Ladybird
A single ladybird can eat several thousand aphids in its lifetime, making it a gardener’s best friend.
Insect
Leafcutter Ant
Leafcutter ants do not eat the leaves they cut: they use them to grow a fungus garden, a form of farming that ants invented tens of millions of years before humans.
Monarch Butterfly
Eastern monarchs fly up to around 4,000 km or more to a few mountain forests in central Mexico, a place none of them has ever seen before.
Mosquito
Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals to humans, because they spread diseases such as malaria, which kills around 600,000 people a year.
Periodical Cicada
Periodical cicadas spend 13 or 17 years underground, then emerge together in their millions within a few days.
Praying Mantis
Praying mantises are the only insects proven to have 3D vision: scientists tested this by fitting them with tiny 3D glasses.
Stick Insect
The longest insect ever recorded is a Chinese stick insect about 62 cm long, including its outstretched legs.
Termite
Some termite mounds are so well ventilated that engineers copied their design to cool a building in Zimbabwe without conventional air conditioning.