Comparison between male cockroach and female cockroach (Periplaneta americana)

Male cockroach	Female cockroach
1.      Larger in size	Smaller in size
2.      Narrow abdomen	Broad abdomen
3.      Anal styles present	Absent
4.      Brood pouch absent	Present
5.      Wings extend beyond the tip of abdomen	Wings extend up to abdomen
6.      Testes and associated organs are present	Ovaries and associated organs are present
7.      Chromosome number (2n)= 33	Chromosome number (2n) = 34

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Flea facts

Flea: external view

• A flea can jump 150 times its size. That is the same as a person able to jump up 1,000 feet in the air. 
• An Antarctic flea has evolved to wait 9 months under several feet of ice and snow for its host, the petrel, to return to the nest. 
• Bat fleas in Southeast Asia hitch rides to the bat roosts on the backs of bat earwigs – as many as 41 fleas have been counted on the back of one earwig! 
• Female fleas cannot lay eggs until after their first blood meal and begin to lay eggs within 36 to 48 hours after that meal. 
• Flea fossils date back to the Lower Cretaceous period, meaning fleas have been around for about 100 million years. At that time, their neighbor might have been a Tyrannosaurus Rex or Triceratops! 
• Flea larvae are blind. 
• Fleas are often confused with bedbugs, lice and ticks. 
• Fleas have a ball of a substance called Resilin above their hind legs, which gives them their bounce. Resilin is the most elastic substance known. A Resilin ball dropped from100 feet would bounce back to 97 feet! 
• If you happen to see one flea, there may be more than 100 offspring or adults looming nearby in furniture, corners, cracks, carpeting or on your pet. 
• Modern life makes it easy to forget about fleas. Our houses are drier than those of our ancestors and flea larvae need moisture to reproduce. Hence we are less plagued with them than our forebears. However, for most of human history humans of all classes were routinely flea-bitten. In the words of one old poem the flea was "born to range the merry world / to rob at will the veins delectable of princes... To lie with ladies, and ah fairest joy, / on infants' necks to feed." 
• One theory of historians says that lap dogs were bred, not for their company, but to distract the fleas into biting the dog instead of its owner! 
• Some fleas can jump 150 times their own length. That compares to a human jumping 1,000 feet. One flea broke a record with a four-foot vertical jump. 
• The cat flea, which infests both cats and dogs, is a tropical insect and cannot tolerate freezing temperatures for long periods of time. However, it is well adapted to indoor living. 
• The female flea can lay 2,000 eggs in her lifetime; if all 53 million dogs in the U.S. each hosted a population of 60 fleas, we'd have more than six trillion flea eggs surrounding our pets. Laid end-to-end, those eggs would stretch around the world more than 76 times! 
• The female flea consumes 15 times her own body weight in blood daily. 
• The largest recorded flea is the North American Hystrichopsylla schefferi, measuring 12mm in length -- almost half an inch! 
• They can perform the human equivalent of jumping over St. Paul's Cathdral in London...not just once but 600 times an hour for three days in a row! 
• Undisturbed and without a blood meal, a flea can live more than 100 days. On average, they live two to three months. 
• While adult fleas all suck blood from a cat, dog or other mammal, their larvae live and feed on organic debris in the host animal's environment. 
• While there are more than 2,000 known species and subspecies of fleas, only one flea species -- the cat flea -- accounts for almost all the fleas found on cats and dogs in the United States.

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Dragonfly facts

• Dragonflies have been around 300 million years. One prehistoric fossil had a wingspan of 2 1/2 feet!
• Today, the largest dragonfly is found in Costa Rica. It has a wingspan of 7 1/2 inches.
• Dragonfly eyes contain up to 30,000 individual lenses. Human eyes only have one.
• They have two sets of wings. They don’t have to beat their wings in unison like other insects do. Their front wings can be going up while their backs ones are going down.
• Excellent and strong fliers, they can loop-the-loop, hover, and fly backwards.
• Dragonfly nymphs (the first stage after hatching) live in the water for about a year.
• While underwater they eat mosquito nymphs, tiny fish, and pollywogs. When they have matured to airborne insects, they catch mosquitoes and gnats in mid-air before devouring them.
• After leaving the water and becoming flying insects, they only live for about a month.
• Their natural predators are birds.
• Among the many names for dragonflies around the world are Old Glassy from China, Water Dipper from England and Big Needle of Wings from the ancient Celts.
• A bee flaps its wings about 300 times per second, but a dragonfly flaps its wings at only about 30 beats per second. (Fact, dragonflies have two sets of wings so they don’t have to beat them as much to fly.)
• A dragonfly is a very strong and good flyer, and can fly at speeds of up to 36 miles per hour.  (fact - but not all dragonflies are that fast – one was clocked at this speed in Australia)
• Dragonflies are known as snake doctors because they can bring dead snakes back to life. (myth)
• There were huge dinosaur dragonflies that lived 300 million years ago. (Fact – the largest fossil found had a 2 ½ foot wingspan, and currently there are dragonflies in Costa Rica that measure 7 ½ inches across the wings.)
• Dragonflies have huge stingers and some people are allergic to their stings and can die. (Myth – the thing that looks like a stinger on a dragonfly is actually called a clasper and the male dragonfly uses it to hold onto the female when they are mating.)
• There are about 5,000 different species of dragonflies all over the world except in Antarctica. 450 of the species can be found in the United States and about 80 species in British Columbia. (Fact, most of the 5,000 species are found in remote, tropical areas.)
• A dragonfly’s eyes have about 30,000 lenses and a dragonfly can see all the way around it, but they don’t see details very well. (Fact, a human eye only has one lens and sees better than a dragonfly, but only to the front and side of them.)
• From the time a dragonfly egg hatches, it can live anywhere from six months to six years, but only about two months as an actual dragonfly. (Fact, most of the time spent is as a nymph in the water before the dragonfly’s metamorphosis into a full grown dragonfly.)
• In the old days, dragonflies would seek out bad kids and sew their mouths together with their claspers while they slept. Dragonflies were known as the devil’s darning needles. (Myth – dragonflies don’t have pockets to carry the thread to the beds of sleeping wicked children.)
• A dragonfly’s scientific name is Odonta, which comes from the words “tooth-jawed” because the entomologist (insect scientist), Johann Christian Fabricius, who named them studied the dragonflies’ mouths in order to distinguish the different species. Now their wings are studied as well to classify dragonflies. (Fact – other names for dragonflies around the world are water dipper in England, old glassy in China, and the ancient Celts called dragonflies big needle of wings.)
• A long time ago, Japan was named Akitsushima, which translates to "Isle of the Dragonfly" (I named my nation on face book this).  There are two legends to how Japan got this name.  The first legend is that Japan was named after the Dragonfly because the country itself resembles a dragonfly's tail.  The second legend is that the Emperor of Japan was bitten by a housefly, and that housefly was eaten by a dragonfly, so in gratitude, the Emperor named Japan in honor the Dragonfly.
• Dragonflies are also very sacred in Japan and many samurai wore dragonfly symbols on their armor.
• Way back when Dragonflies were known by many names.  Two of those names were; the devil's darning needles, and horse biters.  Parents would tell their children that if they didn't behave the dragonflies would come in at night and sow their mouths shut.  There was also a belief that the dragonflies had stingers in their tales and that they used these stingers to upset the horses at night, but really, the dragonflies seen near the upset horses were really helping the horses by eating the insects that were really biting them.
• Dragonflies mate while flying and the males are very possessive.  If a male dragonfly wants to mate with a female dragonfly that already has another male dragonflies eggs inside her, the new male dragonfly will rip them out of her and insert his own.

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Butterfly, Moth & Caterpillar facts

Morpho rhetenor 

• Butterflies and moths are found on all land masses except Antarctica. 
• Butterflies are further divided into 30 orders, based mainly on their wing structure.
• Butterflies belong to, alongside with moths to an order called Lepidoptera.
• The main common features of butterflies are : 6 legs, one pair of antennae, a segmented body in which three body parts, a head, a thorax and an abdomen can be distinguished.
• Butterflies can recognize the colors red, green, and yellow.
• A butterfly has to have a body temperature greater than 86 degrees to be able to fly.
• A butterfly's taste sensors are located below their feet.
• A caterpillar grows roughly 27,000 times its size when it first emerges as an egg.
• A garden caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head. 
• Butterflies get their name from the yellow brimstone butterfly of Europe that is first seen in the early spring or "butter" season.
• Sailor, Dead Leaf, Paper Kite, Blue Striped Crow, Julia and Great Egg Fly are all names of butterflies. 
• Female Queen Alexandra butterflies, from Papua and New Guinea, are the largest in the world, some with wingspans larger than 26 cm.

Monarch butterfly 

• Monarch caterpillars shed their skin four times before they become a chrysalis, growing over 2700 times their original size.
• Night butterflies have ears on their wings so they can avoid bats. 
• Some leaf-rolling caterpillars fire faecal pellets from their anuses. "A structure called the anal plate is loaded with a faecal pellet, and then retracted into the pre-firing position and held in place by a cuticular catch. The blood pressure in the anal compartment is then raised by contracting nearby muscles. When the pressure reaches a sufficient level, the catch gives way and the anal plate flicks the pellet of sh… Out at a velocity of over 1 m.s-1.!"

Atlas moth 

• The atlas moth is one of the largest silk moths. It can be mistaken for a medium-sized bat when flying. 
• The caterpillar of the polyphemus moth, Antheraea polyphemus, can eat 86,000 times its weight at birth in little less than two months. 
• The color in a butterfly's wings does not come from pigment. The color is produced prism-like by light reflected by their transparent wing scales.
• The fastest flying butterfly is the Monarch, which has been clocked with a speed as high as 17 miles per hour.
• The largest butterfly is the Queen Alexandra's bird wing butterfly from Papua New Guinea. The wingspan of the butterfly can reach to be almost one foot.

Butterfly- Life cycle

• The monarch butterfly can detect its lover's scent eight kilometers away. 
• The original name for the butterfly was 'flutterby'!
• The taste buds of a butterfly are in its feet. 
• There are over 2,000 species of butterflies in the rain forests of South America.

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Honeybee facts

·         Bees fly an average of 13-15 mph.

·         A bee travels an average of 1600 round trips in order to produce one ounce of honey; up to 6 miles per trip. To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.

·         Honeybees visit about 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey.

·         During honey production periods, a bee's life span is about 6 weeks.

·         Just a single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees!

·         Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.

·         About 8 pounds of honey is eaten by bees to produce 1 pound of beeswax.

·         Beeswax production in most hives is about 1 1/2% to 2% of the total honey yield.

·         The average hive temperature is 93.5 degrees.

·         Queens will lay almost 2000 eggs a day at a rate of 5 or 6 a minute. Between 175,000-200,000 eggs are laid per year.

·         The speed at which honey bees fly is at 15 miles per hour.

·         The sole purpose of a drone bee is to mate with the queen bee.

·         Bees from the same hive visit about 225,000 flowers per day. One single bee usually visits between 50-1000 flowers a day, but can visit up to several thousand.

·         Honeybees have hair on their eyes.

·         A colony of bees has to fly almost fifty-five thousand miles and tap two million flowers to make one pound of honey.

·         A honey bee strokes its wings about 11,500 times a minute.

·         Bees can communicate with other bees by dancing. Their dance can alert other bees as to which direction and the distance nectar and pollen is located.

·         It takes 12 honeybees to make one teaspoon of honey. In a lifetime, on average a honey bee produces 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.

·         In one trip, a honey bee visits about 75 flowers.

·         In one day, a queen bee can lay up to 1500 eggs in one day.

·         Honeybees use the sun as a compass which helps them navigate.

·         A honey bee has four wings.

·         A bird called the bee eater in areas of Africa thinks that riding around on the backs of other animals is fun!

·         The honeybee has to travel an average of 43,000 miles to collect enough nectar to make a pound of honey!

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Ant facts

• If a man could run as fast for his size as an ant can, he could run as fast as a racehorse. 
• Ants can lift 20 times their own body weight. 
• With their combined weight greater than the combined weight of all humans, ants are the most numerous type of animal.
• An ant brain has about 250 000 brain cells. A human brain has 10,000 million so a colony of 40,000 ants has collectively the same size brain as a human. 
• Ant brains are largest amongst insects. An ant's brain may have the same processing power as a Macintosh II computer.
• Thousands of years ago, King Solomon wrote: "Go to the ant, consider its ways and be wise". 
• The average life expectancy of an ant is 45-60 days. 
• Adult ants cannot chew and swallow solid food. They rely on juice which they squeeze from pieces of food. 
• The abdomen of the ant contains two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with other ants. 
• There are over 10000 known species of ants. 
• Some worker ants are given the job of taking the rubbish from the nest and putting it outside in a special rubbish dump. 
• Some birds put ants in their feathers because the ants squirt formic acid which gets rid of the parasites. 
• The Slave-Maker Ant (Polyergus rufescens) raids the nests of other ants and steals their pupae. When these new ants hatch, they work as slaves within the colony. 
• If a worker ant has found a good source for food, it leaves a trail of scent so that the other ants in the colony can find the food. 
• Army Ants are nomadic and they are always moving. They carry their larvae and their eggs with them in a long column.
• The Army Ant (Ecitron burchelli) of South America can have as many as 700,000 members in its colony. 
• The Leaf Cutter Ants cut out pieces of leaves which they take back to their nests. 
• Wood ant workers live seven to ten years.
• The queen ant lives up to ten or twenty years.
• The wood ant can threaten the enemy with open jaws.
• There are thirty-five thousand kinds of ants in the world.
• Some ants sleep seven hours a day.
• Ants are normally from 2 to 7 mm long, although carpenter ants can stretch to 2 cm, or almost an inch. 

Fire ants

• Some ants care for and "farm" other insects.
• Ants don't sleep.
• When the only queen ant dies, so does the entire colony, because no new workers are born.
• The study of ants is called Myrmecology.
• For every human in the world there are one million ants.
• The brain of an ant has about 250,000 brain cells.
• The sense of smell of an ant is just as good as a dog's is.
• Ants can lift an object up to fifty times their body-weight and carry it over their heads. They don't do this with their feet, but with their mouths.
• A leaf-cutter ant queen mates only once - just before establishing a new colony. She can then keep the sperm viable for up to 15 years and produce as many as 300 million offspring.

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