INTERESTING INSECT INFORMATION

Here are some facts about insects that are not your "everyday" facts.

We hope you enjoy them.

Ants can lift 50 times their own weight. But that's nothing compared with the honey bee, which can lift 300 times its own weight - roughly the equivalent of a person lifting 15 tons.

The average mosquito has 47 teeth - but it's the mosquito's sharp proboscis that'll make you itch.

The proboscis, which looks like a really long, pointy nose, is the female mosquito's rather effective tool for sharing your blood supply.

There are grasshoppers that can draw blood with a kick.

Fleas that can leap eight hundred times farther than their body length.

Did you know that the Deer Bot Fly, Cephenemyia jellisoni Townsend (the infamous supersonic fly) was reputed by C.H.T. Townsend, that father of "Myiology" in 1926, to zoom from hilltop to hilltop in New Mexico at speeds of up to 818 miles per hour!

Courtship among Balloon Flies is dangerous because the female, when given a chance, will eat the male. To keep his head and get the girl, the male fly resorts to gift-giving, presenting the female with a small, balloon-shaped cocoon. Unwrapping the present keeps the female distracted, giving the male time to love her and then leave her.