What is the world s biggest insect

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Q.� How much does it weigh

A.� It weighs in at 100 grams and can be as long as 12cm.

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Q.� Where do they live

A.� In warm climates around the globe such as the rain forests of Costa Rica or the Amazon Jungle.

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Q.� Any other beetle facts

A.� There are billions of insects on earth, but the beetle family wins in numbers of species, which could be one possible answer to a previous AnswerBank question: 'does a greater number of species indicate the success of a genus' depending on your point of view.

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The goliath beetle belongs to the scarab family, which has 30,000 species. Quite impressive when you consider that many animals have only a few species belonging to their family. The human family, Homo, has only one extant species, us, sapiens.

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Q.� What are the restricting factors in insect size

A.� In the past there has certainly been some impressive insects, coach roaches, a type of beetle, were especially much bigger during the Jurassic period than they are today. Although earth has its current tropical zones, during the Jurassic the entire globe was much warmer.

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One possible explanation is that the warmer climate helped animals reach a bigger body size; significantly the goliath beetle is restricted to the warmer regions of the earth.

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Q.� How long have beetles been around

A.� For around 300 million years.

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Q.� What makes beetles so successful

A.� Their adaptability: they seem to be able to accommodate themselves in just about any environment. Such adaptability ensures diversity and longevity for a species.

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In fact there are species of beetles that stick to only one type of living quarters, something that makes them very useful for determining environmental conditions from archaeological samples. If the archaeologist finds a type of beetle within a deposit that liked to live in damp, dirty hay, then the assumption that the floor was covered with hay that wasn't changed very regularly is a relatively safe one.

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by Lisa Cardy