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Fun Facts - Insects are Cool !

- Insects have been around for 350 million years, over 1,000 times longer than humans.
- Caterpillars have 12 eyes, yet they are legally blind.
- Butterflies taste with their feet.
- Grasshoppers existed before dinosaurs.
- It takes 100 Monarch Butterflies to weigh an ounce. 
- Ants carry up to 50 times their own body weight. If a human could lift 50 times their body weight, that would be about 4,000 pounds...more than the weight of the average car.
- Silk is the strongest natural fiber in the world; it is made by a bug.
- Houseflies find sugar with their feet, which are 10 million times more sensitive than human tongues.
- It takes 2,000 silkworm cocoons to produce one pound of silk.
- Bees fly up to 60 miles in one day.
- Wasps have been known to get drunk and pass out.
- The queen of a certain termite species can lay 40,000 eggs per day.
- Honeybees have to make about ten million trips to collect enough nectar for production of one pound of honey.
- The term "honeymoon" comes from the Middle Ages, when a newly married couple was provided with enough honey wine to last for the first month of their married life.
- To survive the cold of winter months, many insects replace their body water with a chemical called glycerol, which acts as an "antifreeze" against the temperatures. There are nearly as many species of ants (8,800) as there are species of birds (9,000) in the world.
- About one-third of all insect species are carnivorous, and most hunt for their food rather than eating decaying meat or dung.
- The Elephant Hawk-moth, when alarmed, raises its head and inflates its thorax, causing it to look like the head of a snake.