INSECTS

Study Claims To Show Cockroaches Have Distinct Personalities

These Flies Go Headhunting for Dinner

Watch this Guy Serve as an Incubator for Bot Flies

Elsa Youngsteadt via North Carolina State University

NYC Insects Eat a Lot of Food Waste

How Antlion Larvae Eat Without a Mouth

Mosquitoes Get Bug Bites, Too

This Moth’s Love Song Has a Dual Meaning

When love is in the air for certain moth species, the female secretes a pheromone to signal that she’s ready to make little moths. An interested male will approach and “sing” her a courtship song composed of a series of ultrasonic pulses.

12 Facts About the Death's-Head Hawkmoth

Celebrate National Moth Week with a few facts about one of the most striking insects in the animal kingdom: The Death's-Head Hawkmoth.

A Tiny Spider’s Secret to Taking Down Big Prey

At first glance, the pin head-sized spider Zodarion cyrenaicum seems like its on a suicide mission every time it hunts for a meal. Its preferred prey is a desert ant, Messor arenarius, some three times bigger and six times heavier than itself. But as Davi

This Assassin Only Kills If Its Victim Strikes First

Letting your opponent land the first blow usually isn’t a surefire strategy for winning a fight, but for one insect predator, it’s the only way to come out on top.

A Treasure Trove of Parasitic Wasps

For the last three decades, scientists in the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG), a roughly one-thousand-square-kilometer chunk of forest in northwestern Costa Rica, have been inventorying and rearing hundreds of thousands of caterpillars. With the hel

Some Animals Give Poison Presents

11 Amazing Insect Close-Ups

Whether you find insects creepy or fascinating, seeing close-up photographs of insects taken with modern camera equipment reveals that they can be quite beautiful.

These Spiders Use Unlikely Bodyguards

Many ant species are territorial and aggressive. That maybe wouldn’t be so bad if ants were loners, but they tend to stick together in groups, sometimes tens of thousands strong. If you’re a bigger, tougher animal that eats ants, or one that stays safe by

8 Facts About the Spiny Flower Mantis

Sure, you've heard of the Praying Mantis. But have you seen its cousin, the Spiny Flower Mantis?

Do Flies Really Have 24-Hour Lifespans?

“I’ve only got 24 hours of living, and I ain’t gonna waste ‘em here!” groans a disgruntled housefly during a hilarious scene in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. But do those pesky insects really brandish a day-long life expectancy?

Darwin's Beetle, Lost and Found

11 Unexpected Accessories Designed for Experiments

The road to enlightenment has taken some pretty strange turns over the last century. Here are a few of the weirdest pit stops.

10 Awesome New Species Discovered in 2013

Geckos and shrubs and sharks, oh my! 2013 was a big year for new species. Scientists found hundreds of them this year. Here are some of our favorites.

These Ants Use Mercenaries to Fight for Them

In the jungles of Panama, a group of farmers ekes out a living by raising fungi for food. They’re peaceful, and when more aggressive neighbors come into their territory, looking for a cut of the crop, they oblige the guests and don’t fight them. But while

Why Won’t These Bugs Cross This Line?

At this invisible line, two related species of millipedes meet, but don’t mix—and no one knows why.

13 Fascinating Facts About Bees

Sure, you know that bees pollinate our crops and give us honey. But there's so much more to these buzzing insects than that.

Even Entomologists Are Scared of Spiders

Some entomologists, the scientists that study insects, have a work life that presents a challenge: they’ve devoted their careers to creepy-crawly animals, work with them every day, sometimes get up close and personal with them and are maybe even fond of t

This Wasp Turns Spiders Into Zombie Construction Workers

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