insects

Not quite a Brundlefly, but still too close for comfort.

Learn more about how common house flies eat (and poop), plus what’s really going on when one of them ends up in your dinner.

Shopping secondhand? Learn how to avoid common pests like bed bugs and clothes moths during your next thrift store haul.

From the luna moth to the Madagascan sunset moth, these species rival the most stunning butterflies.

'Psylla frodobagginsi' (left) and Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins in 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' (2001).

These creatures don't live in Middle-earth—but they sound like they could.

See if you can spot the names of these common (and not so common) terms for animal apprehension.

Bathynomus vaderi is a supergiant isopod that can grow 12.7 inches in length.

Velvet ants aren‘t actually ants. They‘re fluffy wasps.

Meet the insect with an exoskeleton so dark it absorbs almost all light.

Absolutely the last thing you want to see in your hotel room.

The bloodsucking hitchhikers have good reason to scoff at insecticides—they’re freakishly resistant to them.

The monarch butterfly is facing challenges.

Conservationists warn that the monarch could die out by the end of the century unless action is taken.

Research (and lots of dry-heaving) has revealed why the flower reeks of weeks-old road kill.

A black-throated green warbler perches on a funerary statue at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Three historic cemeteries, designed as refuges of the dead, are bringing their landscapes back to life for native plants and animals.

These creepy crawlers must defend themselves from many predators, such as lizards, snakes, and birds.

A new study on tarantulas reveals surprising insights into their relationship with army ants.

Make a pollinator’s life easier by providing it a place to stay.

The solitary bee population is declining—here’s what you can do to help.

Making a beeline for the buffet table? You’re buying into some bee stereotypes.

Air pollution may keep these pollinators from doing their jobs.

Air pollution is making it hard for bees to pollinate flowers.

You won’t bee-lieve how honeybees give directions.

Not everyone gives directions the way you do—in fact, the way people tell others how to get where they want to go can vary by city, town, and culture. Some of these directional systems might just change how you navigate the world.

Even this cricket wants to know the answer.

Cricket chirps can reach 100 decibels. So why do we use them as a byword for ‘silence’?

Goats have accents, hippos sweat something that looks like blood, and mosquitoes love feet. In the latest episode of The List Show, host Erin McCarthy dives into 28 animal facts that are sure to make you go "WTF?"

Grasshopper on the left, swarm of locusts on the right

All locusts are grasshoppers, but not all grasshoppers are locusts.

These lightning bugs know how to coordinate.

Just looking at this makes your skin crawl.

The telltale itch of a mosquito bite doesn’t actually come from the bite itself. It comes from something that’s a fair bit worse: literal blood-sucking.