The Audubon Institute’s Insectarium

On a very humid (swamp like) day, this past July, I spent a few hours in the Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium a wonderful entomology museum in New Orleans.
Here are some of my favorites:

The Atlas Moth

They are massive and magnificent Atlas Moths. Their cocoons are so large and made of such sturdy silk that in Taiwan they are sometimes used as purses.

With a wingspan of 11 inches, Atlas moths are native to tropical and subtropical forests of southeast Asia.

Beetles

Nature is so fond of beetles that there are 350,000 different species, outnumbering butterflies and moth varieties 2 to 1. If you could line up one member of each animal species in the world, every fourth creature would be a different beetle.

Bees

Did you know…that a hive of honeybees has to visit 2 million flowers and travel more than 55,000 miles to make just one pound of honey!

About 80% of all fruits and vegetables are pollinated by bees, impacting U.S. agriculture alone by $14 billion-plus a year.

Honey is loaded with vitamins and minerals: from A, B and C vitamins and calcium, potassium and iron. Bee pollen is a popular dietary supplement.

Hives are single-family units, with one egg-laying queen and thousands of sterile female workers. Drones, male honeybees, are raised only to fertilize new queens. They mate and die.

Female bees do all the work. They are the ones with the pollen basket on their legs.

And, according to a piece I read National Geographic, without bugs, we might all be dead

There are 1.4 billion insects per person on this planet and we need (almost) every one of them.

Do you know what your state insect is? Find out here!