Amazing Minibeasts
Chapter 1: Minibeasts
A minibeasts is a small animal with no backbone. It’s an invertebrate. There are many different types of minibeast. Scientists put them into different groups.
The biggest group is the arthropods. Arthropods have six or more legs. Some arthropods are insects. Insects have six legs. There are more than one million types of insect. Some examples are bees, beetles, ants, flies, and grasshoppers.
Some arthropods are arachnids. Arachnids have eight legs. Scorpions and spiders are arachnids.
Some arthropods are myriapods. They have lots of legs. Centipedes and millipedes are myriapods. Centipedes have two legs on each body section. Millipedes have four legs on each body section.
Some minibeasts don’t have legs. Snails and slugs don’t have legs. They are mollusks. Earthworms and leeches don’t have legs. Their bodies have lots of sections. They are annelids. Which minibeasts do you know?
Chapter 2: Insect Bodies
Most insect bodies have three parts: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. The head has eyes and a mouth. The thorax has legs and wings.
Insects don’t have any bones, but they have a hard cover. This hard cover is called an exoskeleton. Insects grow, but their exoskeleton can’t grow. When an exoskeleton is too small, it comes off. Then the insect grows a new, bigger exoskeleton.
Insects can use their bodies to hide from birds and other animals. They don’t want the other animals to eat them. This is called camouflage.
Some insects have bright colors. Animals don’t eat any insect that is black, white, and red. It isn’t usually good to eat. Sometimes it’s poisonous.
Chapter 3: Insect Senses
Most insects have two very big eyes. They can’t see clearly, but they can see things move very well. Some insects have extra eyes that can only see light and dark.
Some minibeasts have antennae on their head. They use their antennae to feel and touch things. They can also smell food and other minibeasts with their antennae.
Butterflies have a very long tongue called a proboscis. They use their tongue to taste and drink nectar in flowers. Butterflies can also taste with their feet!
Most insects don’t have ears on their head. Do you know where they are? They have ears on their body or their legs!
Crickets have ears on their front legs.
Chapter 4: Communication
Most male and female minibeasts communicate with each other because they need to make new, baby minibeasts!
Some minibeasts communicate with sound. Grasshoppers can sing. They move their legs up and down to make a singing sound.
Some minibeasts communicate with smell. The female moth makes strong smells called pheromones. The male moth can smell the female with its antennae.
The male emperor moth can smell a female 10 kilometers away!
Some minibeasts communicate with light. Fireflies can make light with their abdomen. Male and female fireflies flash their lights to each other.
Some minibeasts communicate to give each other information. Bees dance to tell other bees where there is food. Ants touch each other’s antennae or head to give information about food or danger.
Chapter 5: Baby Minibeasts
Most baby minibeasts come from eggs. Some minibeasts, like slugs and earthworms, lay their eggs in soil. Other minibeasts, like butterflies and beetles, lay their eggs on plants.
Scorpions don’t lay eggs. They have live babies. The baby scorpions travel on their mother’s back.
The babies of some flying insects look like their parents, but they don’t have any wings. Baby grasshoppers don’t have any wings. They grow wings when they get bigger.
Some babies are larvae. Beetle, butterfly, and bee babies are larvae. After a few weeks, they become pupae. Then they become insects with wings, like their parents.
Chapter 6: Working Insects
Some insects work together in groups. Leafcutter ants work together. First they find leaves. They carry the leaves to their nest. Fungus grows from the leaves, and then the ants eat the fungus.
Leafcutter ants are very strong. They can carry leaves that are about 50 times heavier than their bodies!
Honeybees work together, too. One queen bee lays all the eggs. Then the female worker bees care for the bee larvae. They look for food, they make honey from nectar, and they give honey to the bee larvae. They keep the honey in honeycombs inside the hive. The worker bees also clean the hive.
Chapter 7: Minibeast Homes
Some minibeasts, like earthworms and ants, live underground, and others live in water. Dragonflies lay their eggs on leaves in the water. Their larvae live underwater.
Snails carry their home on their back. They live in many different places. Land snails live in deserts, mountains, forests, and gardens. Marine snails live in the ocean.
Lots of minibeasts make nests. Some wasps make nests from wasp paper. They make the paper from wood and saliva. The queen wasp lays eggs in the nest. The nest has lots of small rooms for the wasp larvae. Wasps attack other animals to protect their nest.
A wasp nest can have about 10,000 wasps inside!
Chapter 8: Spiders
Spiders have two body parts and eight legs. They have six or eight eyes.
All spiders can make silk. Some spiders use the silk to make webs. Insects fly into the web. Then the spider eats the insects.
Some spiders hunt. The wolf spider hides in leaves. Then it jumps out and catches insects, mice, and frogs.
A spider can only eat liquid food. It bites an animal with a poison that makes the animal liquid inside. Then the spider drinks the liquid.
Female spiders are often much bigger than male spiders.
The Golden Orb female spider can have a body up to ten times bigger than the male!
Chapter 9: Problems with Minibeasts
Some minibeasts can sting. The part that can sting is called a stinger. A wasp and an ant can sting again and again. A bee can only sting once. Then it dies.
Other minibeasts can bite. Some spiders have a poisonous bite, and other animals can die from this poison. A person can die from the bite of a black widow spider.
Only female mosquitoes bite
Minibeasts can also make people sick. They can bite people and give them diseases. Mosquitoes can give people a very bad disease called malaria.
Some minibeasts make problems for farmers. Locusts are a type of grasshopper. They eat a lot of food crops. Other minibeasts make problems in our homes. Some moths eat clothes, and some beetles eat wood.
Chapter 10: Useful Minibeasts
Minibeasts are important food for many other animals. Fish, frogs, bats, and birds eat minibeasts.
Insects help plants grow. Insects visit different flowers to collect food. The pollen from one flower sticks to the body of the insect. When the insect goes to another flower, the pollen falls onto this flower. The flower uses this pollen to make seeds. Then a new plant grows. This is called pollination.
Earthworms help soil and plants. When they move through the soil, they let air and water in. Plant roots need the air and water.
Bees give us honey and silkworms give us silk. Silkworms make silk cocoons when they become pupae. People use silkworm cocoons to make silk fabric.
Minibeasts are amazing. They are also very useful! People, animals, and plants all need minibeasts to live.