Howdy everyone! Welcome to Insect and Invertebrates studies! My department is a big one, because we insects are numerous! Arthropods include insects, crustaceans, spiders (who are not insects), trilobites and centipedes.
I focus mainly on insects, but we’ll also cover crustaceans, spiders and trilobites. Let’s get started with what makes an insect an insect first!
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! There are so many of us, I could start my own university just about bugs, but I like it at the University of E&E! We’ll be adding more info about the other members of the arthropod order soon!
The Adventures of Ellie and Edmond 