Insect facts for kids: 7 insects and spiders to research

Insects are the most numerous animals on Earth — around a million named species and many more unnamed — and every one has six legs, three body sections and an external skeleton it must shed to grow. Bees pollinate roughly a third of the crops people eat and tell hive-mates where flowers are with a waggle dance. Ants live in colonies of up to millions, farm fungus, herd aphids, and together outweigh all the wild birds and mammals combined. Butterflies begin as caterpillars and rebuild their entire body inside a chrysalis; the monarch then flies up to 4,800 kilometres to winter in Mexico. The praying mantis snaps out folded forelegs faster than the eye can follow and is the only insect that can turn its head. Spiders and tarantulas are not insects at all — they are arachnids, with eight legs and no antennae — but they belong in any study of small hunters. Insect numbers are falling in many regions, which matters for everything that eats them.