Insects Around the World

Country or History Activity – Insects Around the World

Talk about the insects you found on the Scavenger Hunt. Explain they are found here in Arizona. Show them a map of the world (Globe) and point out AZ. Proceed to tell them about other insects found around the globe while reading the info below and pointing to the corresponding location on the map. Add any you many know of.


On the land however there isn't anywhere you can go that you can't find some insects, even in the frozen extremes of Arctica and Antartica you will find some insects alive and active during the warmer months.

Acteon Beetle (Megasoma acteon) from South America the males of which can be 9cms long by 5cms wide by 4cms thick

Heaviest insect in the world in the form of the True Wetas from New Zealand.

Longhorn beetles are nearly as large and may look even bigger because of their longer legs i.e. Xixuthrus heros from Fiji.

In Africa swarms of Orthoptera ( Desert Locusts Schistocerca gregaria) may contain as many as 28,000,000,000 individuals. Although each Locust only weighs about 2.5grams when they are all added up together this comes to 70,000 tons of locust.

Ants are social animals and live in colonies, sometimes these colonies may contain only 50 or so individuals, but, one supercolony of Formica yessensis on the coast of Japan is reported to have had 1,080,000 queens and 306,000,000 workers in 45,000 interconnected nests.

In 1943 Profeesor Salt found that an acre of British pastureland near Cambridge supported over 1,000,000,000 Arthropods of which nearly 400,000,000 were Insects and 666,000,000 were Mites the remaining 38,000,000 were Myriapods (Centipedes and Millipedes).