15 Incredible Insects From Around The World

Insects are all over the place! Some individuals find them fascinating while others can't bear the notion of them. In any case, we share our planet with this nasty crawlies that seem like aliens. Insects have been on Earth long before humans and will continue to do so. There are many more insects on Earth than people – there are 900,000 recognized species and possibly millions more that have yet to be discovered! Check out our selection of the strangest (and coolest) ones we could locate.

The timber beetle. This common furniture beetle is by far the most common cause of damage encountered. Its specialty is sapwood of softwood and European hardwoods. One of the more unusual, and enigmatic, beetles that I encountered in South Africa was this beetle in the pantropical genus Atractocerus. Placed in the family Lymexylidae (ship-timber beetles), species in this genus look less like beetles than they do large flying ants or strange damselflies due to their highly reduced elytra that expose their greatly elongated abdomen and leave the hind wings uncovered. The hind wings also are unusual in that they are held fan-like in repose rather than folded as in most other beetles. Atractocerus brevicornis is the only species in the genus found in Africa (Scholtz & Holm 1985).