The World of Insects

A peek into the world of insects. Interesting fun facts about insects – courtesy of Facebook pages ‘Colours of Nature’, ‘Ancestral Stories’, ‘Weird Facts’, ‘Unbelievable Facts’, ‘Today I Learned’, Science and facts, Crazy creatures, The Knowledge Factory, The study secrets etc… However, I do not know if they are true. Some of them sound really incredible.

When a female praying mantis is ready to mate, she sends out chemical signals called pheromones. These tiny smells float through the air and tell male mantises where she is. The males follow the scent and come close, hoping to mate and pass on their genes.

But mating can be dangerous for the male. In many cases the female attacks and eats the male during or after mating. Sometimes she kills him first. This behavior may seem shocking to us, but it happens often in nature among mantises.

Scientists think this helps the female get extra nutrition for her eggs. By eating the male, she gains energy that can make her babies stronger or more likely to survive. So, while it looks violent, it is a natural way some mantises use to help their young do better. – A Facebook post by ’Colours of Nature’

Mantises strike fast, eating anything from aphids and leafhoppers to larger beetles and grasshoppers, keeping pests in check without chemicals.

Their camouflage and patience let your garden recover quietly, proving real balance comes from letting nature work. – A Facebook post by ‘Strangest Facts’

You’re looking at a biological breach. A beetle that weaponized chemistry. A living bomb with a rotary turret.

This is the Bombardier Beetle, a ground-dwelling brachinini from every continent. No sting. No venomous bite. No escape. Just one protocol: detonate.

While other insects hide, this one mixes hydroquinones and hydrogen peroxide in an internal combustion chamber and fires a 100°C toxic spray.

Ants? Frogs? They don’t survive the first encounter. They retreat, scalded.

You think defense is passive? This beetle is proof it is reactive, a precise, boiling counterstrike, and brutally efficient. It doesn’t just fight back. It conducts a controlled explosion. – A Facebook post by ‘Cronus’

We romanticize apex predators like wolves and sharks, but statistically, they are amateurs. A lion fails three out of every four hunts. A dragonfly almost never misses. They have a 95% success rate.

How? They don't "chase" prey; they calculate ballistics.

Dragonflies use interception-based flight. Their brains calculate the speed and trajectory of the target and fly to where the prey will be, not where it is, predicting the prey's future location. By the time the prey realizes it is being hunted, the math has already been done. The outcome is inevitable.

Thirty thousand individual lenses (facets) are fused into two compound eyes. This gives the dragonfly nearly 360-degree vision. They can see you from behind, above, and below simultaneously.

They process visual information at a much faster rate than humans, effectively seeing the world in "slow motion." This is the only insect that can fly forward, backward, sideways, and hover. It can pull 9Gs of force in a turn and accelerate from 0 to 30 mph instantly.

Helicopter engineers have spent decades trying to replicate the flight mechanics of the dragonfly. They still haven't cracked it.

Nature built the perfect machine 300 million years ago and hasn't needed to update it since. – A Facebook post by Cronus

Only female mosquitoes bite people and animals. They do this because the eggs they carry need extra nutrients to grow. Blood gives them protein and iron that help the eggs develop. Without that blood meal, many female mosquitoes cannot make healthy eggs.

Male mosquitoes do things differently. They eat nectar and plant juices for energy, just like bees or butterflies. Male mosquitoes do not have the sharp mouthparts needed to pierce skin, so they cannot bite or draw blood at all.

Female mosquitoes also drink nectar for energy when they are not making eggs, but they turn to blood when they are ready to lay eggs. This is why you might be bitten more at certain times—when females need the extra nutrients to reproduce. Remember, it’s the need to nourish offspring that drives females to bite, not a desire to hurt people. – A Facebook post by ‘Colours of Nature’

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