The class of insects is the most numerous on Earth: it has about one million species. Some of its representatives are considered the oldest inhabitants of the planet. They inhabited it 400 million years ago. This class managed to survive and survive in the conditions of cataclysms that have happened more than once on Earth. Due to the peculiarities of life, insects today are a progressive group of animals. The information about insects presented in the specialized literature is striking in the number of unusual and little-known facts. The same sources indicate that the life of wildlife on the planet has not been fully studied.
The most important units of the class
The life of insects living on the planet is under close attention of zoologists. For the convenience of studying animals, they were divided into groups.
The following signs became the basis for the classification:
- character of development - direct (without metamorphosis), indirect (with metamorphosis);
- structural featuresmouth apparatus - sucking, gnawing, licking, gnawing-sucking;
- presence and structure of wings.
In this regard, scientists have identified the following orders - cockroaches, termites, orthoptera, lice, bugs, homoptera, beetles, lepidoptera, hymenoptera, dipterans, fleas. Here is a far from complete list of currently existing groups of insects.
Due to their high ability to adapt to living conditions, insects have spread throughout the planet. They live on the surface of the earth, in the soil, in fresh and s alt water bodies. Some species of insects parasitize humans, animals, and plants. Modern scientists have established that there were orders of insects that have now become extinct. Their oldest representatives belonged to the orders of pra-roaches, dragonflies, gerarids and others.
Hymenoptera
Bright representatives of this order are bumblebees, bees, wasps, ants. They are characterized by a full cycle of development, the presence of two pairs of reticulate wings, sucking and lacquering mouthparts. These animals received another name - social insects.
Their way of life has always been interesting to man. Today, twenty thousand species of bees are known to exist, many of which have been domesticated by people to obtain such a valuable product as honey.
But not everyone knows that these insects have to work hard throughout their lives. In order for 500 grams of honey to be formed in the combs, one bee needs to make 10 million flights from the hive to the flower andback. At the same time, a characteristic buzzing is heard. It appears for the reason that insects cut through the air, making frequent flapping of their wings. Sometimes their frequency reaches 11,500 strokes per minute. But this is not a record either. Stinging insects are known that are capable of performing more than 62 thousand flaps of wings in one minute.
Human, having studied the habits of honey bees, has learned to create favorable conditions for them in order to obtain beekeeping products of the best quality and in large volumes.
Wasps and bumblebees are also social insects. Their families do not live long - only one summer. Only the young uterus remains for the winter, the old one dies. Together with her, males and worker insects end their lives at the end of summer. Representatives of the order Hymenoptera are excellent pollinators.
Cockroaches
Red and black cockroaches are the main representatives of the detachment. They settle in those places where a person ceases to care about the cleanliness of his home. These dangerous insects can cause the spread of some infectious diseases. Cockroaches enter places where human food is stored and pollute them with waste products.
A female cockroach can lay about two million eggs a year. From them, white small insects, similar to adults, are born. After a while, they molt, acquiring the color of adults.
Lepidoptera
All types of butterflies belong to the detachment. Interesting facts about insects always concern the life of this particular group of representatives.fauna. Butterflies vary in wing color and size. For example, there are insects that are sometimes mistaken for birds - such is the wingspan of these butterflies.
Some species are only nocturnal. Butterflies are known to taste food in an unusual way - with their hind legs. The structure of their wings has become the subject of study by more than one scientific laboratory.
Orthoptera
Locusts, crickets and grasshoppers belong to the order Orthoptera. Insects of this group are distinguished by an incomplete development cycle (without transformation), the presence of a gnawing mouth apparatus, two pairs of special wings, which scientists call elytra.
The most dangerous insects of this squad are locusts. The species has the ability to mass reproduction. Gathering in huge swarms (the number can reach 50 billion individuals), locusts move over long distances. All vegetation along the path of hordes of insects is destroyed. A swarm of locusts eats in a day the same amount of food that a city of many millions of people, such as New York, will need for the same period. The damage caused by locusts is in some cases irreparable.
Beetles
The detachment has another name - Coleoptera. Characteristic representatives include the rhinoceros beetle, May beetle, ladybug, ground beetle, weevil and many others. The life of insects of this detachment is full of mysteries, secrets and legends. About 400 thousand species of beetles are known on earth. The largest representative of the detachment is the titan beetle -reaches a length of seventeen centimeters. Species that are several millimeters long are also known.
New interesting facts about insects of this group regularly appear in the literature. So, for example, the stag beetle grows up to eight centimeters in length. Its larvae develop in rotting tree stumps for five years. During this time, they reach large sizes - about 14 centimeters. Many beetles are pests. They destroy plantations of cultivated plants, forests, food, wood products, leather and other natural materials.
Interesting facts about insects
It is known that the fastest insect on Earth is a dragonfly. It is capable of moving at a speed of fifty-seven kilometers per hour.
There are countries where insect dishes are a real delicacy. Fried crickets and locusts are rich in protein, carbohydrates and other nutrients.
Grasshoppers can jump over forty times their body length.
Most house flies live in the area where they were born, but there are cases when insects move away from their native places for more than forty kilometers. It turns out that flies cannot resist the force of the wind and travel with air currents.
Scientists have found that, on average, about 26 billion different insects live in an area equal to a square kilometer, which differ from each other in their lifestyle and food preferences, ways of development, durationlife.
Modern science cannot know everything about insects for the reason that there are still unknown species. But even those that are described by scientists have not yet been fully studied. The world of insects is the most mysterious and little-studied part of wildlife. Interesting facts about insects, their knowledge teaches a person to treat nature correctly, to understand its laws, not to harm the world around.
