Insects category: 384 books

House flies are not the neatest of insects. They visit such places as dumps, sewers, and garbage heaps. They feed on fecal matter, discharges from wounds and sores. They deposit feces constantly, which is one of the factors that makes the insect a dangerous carrier of pathogens. If you’ve got fed...

The story of nineteenth century investigation into the nature of spiders.... “February, 1865, when it was suggested to me to ascertain how much silk could be got from one spider, and to what extent it was possible to obtain and rear the insects themselves. This I readily undertook, for the investigation...

Snake venom that digests human flesh. A building cleared of every living thing by a band of tiny spiders. An infant insect eating its living prey from within, saving the vital organs for last. These are among the deadly feats of natural engineering you'll witness in The Red Hourglass, prize-winning...

Bed bugs. Few words strike such fear in the minds of travelers. In cities around the world, lurking beneath the plush blankets of otherwise pristine-looking hotel beds are tiny bloodthirsty beasts just waiting for weary wanderers to surrender to a vulnerable slumber. Though bed bugs today have infested...

"Honey has been waiting almost ten million years for a good biography," writes Holley Bishop. Bees have been making this food on Earth for hundreds of millennia, but we humans started recording our fascination with it only in the past few thousand years -- painting bees and hives on cave and temple...

Britain is home to some forty species of dragonfly, and public interest in their plight is high right now thanks to their primeval beauty, aerobatic grace and a growing realisation of their importance for water eco-systems. In 'The Dragonfly Diaries', Ruary Mackenzie Dodds shares his quirky fascination...

From building a hive to harvesting honey, a top urban beekeeper shares how to care for bees the simple, mindful way.     Global bee populations have been rapidly declining for years, and it’s not just our honey supply that’s at stake: the contribution of bees to the pollination of crops...

A Crash Course on How to Get Rid of Grubs A larva (Latin; plural larvae) or grub is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle....

A Crash Course on How to Get Rid of Sugar Ants Sugar ants of Australia, or camponotus consobrinus, dwell in arid climates and can be found in urban areas, woodlands and forests. Sugar ants are identified by their black heads, protruding mandibles, orange or brown bodies and relatively large...

A Crash Course on How to Get Rid of Cockroaches Cockroaches are insects of the order Blattaria or Blattodea. The name cockroach comes from the Spanish word cucaracha, chafer, beetle, from cuca "kind of caterpillar." The scientific name derives from the Latinized Greek name for the insect....

A Crash Course on How to Get Rid of Centipedes Centipedes (from Latin prefix centi-, "hundred", and pes, pedis, "foot") are arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda of the subphylum Myriapoda. They are elongated metameric animals with one pair of legs per body segment. Despite the name,...

The Life and Love of the Insect enters into a hidden realm with 18 illustrated essays, rendered in lively, poetic language. Whether extolling the maternal instincts of the Sacred Beetle or chronicling the protracted and ultimately fatal mating ritual of the Languedocian Scorpion, Fabre consistently...

This book is an account of two years spent getting to know Britain's most dazzling and enigmatic insects - the dragonflies and damselflies. The quest to find, photograph, watch and learn about dragons and damsels took the author on a tour of diverse and lovely wetlands up and down Britain, from the...

This beautifully illustrated pocket field guide is packed with information on the marvellous variety of insects that inhabits Britain and the near Continent. It includes more than 180 species, including dragonflies, bees, wasps, beetles, bugs and flies, all of which are illustrated with superb full-colour...