# What is an insect?

An episode of [Science for Kids / Science's Not Boring: The Kids Science Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1896928296), 28 Aug 2026, 11 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2624612/episodes/19679977-what-is-an-insect.mp3

Have you ever wondered how many creepy crawlies share our planet? Get ready to have your mind blown, because for every single person on Earth, there are over one billion insects! Join Mira and Finn on an incredible adventure as they shrink down to explore the wild and wonderful world of bugs. You will travel deep into a South American rainforest where scientists made it literally rain bugs from the treetops, discovering thousands of brand-new species hiding high in the canopy. Then, venture underground to explore a massive leafcutter ant mega-city that goes twenty-six feet deep and took ten tons of cement to uncover! But that is not all! You will also meet some of nature's tiniest superheroes, like the mighty Hercules Beetle that can lift one hundred times its own weight, and the famous Bombardier Beetle that shoots boiling hot spray from its bottom to blast away enemies! Discover why these six-legged creatures are the ultimate recyclers and completely essential to our ecosystem. Shrink down and get ready for the biggest, buggiest episode yet!

## Transcript

[0:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Science is Not Boring by Kidopoly.com.
[0:03] SPEAKER_00: I'm Mira.
[0:04] SPEAKER_00: And I'm Finn.
[0:06] SPEAKER_00: Hey Finn, have you ever wondered how many insects are crawling around on Earth right now?
[0:12] SPEAKER_00: Hmm, probably a lot.
[0:14] SPEAKER_00: Like a hundred billion?
[0:17] SPEAKER_00: Not even close.
[0:18] SPEAKER_00: Scientists estimate there are ten quintillion insects alive at this exact moment.
[0:25] SPEAKER_00: Ten quintillion?
[0:27] SPEAKER_00: Wait, how many zeros is that?
[0:29] SPEAKER_00: That's a one with 19 zeros behind it.
[0:32] SPEAKER_00: If you gathered them all up and shared them out equally, every single person on Earth would get over 1.2 billion bugs.
[0:41] SPEAKER_00: 1 billion bugs just for me?
[0:43] SPEAKER_00: No thank you.
[0:44] SPEAKER_00: I don't want a billion roommates with six legs.
[0:48] SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't fit in your room anyway.
[0:50] SPEAKER_00: But today we are shrinking down to explore the most successful animals on the entire planet.
[0:56] SPEAKER_00: Because they outnumber us by so much?
[0:59] SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
[1:00] SPEAKER_00: We're talking about creatures that build massive underground cities, survive extreme temperatures, and literally keep our whole world running.
[1:09] SPEAKER_00: Okay, I guess if there are that many of them, we'd better find out what they're up to down there in the dirt.
[1:14] SPEAKER_00: Let's go! So, let's start with the basics.
[1:17] SPEAKER_00: To be an insect, an animal needs exactly six legs, and a body with three main parts: a head, a thorax in the middle, and an abdomen at the end.
[1:28] SPEAKER_00: And they all have a hard shell on the outside, right?
[1:31] SPEAKER_00: Like a built-in suit of armour.
[1:33] SPEAKER_00: Yep, that's called an exoskeleton.
[1:36] SPEAKER_00: And this design is so perfect that insects have been on Earth for about 400 million years.
[1:44] SPEAKER_00: 400 million?
[1:45] SPEAKER_00: That means they were here way before the dinosaurs?
[1:49] SPEAKER_00: Long before.
[1:50] SPEAKER_00: And over all that time, they evolved into an unbelievable number of species.
[1:55] SPEAKER_00: Just look at beetles, for example.
[1:58] SPEAKER_00: How many kinds of beetles are there?
[2:00] SPEAKER_00: Scientists have officially discovered and named around 400,000 different species of beetles.
[2:07] SPEAKER_00: 400,000?
[2:08] SPEAKER_00: Just of beetles?
[2:10] SPEAKER_00: Yes.
[2:11] SPEAKER_00: In fact, 25% of all known animal species on Earth are beetles.
[2:17] SPEAKER_00: One out of every four animals you could possibly name is a beetle.
[2:21] SPEAKER_00: That is wild.
[2:23] SPEAKER_00: You could have a whole zoo, and it would just be thousands and thousands of beetles.
[2:28] SPEAKER_00: And they live practically everywhere.
[2:30] SPEAKER_00: Deserts, frozen mountains, rainforests, inside caves, and even hiding in your own backyard.
[2:37] SPEAKER_00: The only place they don't really rule is the very deep ocean.
[2:42] SPEAKER_00: Okay, but if we've found 400,000 beetles, how many insects are we still missing?
[2:48] SPEAKER_00: Do we even know how many are out there left to discover?
[2:51] SPEAKER_00: That is the biggest mystery in entomology.
[2:54] SPEAKER_00: Every single day, scientists are out in the field trying to find and catalogue these amazing little creatures before their habitats disappear.
[3:03] SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what an entomologist named Terry Irwin wanted to find out back in 1982.
[3:10] SPEAKER_00: An entomologist is a bug scientist, right?
[3:13] SPEAKER_00: What did he do?
[3:15] SPEAKER_00: Yes! Irwin travelled to a dense rainforest in Panama.
[3:19] SPEAKER_00: He found a massive, towering tree called a Luhia semenai.
[3:24] SPEAKER_00: Just one tree?
[3:26] SPEAKER_00: Why is that special?
[3:27] SPEAKER_00: Because the tops of rainforest trees, called the canopy, are super hard to explore.
[3:33] SPEAKER_00: So, Irwin used a special machine to blow a bug catching spray into the top of this one specific tree.
[3:40] SPEAKER_00: Oh, to make all the bugs fall down so he could catch them.
[3:44] SPEAKER_00: Exactly! He placed giant funnels under the tree, and it literally rained bugs.
[3:50] SPEAKER_00: He collected thousands of insects from just that single tree canopy.
[3:55] SPEAKER_00: Raining bugs?
[3:57] SPEAKER_00: Okay, I would definitely need an umbrella for that.
[4:01] SPEAKER_00: When he looked closely at the catch, he realised most of these insects had never been seen by humans before.
[4:08] SPEAKER_00: They were completely new to science.
[4:10] SPEAKER_00: All from one tree?
[4:12] SPEAKER_00: How many new ones?
[4:14] SPEAKER_00: Hundreds! Based on what fell out of that canopy, Terry Irwin did some math.
[4:19] SPEAKER_00: He estimated there could be up to 30 million insect species on Earth.
[4:26] SPEAKER_00: 30 million different types?
[4:28] SPEAKER_00: And we've only found about a million of them.
[4:31] SPEAKER_00: Exactly! The rainforest canopy is like a massive, hidden continent floating above our heads, absolutely packed with secret life.
[4:40] SPEAKER_00: Okay, so they rule the treetops.
[4:42] SPEAKER_00: But what about underground?
[4:44] SPEAKER_00: You mentioned insect cities earlier.
[4:46] SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is the best part! Down in Brazil, researchers wanted to understand how leafcutter ants build their nests.
[4:54] SPEAKER_00: Leafcutter ants?
[4:55] SPEAKER_00: Those are the ones that carry pieces of leave like tiny green umbrellas, right?
[4:59] SPEAKER_00: That's them! But they don't eat the leaves.
[5:02] SPEAKER_00: They chew them up and use them to grow a special fungus underground, like tiny farmers.
[5:08] SPEAKER_00: Wait, ants have farms?
[5:10] SPEAKER_00: That's so cool! It gets crazier! To see the exact shape of a massive abandoned ant colony, scientists poured liquid cement down the tunnel entrances.
[5:20] SPEAKER_00: How much cement did it take to fill a bug nest?
[5:23] SPEAKER_00: Like a couple of buckets?
[5:25] SPEAKER_00: Try ten tons of cement.
[5:27] SPEAKER_00: It took ten days just to pour it all in.
[5:30] SPEAKER_00: The tiny tunnels just kept swallowing up the liquid concrete as it flowed through all the passageways.
[5:36] SPEAKER_00: Ten tons?
[5:37] SPEAKER_00: That's the weight of like two huge elephants.
[5:40] SPEAKER_00: When the cement hardened, they spent weeks digging away the dirt.
[5:44] SPEAKER_00: What they found was a subterranean mega city.
[5:47] SPEAKER_00: How big was it?
[5:48] SPEAKER_00: It spread over 500 square feet and went 26 feet deep into the earth.
[5:54] SPEAKER_00: It had millions of rooms, connected by underground highways and ventilation shafts.
[5:59] SPEAKER_00: 26 feet deep?
[6:01] SPEAKER_00: That's deeper than a two-story house.
[6:04] SPEAKER_00: And they built that without any machines.
[6:06] SPEAKER_00: Just tiny jaws and teamwork.
[6:08] SPEAKER_00: To build it, those leafcutter ants had to dig up and move over 40 tons of soil.
[6:14] SPEAKER_00: Okay, I have to admit, that's incredible engineering.
[6:17] SPEAKER_00: But why are there so many insects?
[6:19] SPEAKER_00: Do we really need a billion bugs per person?
[6:23] SPEAKER_00: We absolutely do.
[6:25] SPEAKER_00: Without insects, our entire world ecosystem would literally collapse in a few months.
[6:30] SPEAKER_00: It would be a disaster.
[6:32] SPEAKER_00: Collapse?
[6:33] SPEAKER_00: Like, how bad are we talking here?
[6:36] SPEAKER_00: Very bad.
[6:37] SPEAKER_00: Insects are nature's ultimate recyclers.
[6:40] SPEAKER_00: They break down dead trees, fallen leaves, and animal waste, turning it all into rich, healthy soil that new plants need to grow.
[6:49] SPEAKER_00: Well, someone's got to do the dirty work.
[6:51] SPEAKER_00: So they are basically the world's cleanup crew.
[6:54] SPEAKER_00: Exactly! Plus, they pollinate our crops.
[6:58] SPEAKER_00: About one out of every three bites of food you eat is only possible because a bee, beetle, or butterfly helped pollinate the plant.
[7:07] SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't have apples, chocolate, or strawberries without them.
[7:10] SPEAKER_00: So without them, we'd run out of food really fast.
[7:14] SPEAKER_00: They're basically tiny superheroes.
[7:16] SPEAKER_00: Yep.
[7:17] SPEAKER_00: And speaking of superpowers, I have to tell you about the Bombardier Beetle.
[7:21] SPEAKER_00: What does it do?
[7:22] SPEAKER_00: Shoot lasers?
[7:24] SPEAKER_00: Almost.
[7:25] SPEAKER_00: When it's threatened by a predator, the Bombardier beetle mixes chemicals inside its body and shoots a boiling hot toxic spray out of its rear end.
[7:35] SPEAKER_00: Boiling hot?
[7:36] SPEAKER_00: Like, how hot exactly?
[7:38] SPEAKER_00: It reaches exactly 100 degrees Celsius.
[7:42] SPEAKER_00: That's 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
[7:44] SPEAKER_00: It literally cooks its enemies in self-defence.
[7:48] SPEAKER_00: Remind me never to sneak up behind a bombardier beetle.
[7:51] SPEAKER_00: Or get in a wrestling match with a Hercules beetle.
[7:54] SPEAKER_00: They are native to Central and South America, and the males have giant horns.
[7:59] SPEAKER_00: Are they really strong?
[8:00] SPEAKER_00: Extremely strong.
[8:02] SPEAKER_00: A Hercules beetle can actually lift up to 100 times its own body weight.
[8:07] SPEAKER_00: 100 times?
[8:09] SPEAKER_00: If I could do that, I could pick up an adult rhinoceros.
[8:13] SPEAKER_00: Exactly! Okay, I think it's time to see what you learned today.
[8:17] SPEAKER_00: Alright, Finn, quiz time! Okay, I'm ready.
[8:21] SPEAKER_00: First question.
[8:23] SPEAKER_00: How many insects are there for every single person on Earth?
[8:30] SPEAKER_00: Next one.
[8:31] SPEAKER_00: What year did Terry Irwin do his famous rainforest bug experiment?
[8:39] SPEAKER_00: Question three.
[8:41] SPEAKER_00: How many tons of cement did scientists pour into the leafcutter ant city?
[8:49] SPEAKER_00: Here's number four.
[8:51] SPEAKER_00: What percentage of all known animals on Earth are beetles?
[8:58] SPEAKER_00: Last question.
[8:59] SPEAKER_00: How deep was the leafcutter ant megacity in feet?
[9:06] SPEAKER_00: Great job! Let's see how you did.
[9:09] SPEAKER_00: The first answer is there are over 1.2 billion insects for every person.
[9:15] SPEAKER_00: For question two, the experiment was in 1982.
[9:20] SPEAKER_00: Number three, the answer is they poured 10 tonnes of cement.
[9:26] SPEAKER_00: Question 4.
[9:27] SPEAKER_00: 25% of all known animals are beetles.
[9:31] SPEAKER_00: And the final answer is the city was 26 feet deep.
[9:36] SPEAKER_00: What a wild episode! I don't think I'll ever look at a tiny ant the same way again.
[9:42] SPEAKER_00: Me neither.
[9:43] SPEAKER_00: Knowing they can build a 26 foot deep city without any blueprints is just unbelievable.
[9:50] SPEAKER_00: Science is amazing like that.
[9:53] SPEAKER_00: Hey, if you love discovering these wild facts with us, please leave us a five-star review.
[9:58] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[9:59] SPEAKER_00: Give us five stars to help us discover even more completely new species in the rainforest canopy.
[10:05] SPEAKER_00: Just scroll down and tap the stars on your app.
[10:08] SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to check out our site, kidopoly.com, where we've got tons of fun learning games and awesome activities for you to explore.
[10:17] SPEAKER_00: It's like our own digital megacity.
[10:19] SPEAKER_00: Oh, and if you want a shout out on the show, or just want to say hi, email us at hello at kidopoly.com.
[10:26] SPEAKER_00: We love hearing from you! Thanks for exploring the insect world with us today.
[10:32] SPEAKER_00: See you next time on Science is Not Boring.
[10:35] SPEAKER_00: Bye everyone! Bye!

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