| The Fastest Flyer: It's hard to spot them much less get an accurate measure of their velocity, but back in 1917 Austrophlebia costalis turned in an amazing 60.9 mph. |
| Most Tolerant of Cold: It's a second gold medal! The larvae of the chironomid, Polypedilum vanderplanki Hinton, comes in after being able to live for five minutes at minus 454° F when submerged in liquid helium! |
| Smallest Eggs: We couldn't find a gold medal small enough for these. The microtype eggs of Tachinidae measure a mere eight ten thousandths of an inch long. Line them up and you would need 1,250 to make an inch! |
| Fastest Wing Beat: Talk about a flapper. The midge of the genus Forcipomyia (Diptera:Ceratopogonidae) beats its wings 1,046 times per second! |
| Resistant to Most Insecticides: You better just step on it . . . the green peach aphid can withstand 71 types of insecticides! |
| Longest Insect Migration: The desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, wins after a trip of 2,796 miles to cross the Atlantic Ocean. |
| Highest Lifetime Fecundity: The African driver ant can lay three to four million eggs every 25 days. Working 24 hours per day, that's 83 to 111 eggs per minute! |
| Most Heat Tolerant: A desert ant, Cataglyphis bicolor (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), has been seen walking around in 131° F heat. |
| Loudest: The African cicada can sing at nearly 107 decibels at a distance of about 20 inches. How loud is that? A 707 jet taking off 1000 feet away is 100 decibels |
| Largest Swarm: The Desert locust has been known to travel in swarms that cover an area of 77 square miles. It was estimated that 10 billion locusts were in the swarm. |
| Heaviest: The goliath beetle weighs the most. It tips the scales at about 3.5 ounces |
| Longest: A walking stick, the female Pharnacia serratipes, measures nearly 22 inches from tip to tip. |
| Smallest: The males of a parasitic wasp, Dicopomorpha echmepterygis, are only 139 micrometers in length. That means that you would have to line up almost 185 of them end to end just to make one inch! However, there may be even smaller parasitic wasps that haven't been detected yet. |
| Adapted to Greatest Depths: You'd have to dive 4,462 feet into Lake Baikal in Russia to get away from the Sergentia koschowi larvae. |
