1 Top Recycler! Weight Hard Cases Flexible Common lifting champs! Ant Beetles 1 Friends Rough s e My Family name

is Formicidae. 4 Creature Features Fact File Have two stomachs-one I can squirt formic Beetle Line Up I speed up leaf Has many feet They have decomposition, for them and the other acid when threatened We have I like to Welcome to our creature feature gallery, full of fascinating features I am related 7 pairs which returns to share with colony by predators but doesn’t trip and facts about minibeasts. compound eyes. eat plants to Lobsters of legs nutrients to the What does this over because legs and rotting Weevil Leaf • If you go searching for bugs and beasts you are quite likely to find and Crabs soil Stag Chafers Beetle scale to Not are different material mean? Beetle /Dung some of these creatures. Some might also commonly be known as Beetle lengths insects, or invertebrates, which means without a backbone.

5 • There are many, many more creatures to be found out and about. 3 We couldn’t fit them all on here so have picked out a few to tell Millipede means 2 you about. Look at the amazing features these creatures have and Click 1000 feet but they Ladybird Cardinal Beetle Beetle I can stop try and find out even more about them. Some belong to the same Beetle don’t have 1000! scientific group of creatures, some belong to different groups. How strong others eating Do you know which are which? How can you tell which are related do you think me by secreting and which are not? I am? We have fluid that tastes Body made up 3 body parts, 6 legs Carrion horrid • Start thinking about the other minibeasts you find and spend some of 13 segmented head, thorax and abdomen Soldier Ground Rove Beetle Beetle Beetle time investigating them too. Look closely and you’ll be able to spot plates Beetle similarities and differences. Are they dangerous, good at camouflage • Unusual crustacean ? • Omnivores as lives on land ? or easy to catch? There are lots of great facts to discover…you just • They leave a trail of smells Two pairs of • Don’t confuse me with need to seek them out! • If they dry out they suffocate, to lead other ants to food a … so they avoid dry places • 25% of all known life ? wings but only have flatter • If you can’t find all the information you need when you are • Some ants ‘milk’ aphids and forms are beetles use hind wings • minibeasting, make a note of your questions and look them • Breathe through air holes drink the sugary honeydew bodies than • Beetles can be carnivores, up in a book or on the Internet. You can use a key or in back legs that is produced for flying and longer legs that stick herbivores or scavengers out sideways identification guide (ID guide) to work out what • Can secrete repellent fluid D • Average life expectancy BlackBlack AntAnt something is. Good luck! in self-defence 45 – 60 days • Ladybirds are beetles and are • Millipedes have two pairs

D D AdultAdult WoodlouseWoodlouse Length:Length: 3-5mm3-5mm good for garden pest control BeetleBeetle Common Millipede • Pill woodlice can roll into a D of legs per segment and Length:Length: 17mm17mm • Female ants live underground QueenQueen AntAnt 8-9mm8-9mm as they eat aphids. Length:Length: UpUp toto 40mm40mm ? Length: 25-30mm ball, known as “Billy Buttons” in large colonies of thousands. Centipedes have one. Silk Spinners Metamorphosis High r Trail Blazers Spider Grasshopper Jump Stars Butterfly Experts 7 Slug Can have between Our antennae I’ve got 4 2 and 4 pairs of eyes. tentacles, 2 for Long back legs are much shorter I can see than crickets’ almost 360 Breathes and poos seeing with and for jumping 2 for smelling We can all spin degrees around through the same hole We like to you with silk, but we don’t bask in the sun all make webs. Our to warm up silk is stronger than steel

7 Club-like 8 antennae – 9 False eyes used to 6 We detect smells communicate on Peacocks You can find us by singing. Our to fool anywhere, even in songs vary from predators • Scientific classification: Phylum: • are ? water. Have you species to Wings are used for Their colour provides Mollusca, Class: Gastropoda, They have 8 legs found us in a pond species flying, controlling • good camouflage in which means belly foot Thousands of tiny before? • Insect with 3 body parts ? temperature and • The pattern of eyes their habitat • Mucus helps them move, teeth on belly for depends on the family • Order: Lepidoptera, courtship displays prevents drying and acts • Order Orthoptera, which which means scale wing eating plants • The Woodlouse spider eats means straight wing as a sticky defence • They have six legs, which woodlice, but what does abdomen, • Largely nocturnal the Wasp spider eat? • Particularly common ? are also used for detecting head in southern Britain vibrations from predators • They wait until the rain • The Wasp spider has has stopped before ? Have 2 body parts • To communicate (stridulate) moved into Suffolk, • Butterflies taste with D grasshoppers rub their back coming out to play spreading from warmer their feet. Imagine if D legs against hard wing cases. • Birds, hedgehogs and places, possibly due to Grasshopper you did that! Small Tortoiseshell Garden Spider Crickets rub their front D Grasshopper Small Tortoiseshell frogs eat slugs Slug D

Photo credits : Photos 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9 © www.northeastwildlife.co.uk; Photo 4 © Denis Greenough; Photo credits : Photos 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9 © www.northeastwildlife.co.uk; Photo 8 © Thornham; All line illustrations Jem Seeley www.wearedrab.net. climate change. It can be Length: 8-12mm wings together. Length:Length: 13-24mm13-24mm Length: 46-53mm Length: 25-150mm

found at Needham Lake. • Average lifespan is 2 years. © Mid Suffolk District Council 2009. Designed by Drab Ltd. www.wearedrab.net