Insects, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 31, 2012

Where Do Fruit Flies Come From?

Fruit flies need very little to call your kitchen their “home, sweet home.” All that they require is a moist area of fermenting stuff. That stuff can be ripened fruits or vegetables, as well as drains, garbage disposals, empty bottles and cans, trash bags, or cleaning rags and mops. Fruit...

Mar 31, 2012

How Gravity Messes with Honeybees' Waggle Dance

Honeybees are known to communicate in a dance language called the waggle dance to point out the location of resources that keep the hive alive, but new research reveals that gravity can mess with this dance's accuracy. The waggle dance is an important part of how they provide for the...

Jul 31, 2013

Caterpillar Can Hop for 3 Days in Leafy 'Sleeping Bag'

Hop over, Mexican jumping beans: Scientists have discovered another fascinating caterpillar species with impressive jumping skills. During its larval stage, the moth Calindoea trifascialis crawls the dry forest floors of southern Vietnam amongst elephants and flying insects, spending most of its time chewing away at a protective, tent-like structure it...

Oct 31, 2014

Insect Family Tree Maps 400-Million-Year Evolution

Creating a family tree that dates back more than 400 million years and details the evolution of the most diverse group of animals on the planet is no easy feat, but one ambitious group of scientists has done just that. The first-ever comprehensive evolutionary tree of insects was recently created...

Sep 30, 2014

Bugs as Treatment: Coming to a Clinic Near You... (Op-Ed)

This article was originally published on The Conversation. The publication contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. When you’re sick, you want the most effective treatment to help get you back on your feet. But what if that involved bugs? Maggots and leeches have been used...

Jun 30, 2019

Yellow Jacket 'Super Nests' the Size of Cars Are Popping Up in Alabama

Yellow jackets in Alabama may be in the midst of a colossal craze; they're making humongous super nests that can house 15,000 worker wasps, according to an entomologist there. That's three to four times the size of typical wasp nests, which are the size of a volleyball and house about...

Jun 30, 2020

Ruthless Australian 'assassin flies' named for Thor, Deadpool — and Stan Lee

Quick: Think of the most heroic animal on Earth. If you said the fly — that notoriously annoying insect that eats garbage, breeds in dung and transmits disease all over the world — then you are on the same page as the Australian biology community. Researchers at Australia's federal science...

Mar 26, 2021

Prime numbers protect Brood X cicadas from everything but zombie fungus

After spending 17 years underground, trillions of cicadas will emerge this spring to creak out their ear-splitting mating songs and litter tree trunks with their eerie molted skin. It's weird enough that Brood X, as this enormous influx of cicadas is known, somehow manages to emerge all at the same...

Mar 29, 2021

What are Brood X cicadas?

Every 17 years, the billions of periodical cicadas that make up Brood X turn their attention from tree roots to the sky. In the spring of 2021, after nearly two decades of development underground, the insects are ready to dig their way out of the earth across the eastern United...

May 20, 2021

Finding those delightful Brood X cicadas: Here's how

Something incredible is happening right now that takes place just once every 17 years: Brood X cicada nymphs are wriggling out of the soil to climb the nearest trees, where they will transform into red-eyed, black-bodied adult cicadas by the billions. If you live in the eastern United States, you're...

May 22, 2021

Some Brood X cicadas will be sex-crazed zombies with disintegrating butts

All Brood X cicadas want to do is mate and die in peace — is that so much to ask? Unfortunately, a number of the now-emerging cicadas may instead find themselves the victims of a zombifying fungus that transforms their butts into spore-shedding fungal gardens. For the past 17 years,...

Nov 29, 2021

New video reveals how 'caterpillar soup' transforms into shimmering butterfly wings

To transform into a butterfly, a caterpillar must first dissolve into a goopy soup within its chrysalis. Now, in striking new videos, scientists have revealed how this goo reassembles into the delicate scales on a butterfly's wings. To watch this process unfold in living caterpillars undergoing metamorphosis, the researchers behind...

Dec 1, 2021

Ants vomit into each other's mouths to form social bonds

Ants have social networks just like humans do, but instead of exchanging information through posts and comments, they vomit into each other's mouths. Most insects have a foregut, a midgut and a hindgut. However, for social insects, the foregut has become sort of a 'social stomach,' said Adria LeBoeuf, an...

Dec 16, 2021

Newfound millipede breaks world record for the most legs

A newfound species of millipede has more legs than any other creature on the planet — a mind-boggling 1,300 of them. The leggy critters live deep below Earth's surface and are the only known millipedes to live up to their name. The word 'millipede' has always been a bit of...

Feb 19, 2022

What do ants smell like?

Skunks are notoriously stinky. The musk ox, true to its name, emits a musky scent during mating season. And for some lucky owners, dog paws smell like corn chips. But these are not the only members of the animal kingdom that are smelly. Perhaps one of the most peculiar stinky...