Rainforest insects
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Rainforest insects

There are more kinds of insects than all other kinds of animals added together.

Insects are divided into groups.

The main groups are:

Grasshoppers and locusts

Dragonflies

Bugs (true bugs)

Beetles

Flies

Bees, wasps and ants

Butterflies and moths

Most insects are tiny. Each insect has a body divided into three parts (head, thorax, abdomen)six legs, a covering of hard, horny material called chitin, four wings (although only two may be visible e.g. flied, well developed sense organs for finding out about the world - eyes, feelers and sensing hairs.

If there were no insects very few animals and plants would survive, as insects pollinate our crops and dispose of dead animals and plants.

Rainforest beetles

There are more kinds of beetles than all other insect groups. 0ne in every five named animal is a beetle. There may be 7,000,000 different beetles most yet without a name. Some beetles are very large. Most are very small.

Some beetles are carnivorous eating other animals dead or alive, others are vegetarian eating leaves, wood or bark and soma eat decaying material.

Beetles differ from other insects in having horny front wings which hide the transparent flying wings.

Rainforest butterflies

Soma rainforest butterflies are very colourful. The colour is often produced by light processes such as defraction.  Some butterflies use colour to match their backgrounds i.e. camouflage or pretending to be something fierce e.g. the owl faced butterfly has markings o n the wings which resemble large eyes which scare off predators. _