INSECTS

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

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.

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