Awesome Insects

The guys behind BoardGameTables.com have created a fun, family-friendly game that anyone can play in about 15 minutes. In Kabuto Sumo, players take on the role of some badass beetles, and attempt to push their opponents out of the ring. Each wrestler disc has a unique shape and a special power that affects their moves.

Nature photographer Lothar Lenz captured this incredible macro slow-motion video of hornets in motion, as they fly around, sip water, and live their lives near his home in the Eifel region of Germany. The crystal clear sounds of the buzzing insects are especially immersive with headphones on.

Walking into a spider web can be a sticky and annoying situation for both humans and spiders. But what would happen if spiders and their webs were much larger? Could you extract yourself before you get wrapped up like a giant fly? What If ponders this horrifying situation in a video that’s definitely not for arachnophobes.

Chip Channel spends most of his time restoring rusty old toys. He also has an ant farm. Watch as these industrious little harvester ants start out with a clean slate of sand, and proceed to build out a complex maze of tunnels for their colony to call home. Everything you see here happened in 24 hours.

Despite their size, insects feature some incredibly sophisticated organic engineering. Using high-speed macro photography, Ant Lab shows off the way that eight different types of bugs take to the air. That plume moth looks a little drunk when it takes off.

Kurzgesagt introduces us to the oecophylla weaver ant. These long-legged insects dwell in tropical jungles, building incredible colonies that spread upwards and sideways between trees. They’re not only incredibly industrious, they’re fierce warriors and defenders of their kingdoms.

Before his passing in 2019, scientist and photographer Andreas Kay captured some amazing imagery of the diverse lifeforms in Ecuador. We especially enjoyed this slow motion, macro footage of a tortoise beetle as it opens its wings and lifts off. He also rigged up a spherical treadmill to shoot footage of insects as they walk.

After introducing us to the charming little globular springtail, biologist Dr. Adrian Smith AntLab wanted to capture slow-motion footage of other jumping insects. In this fascinating video, you’ll see how leafhoppers, treehoppers, planthoppers, and froghoppers spring up off of the ground and take flight.

In case you missed it, one of the many threats facing humanity (and the insect world) is the Vespa Mandarinia aka “Asian Giant Hornet” aka “Murder Hornet.” Revoltech’s RevoGeo line is offering an incredibly lifelike 7″ long plastic figure that captures every detail of the terrifying flying killer, complete with posable body parts.

Every time we see a firefly, childhood memories come flooding back of warm Summer nights in our backyard. Discover Life in America (DLiA) and photographer Radim Schreiber teamed up to educate us about these luminescent beetles, then wow us with soothing imagery from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Not only does the Globular Springtail have an awesome name, it also has the ability to perform crazy fast spins as it jumps into the air. Its rotational speed has been clocked at over 22,000 RPM, or about 374 flips per second. AntLab’s Dr. Adrian Smith captured slow motion footage of the little guy in action.

Scientist Steve Mould introduces us to one of the strangest insects we’ve seen. Like other caterpillars, the uraba lugens aka gum leaf skeletoniser gradually sheds its exoskeleton as it grows, but it keeps a stack of its old head shells stacked on its head like a crazy hat. And nobody seems to know why it does this.

If you’ve ever seen a beehive up close, you know how its made up of hundreds of nearly perfect hexagonal cells. Why is that, and how do bees know how to make such perfect geometry? TED-Ed provides a brief explanation of this strange intersection of evolutionary biology and architecture.

Petrick Animation Studio presents a very short film inspired by “real events” that happened at their Moscow, Russia office. Along the way, you’ll meet a fly guy named Fly, and follow him through his brief, but magical journey through life.

We all know that bees make a buzzing sound when they fly about. But electronic musician Bioni Samp knows there’s way more subtlety to the sounds they produce. To create his music, he records and processes these bee sounds, along with others made from the resistive properties of their honey. From Great Big Story.

A fun book for science geeks and anyone who enjoys biology, Believe It or Snot: The Definitive Field Guide to Earth’s Slimy Creatures catalogs snails, bugs, lizards, mammals, and other critters, and explores just how much goo, slime, and mucus they leave in their wake. From the authors of Does It Fart? and True or Poo?