Wrongly accused
An insect is a small creature with three body parts (head, thorax and abdomen) and three pairs of legs. Many have wings. Most of them undergo complete changes of shape during their lifecycles.
Several 'creepy-crawlies' common in the garden are wrongly known as insects: centipedes, millipedes, woodlice, spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, ticks and mites are all from the family Arthropoda. All insects are arthropods, but not all arthropods are insects.
Interesting facts
All wasps die in winter, except the queen.
Only bumblebees and honeybees live together in colonies. Most species of bees live on their own, some in holes in the ground.
Grasshoppers sing by rubbing their hind legs against their front wings; crickets sing by rubbing their front wings together.
Some plants eat insects! They do this by catching them and dissolving their bodies, then they absorb the juice. This gives them nitrogen, which normal plants get from the soil - but these plants live in places where there isn't any.
The larva of the rare Death's Head Hawkmoth squeaks if it is touched.
Most beetles can fly, but the ground beetles you may find in your soil have lost the ability to fly - they scuttle everywhere very fast instead.
The Chilean red-leg spider can eat mice and birds. The funnel-web spider has fangs, which can pierce bone, and its bite can kill a person in two hours.