Aria Hancock’s Reviews > Innumerable Insects: The Story of the Most Diverse and Myriad Animals on Earth > Status Update

Bug fact! There are different types of camouflage that insects use. Some just have colors to blend into certain backgrounds, others make disguises out of debris. Mimesis is the evolution to look like something different (like stick bugs). The insects who look like other venomous insects but aren’t venomous themselves use Batesian mimicry, but if two insects look alike and both have venom, it’s Müllerian mimicry

BUG FACT! Praying mantises have one, single ear in the center of their chests. Also, some insects can hear the ultrasonic sounds bats make and have different methods to avoid being eaten. Some fly erratically to make it harder to be caught, some moths can make their own ultrasonic clicks to basically talk to the bats and say they’re toxic to eat, and tiger moths can make a click sound that jams the bat’s sonar.

BUG FACT!! Some ants and termites have gardens and grow fungus specifically to eat it. ALSO some groups of ants eat the excess honeydew that aphids secret from eating plant sugars, so they act as ranchers and “look over a herd of aphids like tiny cattle.” The ants protect the aphids and even carry them to different places with more plants to eat when they run out. They protect the aphid’s eggs during winter too

Bug facts!

- Bed bugs inspired some of the first exterminator companies
- C. Macellaria maggots helped create the field of forensic entomology, since they eat dead tissue and thus can be used to reveal the time and location of death

All stinging wasps and bees are females, since their stingers are modified ovipositors!!
That might be common knowledge but I sure didn’t know it before now. Also some males have pseudostingers that can stab, but they don’t have any venom.

Anyways: diversity win! The wasp that stung me in middle school was a woman!

BUG FACT: adult lacewings eat pollen, nectar, and sometimes smaller insects (and sometimes they don’t eat at all). Lacewing larvae on the other hand have modified jaws that drain the bodily fluids from their prey! Green lacewing larvae will even camouflage themselves using plant debris or the corpses of their victims! Fun!