INSECTS

How Spiders Win the Lottery

On a cloudy spring day, a little spider scales a tall blade of grass. At the peak, the spider arches up, points its abdomen up to the sky and begins releasing strands of silk from its silk glands. Tens of thousands of strands fill the air, fanning out and

How Many Spiders Do You Really Swallow in Your Sleep?

Depending on who you ask, ingested creepy crawlies can vary from three, to eight, and even zero.

Male Black Widows Practice Cannibalism, Too

Black widow spiders, nature’s femmes fatales, have earned their name from a long-held belief that the females often devour their male counterparts immediately after mating. But recent research has uncovered at least one species of the spider in which this

5 Awesome Facts About the Atlas Moth

We know what you’re thinking: You’d like to torch every one of those pesky bugs buzzing around your porch light and banging into your windows.

6 Cool Insects You Can Raise at Home

Don't let Mother Nature have all the fun!

Why Do Cicadas Spend So Much Time Underground?

In 1996, the cicadas of Brood II (the “East Coast Brood”) swarmed the northeastern United States and then disappeared almost as quickly as they came, leaving only their eggs and molted exoskeletons behind. Once the eggs hatched, the new generation of cica

Painting Frogs, Licking Wounds & Other Adventures with Poisonous Animals

There are plenty of intrepid scientists doing strange-sounding field work. Here are two.

Bee City: A Kooky, Sweet Educational Film

14 Great Names for Bugs

Scientists have a sense of humor just like the rest of us. The difference is that a scientist's jokes are sometimes enshrined in the body of knowledge for eternity, or close to it. One of the ways they do this is naming things that previously had no name,

The 9 Worst Moms in the Animal Kingdom

No matter how many mistakes your mother may have made, there’s no way she's in the same class as these animal mothers.

Why Are Moths Drawn to Flames?

Around the world, moths make kamikaze dives into light bulbs and open flames with such regularity that they have their own idiom. What is it about lights that make moths so crazy?