As the games of the Beijing Summer Olympics begin tomorrow, our American athletes will be attempting amazing feats that they hope will bring them many medals on the victory stand.  This got me to thinking – insects may make pests of themselves, but it’s hard to deny they have amazing abilities that would dwarf some of our human record holders.

Insects have tremendous adaptability. Those abilities allow them to survive in difficult settings and can make controlling insect pests a challenge at times.

For example, fleas are known for their jumping ability, which helps them elude predators and find new places to feed.  Inch-for-inch, they would far out-jump even the best human long and high jumpers. A flea’s 13-inch long jump, when translated to human terms, would be 450 feet. For a human to jump the equivalent of a flea’s 7-inch high jump, he or she would have to jump up 250 feet.

The current world record for humans is a 29.5 foot long jump set by Mike Powell of the United States in 1991 and Javier Sotomayor of Cuba currently holds the record high jump at 8.08 feet, which means Trevell Quinley and Jesse Williams will be hard pressed to match those feats, let alone the insect translations!

The world’s best power lifters can find inspiration in one of the world’s smaller creatures: the ant. Ants can drag food that is 25 times heavier than their own weight.  That’s the equivalent of a 100-pound human carrying around one of our VW bug Mouse cars.

Although the Bug Guy is quite loud, Cicadas are the world champions of noise making. The African cicada produces a calling song with a mean sound level of 106.7 decibels. Two species of North American cicadas produce an alarm call with a mean sound level of 105.9 dB. Both decibel levels are near that made by snow blowers or jet planes.

We wish all of our Olympic athletes the best of luck in Beijing and hope to be able to stage a bug Olympics someday soon!

Do you have any Olympic memories?  Have you ever experienced a world famous cockroach?  Ever been to a flea circus?

Barry The Bug Guy