Many thanks this week to listeners Bob, Nicholas, and Damian, who all suggested insects of one kind or another! So this week is an insect extravaganza, or at least we learn about some gigantic insects, the rarest insect in the world, and a tiny ant.

The Lord Howe Island phasmid:



The longest insect in the world:



The Queen Alexandra’s birdwing butterfly:



The Hercules beetle with random frog. Onward, my steed!



Further reading:

An article about phasmid eggs

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

I’ve received a bunch of excellent topic suggestions this year and I’m getting behind on addressing them, so the next few weeks will mostly be listener suggestions. This week we’re going to look at a topic several listeners have suggested…insects.

Now, you know insects are not my favorite, but they are definitely interesting. So thanks to listeners Bob, Nicholas, and Damian, we’re going to learn about various horrifying, I mean fascinating, insects!

We’ll start with some very small insects. I could probably do a whole episode just about ants, and maybe one day I will, but right now let’s look at a type of ant suggested by Bob. Bob lives in California and mentioned that the type of ant common in that part of the United States is the Argentine ant. It’s native to South America, specifically lowlands around the Paraná River, but it’s spread to many other parts of the world.

The Argentine ant is only about 2 to 3 mm long and are brownish in color. The queen ants are about twice the size of the worker ants, and each colony has many queens, unlike other ant species that may only have one queen per colony. Queen ants are the only ones that lay eggs. Worker ants find food and bring it back to the colony, tend the queen and her eggs, and dig the shallow nest where the colony lives.

Argentine ants are omnivorous, eating pretty much anything, and are definitely pests. They get into people’s kitchens to find food and will even make nests inside houses. Because a colony has more than one queen, the colonies are hard to eradicate. They also displace native ant species, which can impact the entire ecosystem since other animals that depend on native ants as their primary food won’t be able to find enough to eat. Argentine ants also cause problems for farmers, partly because they eat the larvae of pollinating insects, partly because they tend aphids for the honeydew that aphids secrete. Aphids are a pest to many crops, and the last thing farmers want is more aphids around—but Argentine ants want all the aphids they can get.

Researchers have found out something really unusual about Argentine ants. The ants that still live in their native habitat are genetically diverse and territorial, with different colonies fighting each other for nesting sites and hunting grounds. This keeps the population under control naturally. But outside of its native habitat, all the Argentine ants in the world are so genetically similar that in many cases, ants from different colonies act as though they were from the same colony. They don’t fight for territory, and instead act like a supercolony that can stretch for hundreds of miles, killing off or displacing native ants and other insect species.

But in some parts of North America, the Argentine ant is facing an ant species that may end up beating it at its own game. The Asian needle ant has started taking territory from the Argentine ant, helped by its resistance to cold weather. Both species of ant become less active in winter, but the Asian needle ant starts reproducing and foraging much earlier in the spring than the Argentine ant. This gives it a head start every year. Plus, the Asian needle ant is aggressive and has a venomous sting. Unfortunately, the Asian needle ant is just as bad an invasive species as the Argentine ant, driving out native ant species—and, in fact, it’s worse because some people are allergic to its st...