35 Startling Bug Facts That’ll Weird You Out – Part 2

Fireflies are the most efficient producers of light in the world, even when compared to modern light bulbs.

2. Some ants were able to recognize themselves in the mirror, displaying self-cleaning behavior after seeing themselves with a dot painted on their head and failed to do so when the dot was not visible.

3. Cicadas are the only known creature that can kill bacteria on contact via nothing more than its physical surface structure. They have nanoscale sized pillars on their wings that trap and slowly kill bacteria by pulling their cells apart.

4. Bumblebees were originally called humblebees until about the mid 20th Century.

5. Stick insects are actually called Phasmids and the largest species can grow to be 22.3 inches (567mm) long.

Praying mantises only have one ear. They are the only species of animals known to have only one ear.

7. World's rarest insect is 15cm-long “tree lobster” that lives on 1,844 feet high spindle of rock in the middle of Pacific. It was considered extinct until 2001.

8. Ants conduct war in ways similar to humans, they even use more advanced strategies like reconnaissance and sending expendable ants to the front line to preserve the stronger ones.

9. Antarctica's largest native land animal is a 2mm-long insect called Belgica antarctica. It is the only insect that lives on the continent.

10. The Cuckoo bumblebee has lost the ability to collect pollen and to rear their brood. Once a female has infiltrated a host colony, she will kill/subdue the queen of that colony and forcibly "enslave" the workers of that colony to feed her and her developing young.

Ants herd and domesticate aphids to 'milk' them for honeydew nectar. They will move them to sweeter plants, and protect them from ladybugs.

12. Ampulex dementor is a species of wasp that is named after the Dementors in Harry Potter series. This name was chosen to reflect the fact that the wasp uses a toxin to neutralize the neural behavior of cockroaches and makes them docile as if their souls had been sucked out.

13. Triatomine bugs a.k.a kissing bugs attack humans when they are asleep at night as they tend to feed on people’s faces. After they bite and ingest blood, they defecate on the person to pass parasites that cause the Chagas disease.

14. Female hangingflies demand a food gift before a male can mate with her. The bigger the gift, the longer it takes for her to eat it, and thus the longer she'll allow the male to mate with her.

15. Mayflies/Fishflies/Shadflies have been chosen as bio-indicators, markers of water quality in ecological assessments due to the fact that their larvae cannot survive in polluted aquatic habitats.

Mosquitoes pee on you. As a mosquito sucks blood, it needs to get rid of the excess fluid.

17. The alpha female ant of the Dinoponera quadriceps species punishes any pretender by marking her for punishment by chemicals, then let the others immobilize and bite the criminal for 4 days. She is eventually released but loses her high rank.

18. Male carpenter bees will attempt to scare humans away by hovering and buzzing near their faces.

19. There is something called an antlion, which designs an ingenious trap to flawlessly and unfailingly catch ants.

20. There are 1.4 billion insects for every human on Earth. If all the humans in the world got on one scale, and all the bugs in the world got on another scale, the bugs would weigh more.

Some female fireflies mimic the flashes of females of other species to lure in male fireflies to eat them. They are called "femme fatale fireflies."

22. The sperm of a male fire ant is capable of eliminating female DNA from an ovum, which essentially results in the birth of a clone of the male.

23. A Bumblebee will perform warm-up exercises in the winter before taking flight.

24. A species of wasp named Ichneumonidae laid it's young in a live host, made Charles Darwin lose faith in a "benevolent God."

25. There is a species of moth (Mabra elephantophila) that feeds on elephant tears. If the animal is not producing tears, the moth will irritate the eye, causing tears to be produced.