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First printing

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN (hardback) 978-1-4222-3524-9 ISBN (series) 978-1-4222-3523-2 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4222-8344-8

Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with the Library of Congress

WILDLIFE ODDITIES INCREDIBLE INSECTS MYSTIFYING MAMMALS PECULIAR PLANTS REMARKABLE REPTILES SHOCKING SEA CREATURES PICTURE CREDITS

Page: 3: Justin Black/Shutterstock.com; 4: Radu Bercan/Shutterstock.com, Sarit Wuttisan/Shutterstock.com; 5: Vishnevskiy Vasily/Shutterstock.com; 6: Hectonichus, Rob Knell; 7: Sid Mosdell; 8: kurt_G/Shutterstock.com; 9: Brian Lasenby/Shutterstock.com, Danny Cooper/Shutterstock.com; 10: Oliver Koemmerling; 11: Katarina Christenson/Shutterstock.com, Bardocz Peter/Shutterstock.com; 12: John A. Anderson/Shutterstock.com; 13: Visun Khankasem/Shutterstock.com, Kirsanov Valeriy Vladimirovich/Shutterstock.com; 14: Karel Gallas/Shutterstock.com; 15: Brian Lasenby/Shutterstock.com, suradech sribuanoy/Shutterstock.com; 16: David Bygott; 17: Rodney Mehring/Shutterstock.com; 18: Ryan M. Bolton/Shutterstock.com; 19: wonderisland/ Shutterstock.com, Simon Greig/Shutterstock.com; 20: Steve Byland/Shutterstock.com, KPG_Payless/Shutterstock.com; 21: l i g h t p o e t/Shutterstock.com; 22: Amir Ridhwan/Shutterstock.com, optimarc/Shutterstock.com; 23: zen Sutherland; 24: Vladimir Wrangel/Shutterstock.com; 25: Henrik Larsson/Shutterstock.com, Gilles San Martin; 26: Own work; 27: Anders L. Damgaard www.amber-inclusions.dk; 29: AmyLv/Shutterstock.com, Greg Hume; 31: Andy Murray Torn Paper Vector Art: 1, 7, 11, 16, 18, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30: AldanNi/Shutterstock.com; 5, 9, 13, 15, 21: Susse_n/Shutterstock.com

CONTENTS

A Billion Billion

4 6 8

Fashion With a Function

Masters of Disguise

Not Exactly a Milkshake Do You See What I See?

10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32

Built-In Weapons Kill or Be Killed

Cooperation Insect Style I-Messages for Insects More Than Just Water Bugs Secret Roommates Incredible Insect Facts Incredible Insect Words Incredible Insect Projects

Index

Billions of people live on Earth. But for every person, there are more than a billion insects! There isn’t even a name for that number—it’s a 1 followed by 18 zeros. You can find insects everywhere! They live below ground, inside houses, underwater, on plants, and even on our skin.

7 This lantern bug lives in the steamy forests of Malaysia.

8 There are millions of aphids like these in an average field.

4.

Why are there so many insects? The answer is that they have found so many weird ways of living. They eat many different kinds of food, from wooden furniture to plant pollen to elephant dung. Some insects can disguise themselves to hide from enemies. Others use powerful weapons and clever tricks to stay alive.

SIDEBAR

ARE ALL BUGS INSECTS? Not all creepy crawlies are insects. All insects have six legs and two feelers. Creatures with eight legs, such as spiders, are not really insects. Nor are slugs and worms because they have no legs at all!

How can you spot an insect? All insects, when they are fully grown, have six legs. Their bodies are divided into three parts—the head, thorax, and abdomen. They also have two feelers on their heads, called antennae. Insects do not have bones inside their bodies like us. Instead, they have a hard, tough outer skin, called an exoskeleton. This protects their soft insides. As they get larger, they lose this skin and grow a new one.

You can see the main parts of an insect in this picture of a wasp. Not all insects have wings.

7

5.

Insects look like aliens. But there’s a method to the madness. Sometimes being a weird shape can help an insect to find food. Some take advantage of how they look to hide from predators. Other insects look ugly or frightening to scare their enemies away.

If you had eyes on stalks like the diopsid fly at the

Peanut-head bugs live in rainforests and eat tree sap. Their large heads may help to frighten other animals away. 7

bottom of the page, you could use them to peek around corners! But diopsid flies do not do this. Instead, they fight each other by holding up their eyestalks. The fly with the longest stalks is the winner.

8 A diopsid fly’s feelers are on its eyestalks.

6.

You can tell a lot about weird insects from their names. The peanut-head bug gets its name from its strangely shaped head, which looks like a peanut shell. Giraffe weevils, from Africa, are little beetles with very long necks. No one knows for sure why they have them, but scientists think it might have to do with fighting for a mate. Some insects have strange body parts to help them reach their food. Butterflies and moths have a long, thin tube in their mouth called a proboscis. They use it like a drinking straw to suck a sweet juice called nectar out of

flowers. The Darwin’s hawk-moth has a very long proboscis, so it can suck nectar from its favorite orchid.

The giant weta grows up to almost 4 inches (12 cm) long—too big to sit in your hand! 7

SIDEBAR

MEGA BUG The giant weta is a kind of grasshopper from New Zealand. Wetas are among the biggest insects in the world, and some giant wetas are so heavy that they cannot even hop!

7.

The next time you see a leaf, take a second look. Insects are so good at camouflage that they not only fool other insects. They can fool people, too. Insects animals, or even bird droppings! Why make such an effort to blend in? This way, insects can hide from their enemies. Insects can sometimes avoid being eaten by looking like the plants they live on. Some insects are amazingly good at this. The Indian leaf butterfly and the Javanese leaf insect look exactly like leaves. It is very hard to see them, even if you look carefully. They had better watch out for animals that eat leaves! Stick insects look like the green stems of plants, thorn bugs look like thorns, and some disguise themselves as leaves, flowers, twigs, tree bark, other

caterpillars look just like bird droppings. Not many animals would want to eat that!

The abdomen of this leaf insect from Malaysia dangles down just like a real leaf. 8

8.

Some insects disguise themselves as something much bigger and scarier than themselves, like a small bird or lizard. This is another good way to stop an enemy gobbling you up. The owl butterfly has spots on its wings that look like the eyes of a large owl. Owls are deadly hunters. So, a hungry lizard that thinks it sees an owl’s face will keep away.

SIDEBAR

MOTH BURGERS Insects need camouflage because lots of animals love to eat them. Other insects, birds, fish, frogs, lizards, and larger animals such as anteaters all enjoy eating insects. In many countries, people eat them too! Fried locusts, chocolate- covered ants, and moth burgers are all eaten in different parts of the world.

Can you spot the stick insects on this plant? 8

This scary “snake” is in fact the tail end of a hawk-moth caterpillar.

7

9.

Insects don’t need dentists—they don’t have teeth. Instead, insects have two main types of mouths. Some have a long, thin proboscis for sucking up liquids. Others have jaws, called mandibles, which they use for biting. Many insects need to turn solid food into a liquid before they can eat it. The assassin bug attacks a smaller insect by stabbing it with a long, sharp proboscis. Then it injects special spit that turns the victim’s insides to jelly. The assassin bug sucks up the jelly, leaving the empty insect skin behind.

This female praying mantis is halfway through eating her mate. 7

10.

SIDEBAR

BLOODSUCKERS For mosquitoes, midges, and vampire moths, dinner is a drop of blood sucked out of a living animal, such as a cow, sheep, or person. Vampire moths in Malaysia can feed on the same animal for an hour.

Some insects eat members of their own family. A baby gall-midge lives inside its mother and eats her from the inside out! Female praying mantises are bigger than males. After they have mated, the male needs to escape. Otherwise, the female bites the male’s head off and eats him.

This picture shows a close-up of a common housefly drinking water. 7

An assassin bug attacks its prey. 7

11.

No insect actually has eyes in the back of its head. But they do have some strange ways to hear, see, taste, and smell. Butterflies can taste with their feet, moths can sniff with their feelers, and grasshoppers can hear with their knees! Even though they use these strange tools, insects can often see more color, smell farther, and hear better than most people.

Butterflies, bees, and some flies and moths can taste with their feet. This is very useful because it means they can tell right away whether they have landed on something

that is good to eat. Bees and butterflies also find their food by sight and smell. Insect ears are even weirder. Some grasshoppers hear with pads shaped like drums on the sides of their knees. They use these to listen for other grasshoppers. Some moths have ears on the sides of their bodies, which they use to listen for bats that like to eat them.

7

This emperor dragonfly has more than 30,000 separate eyes in each compound eye.

12.

7

This type of grasshopper has ears on its sides. The ear is the pale oval patch just below the wing.

If you take a close look at a fly or dragonfly, you will notice its big, bulging eyes. Eyes like these are made up of thousands of tiny eyes, all joined together. They are called compound eyes. These eyes are so powerful that they can see the slightest movements. They also allow insects such as dragonflies to look in all directions when they are hunting.

Many moths have amazingly sensitive antennae for sniffing out a mate.

7

SIDEBAR

SUPER SNIFFERS • Ants find their way home by following trails of smelly scent left by other ants from their nest. • A male Indian moon moth can smell a female, using his feelers, from up to almost 7 miles (11 km) away.

13.

Humans have developed some pretty complex weapons—and so have insects. But insects have their weapons built right into their bodies. They use nasty sprays, painful stings, or giant pincers to fight their enemies, and the damage can be devastating.

Many insects have strong jaws shaped like pincers. Sometimes these pincers are so large that they can be used as weapons. Male stag beetles

use their giant jaws to have wrestling matches. Soldier ants also have huge jaws for fighting off animals that attack their nests.

7 In this wrestling match, one stag beetle has managed to lift the other off the ground.

14.