The oldest winged fossil dates back 330 million years ago, suggesting that insects were among the first animals to leave the oceans for land during the Devonian period some 400 million years ago.

This story appears in the September 2010 issue of National Geographic ... since the first animal climbed onto land, every age has been, by any reasonable measure, the age of insects too.

“When you work with insects,” McKamey says, “it’s like Christmas every day.” National Geographic senior writer ... reveals the hidden world of animals that most people never see.

This story appears in the March 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine ... leaves like champagne flutes, into which insects (and sometimes larger animals) lose themselves and die.

This story appears in the August 2016 issue of National Geographic ... To this day, insects smaller than a child’s thumbnail remain the most dangerous nonhuman animals on the planet.

Madagascar hissing cockroaches are one of many fascinating animal species to hail from the ... and can be used as an effective alarm cry. Most insects that make noise do so by rubbing their ...

coating their skin with a natural bug repellent and sun block. Rhinos have sharp hearing and a keen sense of smell. They may find one another by following the trail of scent each enormous animal ...

coating their skin with a natural bug repellent and sunblock. Rhinos have sharp hearing and a keen sense of smell. They may find one another by following the trail of scent each enormous animal ...

Naked mole rats are rodents, but they live in communities like those of many insects. Several dozen rats ... female to breed and bear young. Worker animals dig the burrows that the whole clan ...

This is a rarity in primate research, and illustrates just how much remains to be known about these fascinating animals ... the day and forage at night for insects, fruit, flowers, and other ...

The animals most at risk from the black widow's bite are insects—and male black widow spiders. Females sometimes kill and eat their counterparts after mating in a macabre behavior that gave the ...