Back to Basics- Insects

Back to Basics- Insects

We are day number 3 of our back to basics month. Today we are learning about insects with our professor of insects Gracie Grasshopper!

Number of species- nearly 1 million, that’s right we insects account for about 97% of all known species on earth. We arthropods outnumber all other animals on earth.

Insect traits:

• Insects have a segmented body. It’s divided into 3 sections; the head, the thorax and the abdomen.
• Insects are invertebrates. We do not have endoskeletons, like the mammals, birds, fish and reptiles. We have an exoskeleton! Our bodies are covered in hard coverings made of chitin.
• We have two antennae and 6 legs. Each leg has five parts.
• We hatch from eggs.

Insects are generally divided into two groups, insects with wings and insects without wings. I myself have wings.

We either have compound eyes or simple eyes and there are some of us with both types.

We do not have true ears, but we have organs that help us listen to vibrations in our environment.

We do not have lungs or gills to breathe. Instead we have a series of tubes to “breathe” oxygen and expel carbon dioxide.

Yes, we insects have brains. They are tiny and we don’t quiet use them the way other animals do.

There you have the basics of being an insect!