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Bugs are creepy and crawly and endlessly fascinating. You may love them, you may be scared of them, but you can’t deny that the world wouldn’t be the same without them. Maybe you noticed some of the bugs sharing your space, either inside or outside your home, during the summer. Summer is a high point for bugs, and many species start to die off or go dormant as fall sets in. Some might even try to move into the warmth of your home. While we still have a chance, then, autumn is a good time to do some backyard naturalism and see what kind of bugs you can find!
Materials
- Paper (a journal or notebook, if you have one)
- A pencil
- A magnifying glass (optional)
- Some nature!
Process
- Find a nice green space. It can be your backyard, some woods, or a park somewhere.
- Start exploring. Turn over some rocks or old logs. Poke through the glass. Get up close and personal with a tree.
- What do you see? Anything with six legs? Eight legs? More?
- Make sure you’re staying safe. If you find any centipedes, red ants, wasps, spiders, etc. make your observations from a safe distance.
- Start cataloging what you find. Make notes about what you see. Draw some sketches.
- Do you recognize any of the bugs you found? Compare and contrast them. How are they alike and different?
- Keep your journal around. In the spring, go out and make some more observations. What’s different about your backyard bugs? Does the summer change your findings yet again?
Summary
“Bug” is a word we use all the time to refer to the creepy crawlies out there in the world. It’s not very scientifically precise, though. Typically when a person says “bug” they could be referring to insects, arachnids like spiders, or even bugs with lots of legs, like centipedes. The scientific classification for all of these kinds of creatures is arthropoda, and all of them are called arthropods. “Arthropod” comes from two ancient Greek root words, “arthrod,” meaning “joint” and “podos,”meaning “foot,” so arthropods are creatures with “jointed feet,” which refers to the many-jointed legs of insects, arachnids, and centipedes. Insects have six legs, arachnids have eight, and centipedes and millipedes have way, way more.
Arthropods are cool for a few reasons. First of all, they wear their skeletons on the outsides of their bodies. The crunchy “shell” you might notice when you smoosh a bug is called an exoskeleton. “Exo” means “out.” Humans and other mammals, reptiles, and amphibians have an endoskeleton, where “endo” means “in.” Inside their endoskeletons, they’re filled with goop that isn’t quite blood but isn’t too far off, either. It’s called haemolymph, and it moves through their bodies circulating oxygen that they breathe in through special spots on their bodies.
Different areas of the world have different types of arthopods, and naturalists have classified many of them, but are discovering new ones all the time. There are even arthropods under the sea! Can you think of bug-like ocean creatures? You may have even eaten some before.
Keep your bug journal year-round. There are so many different arthropods out there you’ll probably always be discovering new ones!
