I really like insects and read about them a lot. In my reading, I came across the remarkable fact that there are an estimated 10 quintillion insects on Earth. Here is that number written out.
10,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 individual insects comprising more than a million different species. Compare that to 7.3 billion people on the planet, all in a single species, and it turns out that for every man, woman, and child there are more than 1.3 billion insects. (If insects creep you out, sorry about that.)
(A super cool website is the live population clock of the US Census Bureau - check it out at http://www.census.gov/popclock/)
So why are insects so successful? I attempted to write an answer to that question and was lucky enough to have had TED-Ed produce what I wrote. I hope you will take a look and let me know what you think.
M. Gans
Eastfield College
Mesquite, TX
