We do not know if you are one of those who considers insects as your favorite animal, but whether or not you are, there are a lot of amazing creatures within this class of invertebrates , including some of the most hated and probably most hated critters. feared by most, such as cockroaches, mosquitoes or earwigs. Fortunately, not all species of insects are unrewarding to look at. Today we are here to, within that more than a million species of insects described, show you those really beautiful, interesting, that can even inspire us with tenderness, thanks to the fantastic biodiversity of mother nature: butterflies, mantises, dragonflies, grasshoppers … .
Among the most striking characteristics of some insects, we will find that some are capable of living more than 50 years (the queen ant has an overwhelming life expectancy of about 28 years and the queen ends almost double) and others, barely live a few hours (cockroaches, for example, only live 1 year, but they leave behind many thousands of offspring …) There are also those that can go a long time without eating or those that are capable of living in such inhospitable areas as Antarctica.
Butterflies are undoubtedly the most familiar and accepted insects by humans. There are around 17,500 species of butterflies in the world and they are the only group of insects that have scales to cover their wings. In fact, the showy colors of butterflies’ wings come from these little colored flakes. It is called ‘structural color’, where the scales form small grooves that reflect light.
This was witnessed by a study carried out by scientists at Yale University (USA) that revealed the mystery of how the vivid colors of the wings of some species of butterflies are produced. Their results were published in the journal PNAS , and they show that colors are the product of subtle structures in the wings that refract sunlight like a prism. These small repetitive structures, called gyroids, are located on the scales of the wings and are shaped like a corkscrew. Gyroids bend and reflect light to create the wing color that humans are so fascinated by.
