Trivia: When foreplay entails having your head ripped off

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Wed, 05/24/2006 12:20 PM

Did you know that despite ants being such hard workers they never need to sleep? Or that a male spider's legs get a real workout during sex? Find out more about the amazing bugs around you.

* Ants are social insects and live in colonies which may have as many as 500,000 individuals.

* Ants do not sleep.

* When ants find food, they lay down a chemical trail so that other ants can find their way from the nest to the food source.

* Ants cannot chew their food, they move their jaws sidewards, like scissors, to extract the juices from the food.

* Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.

* The queen of a termite colony may lay 6,000 to 7,000 eggs per day, and may live 15 to 50 years.

* The sex organ on a male spider is located at the end of one of its legs.

* A cockroach can live seven days after its head has been cut off, and then it dies of thirst.

* It takes a cockroach 48 hours to digest its food.

* A cockroach can hold its breath for 40 minutes.

* Cockroaches can run the fastest for an insect, moving almost 30 cm per second.

* A one-day old baby cockroach, about the size of a speck of dust, can run almost as fast as its parents.

* The cockroach dates back 300 million years, making it the longest surviving insect.

* A mosquito has 47 teeth.

* Only female mosquitoes bite, as they need the protein from blood to produce their eggs.

* The caterpillar has over 4,000 muscles compared to a human's 639. It has 248 muscles just in its head.

* The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head.

* The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.

* Crickets hear through their knees.

* Only full-grown male crickets can chirp.

* The Indonesian giant stick insect is the longest living insect, measuring 33 cm from end to end.

* The dragonfly is one of the fastest insects, flying 80 to 100 kph. It has a lifespan of just 24 hours and has as many as 30,000 lenses in each eye.

* A dragonfly flaps its two pairs of wings alternately, the front ones rising as the rear ones fall.

* In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon of honey.

* The honeybee kills more people worldwide than all the poisonous snakes combined.

* The Tanzanian parasitic wasp is smaller than the eye of a housefly.

* The fairyfly lays its eggs inside other insects' eggs. Fairyflies measure only 1/5 of a millimeter.

* The very tiny midge beats its wings 1,046 times per second.

* A housefly can somersault in flight to land upside down on a ceiling.

* The complete life-cycle of a housefly takes from 10 to 21 days.

* The tsetse fly kills 66,000 people annually.

* Grasshoppers jump 80 times their length.

* Fleas jump 200 times their body length

* More human deaths have been attributed to fleas than all the wars ever fought. As carriers of the bubonic plague, fleas were responsible for killing one-third of the population of Europe in the 14th century.

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