Snipfact:

  The wings of the female Queen Alexandra birdwing butterfly of Paupa New Guinea measure 28 cm (11 in) across.

  Stick insects have the longest bodies. Some measure up to 51 cm (20.07 in) long, including their legs.

  Insects called springtails live in topsoil all over the world. There are probably as many as 600 million per hectare (1.5 billion per acre). Together , they weigh more than the entire human race.

  In many countries insects are a popular food. Insect dishes include omelette made from silkworms and fried honeybees in china, fried locusts in Thailand and red ant chutney in India. Many of us eat insects without realizing it – the red food colouring cohineal is made from the bodies of Mexican scale insect.

  Butterflies have been tracked flying for 4,828 km (3,000 miles)

  Dragonflies can fly at speeds of 28.7 – 32 km/h (18 – 20 mph).

  Male houseflies live for about 17 days and females for about 29 days. Mayflies may live for only a single day as adults, but for two or three years as larvae.

  Dermaptera “leathery wings”: 1,900 species, e.g. earwings Mecoptera “long wings”: 550 species, e.g. hanging flies Thysanura “fringed tail”: 370 species, e.g. silverfish Archaeognatha “ancient jaw”: 350 species, e.g. bristletails Embioptera “lively wings”: 300 species, e.g. web spinners Megaloptera “large wings”: 250 species, e.g. alderflies Raphidioptera “embroidered wings”: 250 species, e.g. alderflies Zoraptera “pure + wingless”: 30 species, e.g. angel insects Grylloblattodea “cricket cockroach”: 25 species, e.g. rock crawlers

  Thysanoptera “fringed wings”: 5,000 species, e.g. thrips Newroptera “net-veined wings”: 4,000 species, e.g. lace-wings Blattodea “insect avoiding light”: 4,000 species, e.g. cockroaches Pscoptera “milled wings”: 3,500 species, e.g. hook lice Isoptera “equal wings”: 2,750 species, e.g. termites Ephemeroptera “living for a day”: 2,500 species, e.g. mayflies Phasmatodea “like a ghost”: 2,500 species, e.g. leaf insects Mantodea “like a prophet”: 2,000 species e.g. mantids Plecoptera “Wickerwork wing”: 2,000 species, e.g. stoneflies Siphonaptera “tube without wings”: 2,000 species, e.g. fleas

  Coleopetra meaning “hard wings”: 370,000 species, e.g. beetles Hymenoptera “membrane wings”; 198,000 species, e.g. ants, bees, wasps Lepidopetra “Scaly wings”: 165,000 species, e.g.butterflies and moths Diptera “two—wings”: 122,000 species, e.g. midges, mosquitoes, true flies Hemiptera '”half wings”: 82,000 species, e.g. aphids and cicads Orthoptera “straight wings”: 20,000 species, e.g. crickets and locusts Trichoptera “hairy wings”: 8,000 species, e.g. caddisflies Coliembola “sticky peg”: 6,500 species, e.g. springtails Phthiraptera “louse wings”: 6,000 species, e.g. bitting and sucking lice Odonata “toothed flies”: 5,500 species, e.g. dragonflies

  The body of most insects has three parts – head, thorax and abdomen. Insects have three pair of legs and many have two pair of wings. Listed in future posts are the main groups, or orders, of insects. Numbers are just the species that we know about and have been named. There may be thousands more still to be discovered. Total numbers are huge. Together, all the insects in the world would weigh at least 12 times as much as all the people in the world.

  Many bats live in large groups called colonies. Bracken Cave in Texas, USA contains the world’s largest bat colony, with about 20 million animals. This is one of the densest populations of any mammal and there can be as many as 5,000 newborn babies per square metre (11 square feet). These bats eat 1,000 tonnes of insects every night.

  Bats sleep during the day and wake up at night, when they go in search of food. Most bats are insect-eaters-a little brown bat can catch 1,200 insects in an hour –but others eat fruit or nectar from plants. Some larger species catch frogs, birds and fish.

  There are about 977 species of bat. Flying foxes are among the largest. These bats are 45 cm (17.7 in) long, have wings that span 1.7 m (5.6 ft) and weigh up to 1.6 kg (3.5 lb). The kitti’s hog-nosed bat, which lives in thailand, is the smallest. It weighs 2 g (0.07 oz), which is less than a table tennis ball. It is only 2.9 cm (1.1 in) long, making it the smallest of all mammals.

  Bats are the only mammals capable of true flight. They belong to the order Chiroptera, which means hand-wing. Instead of front legs, bats have wings made of skin which are supported by the bones of the arms and hands.

  The biggest ostrich eggs weigh up to 2.35 kg (5.18 lb), but they are not the largest eggs of all time. The extinct elephant bird (Aepyornis maximus) of Madagascar laid eggs that were up to 33 cm (13 in) long. This is larger than the eggs of any dinosaur, seven times bigger than an ostrich egg, 180 times bigger than a chicken egg and over 20,000 times the size of a hummingbird’s egg!

  Ostrich 1,600 g Albatross 595 g Kiwi 450 g Emperor penguin 450 g Mute swan 340 g Eagle 145 g Snowy owl 83 g Domestic hen 65 g Mallard 54 g Peregrine falcon 52 g Sparrow 3.0 g Vervain hummingbird 0.375 g