Compared with other ultrablack animals, female velvet ants are darker than the common birdwing butterfly, the only other insect known to display such a shade. The velvet ants’ coloring is closer to ...

Ant collaboration. Credit ... to rear the colony’s young rather than produce their own individual offspring. Bees sacrifice themselves to defend the hive from a wasp attack. Credit: Qypchak / ...

The four most common orders of insects in the U.S. are beetles, flies, hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps), and butterflies ...