Insects and Arachnids

The world's largest bee, lost to science for 38 years, has been rediscovered on a remote island in Indonesia.

By Jesslyn Shields

There's an old saying that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Scientists have now found out why sour tastes are so repellent to flies.

By Alia Hoyt

There are lots of theories. Maybe fluorescence helps them find each other in the dark?

By Jesslyn Shields

Think a teeny tiny ant can't pack a punch? Think again. The Dracula ant can subdue its prey so fast, they never know it's coming.

By John Donovan

Justin O. Schmidt studies insect venom and has a rating system for the relative agony inflicted by the world's most painful stings. Which is the worst?

By Jesslyn Shields

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

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

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

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