Insects and Arachnids

Structures in some butterflies' wings are actually part of their ears.

By Jesslyn Shields

Thanks to a citizen science project in the path of totality, researchers studied bee activity and were surprised by the results.

By John Perritano

For five nights in a row, a praying mantis came to the same garden spot to hunt for fish, completely confounding scientists.

By Jesslyn Shields

Beekeeping, when you get down to it, is the art and science of removing honey from hardworking bees without them missing it. But beekeeping is about so much more than just the honey.

By Dave Roos

A Columbia University scientist stumbled upon the first of seven new spiders while hunting for local frogs.

By Mark Mancini

The Asian longhorned tick has shown up in six states so far, and nobody knows how it got here.

By Mark Mancini

Being eaten from the inside out by wasps sounds like something out of a nightmare, but for some caterpillars, sadly, it's just life.

By Jesslyn Shields

The pelican spider would just as soon eat another spider as look at one.

By Christopher Hassiotis

Male brown widow spiders stubbornly court the oldest females they can find, though younger females are more fertile and far less dangerous.

By Jesslyn Shields

It seems like flying cockroaches want to dive bomb your face. Are they aggressive? Defensive? Or maybe it's all just in your scared ape mind.

By Jesslyn Shields

Entire colonies of half a million venomous ants are one scary threat following serious flooding.

By Jesslyn Shields

Part of the fun is trying to finagle a spot at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park viewing site in late spring.

By John Donovan

The secrets to ladybugs' wing-folding could yield new designs in flying robots and even newfangled umbrellas.

By Amanda Onion

For one species of dragonfly, the hassle of dealing with aggressive suitors is worth playing possum over.

By Jesslyn Shields

Spiders not only eat more meat than humans every year, they also spend a lot of time getting eaten themselves.

By Jesslyn Shields

And its special endowment is not the thing that intrigues scientists the most.

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

In a state already teeming with pythons, tourists and Jimmy Buffett singalongs, the flesh-eating screwworm makes Florida a little more menacing.

By Jesslyn Shields

Sharing's generally regarded as a desirable behavior among humans. But for some social spiders, it can be the death of them.

By Lauren Vogelbaum

Of course they do. You're an attractive person. But what is it about you specifically that draws them in for a tasty meal?

By Laurie L. Dove

An oar-shaped protrusion of microscopic hairs on the legs of a grain-sized spider is bringing sexy back to the arachnid kingdom.

By Laurie L. Dove

If people had exoskeletons and wings maybe they'd be around forever, too. Insects are born survivors because they have certain traits that other animals don't.

By Nicholas Gerbis

It's not to entertain the insect. Figuring out how mantises perceive the world could lead to tiny, energy-efficient robots with depth perception, too.

By Patrick J. Kiger

The bright colors of this Malaysian spider, first described in 2009, earned it comparisons to the flamboyant styles of David Bowie.

By Christopher Hassiotis

You were a soldier ant. Each day you mostly did that job until one day a scientist came along, jabbed a needle into your brain and your behavior changed.

By Christian Sager

Scientists wanted to figure out how desert ants found their way home without tree shadows to guide them. This is how they did it.

By Laurie L. Dove