Monday, 29 July 2024

#348: National Insect Week

I missed posting this at the time.

The final week of June is designated as National Insect Week. Another one for the calendar of events.

Organised by the Royal Entomological Society.

Entomology is crucial to our understanding of human disease, agriculture, evolution, ecology and biodiversity.

What is an insect?

An insect is one of the most common types of invertebrate (an animal without a backbone). They have six legs, antennae and a body divided into three segments called a head, thorax and abdomen. This segmented body is covered in a hard outer casing called an exoskeleton (a skeleton but on the outside of their body).

Globally over 1 million species of insect have been described but some estimates think there might be as many as 10 million in total. Across all these species, scientists think there could be over 1.4 million billion insects alive right now! This would mean that insects outnumber humans 200 million to one!

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