Stay Wild At Home With

Minibeast Adventure! #staywildathome

Contents

What Are Minibeasts? ...................................................................................................................................................... 2

Stay Wild At Home Online Community ............................................................................................................................. 3

Fascinating Facts ............................................................................................................................................................... 3

Activity 1: Bug Hunt .......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Activity 2: Micro -hike ....................................................................................................................................................... 4

Activity 3: Pond Dipping. ................................................................................................................................................... 4

Activity 4: Bug Hotels ........................................................................................................................................................ 5

Activity 5: Wormery .......................................................................................................................................................... 5

Minibeast Field Guide ....................................................................................................................................................... 6

What Are Minibeasts?

Minibeasts are small animals.

They may have no legs, like

worms, or lots of legs, like

millipedes. They may be

hunters, like centipedes or

spiders, or they may eat dead wood, like woodlice.

Some work as a colony, like ants and bees while

others only look after themselves.

One thing that all minibeasts have in common is

that they do not have a spine, which is why the

other name for minibeasts is ‘invertebrates’. We

can find them almost everywhere if we look closely,

but the best places to look are underneath trees

and bushes, under logs or things that have been

sitting on the ground for a while.

Minibeasts are one of the most important groups of

animals on Earth, they provide food for many other

animals, they clean up the environment by eating

things that we would consider waste and without

them, complex life on Planet Earth would be

impossible.

They are fascinating little animals, living in a tiny

and dangerous world but they have evolved many

incredible abilities to survive and thrive.

Prepare to be amazed and entertained as we

journey into the incredible world of beetles, bugs,

insects and molluscs!

Stay Wild At Home Online Community

You may be bug hunting by yourself or with your family today, but you’re not alone! Join our online community through

our hashtag #staywildathome and share some pictures of the crazy critters you’ve found! You can find us on

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for regular updates and more Stay Wild At Home adventures! If you enjoy this

resource and would like to contribute to our work, you can donate, fundraise for us or support us as you shop.

If you would like us to send you a bug pot and or microlens visit our online shop.

Fascinating Facts

There are so many ants, that the combined weight of all the ants on Earth would total more than the combined weight of all the humans.

Spider silk is five times stronger than steel of the same diameter. Humans have even used spider silk as light-weight bullet proof armour!

Centipedes are agile hunters. They have fangs with which they inject their prey with venom. They feed on insects, spiders and other invertebrates, including other centipedes – yes, they are cannibals!

Millipedes need to eat almost ten times their own body weight in food each day due to the low nutritional content of their food (dead wood). That is the equivalent of someone eating 1,400 dinners a day!

Within an acre of grassland (about the same size as a square that has 20m sides) there are an estimated three million earthworms. These help the plants by eating dead plant material, turning it into soil and creating burrows that aerate the ground and helping water seep through.

A colony of honey bees visits around 64 million flowers to make 1kg of honey!

Now it’s time to get outdoors and find some minibeasts!

Activity 1: Bug Hunt

This one’s easy! Try to find as many different types of minibeast as you can in the garden.

This may require you to count their legs (easy if they have none, but difficult if they are a

millipede!) Do your bug hunt very carefully to avoid harming the animals and make sure that

when you have finished, you put everything back where it was before. If you don’t have a

garden, don’t worry, there’s lots of minibeasts that like to live inside your home, why not

try and find a house spider!? Use our minibeast Field Guide at the end to get you started!

Activity 2: Micro -hike

Lay out a piece of string about 30cm long on the ground. This can be on grass

or under trees or bushes. Then pretend that you are a minibeast going on a

safari along the string. Use a magnifying glass or hand lens to get close to the

ground and follow the string along. As you go, imagine what the landscape

would look like from a minibeast’s point of view. How big or small are the

obstacles that you must cross? Are they spikey or soft? What are the dangers

and features that make up a minibeasts world? How are minibeasts adapted

to thrive in this environment? If you need a micro lens, we can send you one

in the post, just visit our website to place an order.

Activity 3: Pond Dipping Ask permission from parents/ guardians first or ask them to help you.

If you have a pond in your garden, or access to one nearby, pond

dipping is a fascinating activity. Freshwater minibeasts are weird and

wonderful. Some have snorkels while others shoot jets of water from

their bottoms for quick propulsion. Some carry air bubbles between

their legs to breathe and others swim in constant circles to avoid

being eaten.

For pond dipping, all you need is a tray or bowl. Half fill the

tray/bowl with pond water and put it in a stable place near the

pond. Use a net or sieve to scoop at the water in a continuous

movement. Carefully carry the net/sieve to the tray and carefully

turn it inside out. Remember, these creatures are very delicate and

cannot survive out of water for long, so be careful to gently transfer

them without hurting them. Remove any plants, twigs or debris

and allow the water to settle and stop moving. Now look for any signs of movement in the water.

You can watch your creatures and see how they move, try to identify them using the internet or a book. Are

they predators or prey? You can try to catch creatures in different parts of the pond, but make sure that you

carefully put all creatures back into the pond when you have finished by picking up the tray/bowl and gently

tipping it into the pond from a low height.

Activity 4: Bug Hotels

There are lots of different styles of bug

hotels and you can make yours as simple or

as extravagant as you like. Some are more

attractive to crawling minibeasts, others to

flying insects and some can be designed as

a luxury apartment just for specific types of bee.

For a bug hotel, first chose an area of your garden that is in the shade.

Collect material for your hotel. This can be twigs, leaves, rotten logs

and even household recycling. Lots of minibeasts like nooks and

crannies to hide in, so try to find hollow things. The best bug hotels

are layered, using different material in different places. You may

want to use sticks to create a wall first, so that your bug hotel can

grow tall, like a penthouse.

Activity 5: Wormery

You can breed worms, even in the tiniest garden. A wormery can be great fun and you will watch your worms multiply in number and grow ever bigger in size over the weeks. Making a wormery is easy and can be done using any large jar or plastic bottle.

1. Add a little gravel or some small stones to the bottom.

2. Layer the first half of the container with alternate thin layers of sand and soil.

3. Fill the remaining half of the container with just soil and add some leaf litter on top. This can be old or fresh leaves, or just some plucked grass.

4. Add worms! You probably already found some worms in the soil by now, but if not, keep digging! Worms are often found near the surface of the soil, so you shouldn’t have to dig too deep. If you have a compost bin in your garden, there are probably plenty of worms in there already!

5. Add a splash of water! Remember, worms need a moist environment to live in so don’t let your wormery dry out.

NOTE: If you’re not seeing your worms very often, try wrapping the container in something that blocks out the light. Worms naturally avoid sunlight, so making it darker will increase the chances they will visit the edge of your container, allowing you to see them.

Minibeast Field Guide

Worms

Worms are one of the most important creatures on the planet

because they keep the soil fertile, allowing plants to grow. Worms

spend nearly all their life underground. Sometimes you will find

them on the surface, especially if it’s raining. It is for this reason that

some birds do a little dance on grassy areas, which fools the worms

into thinking that it is raining.

Worms are covered in tiny hairs, which grip the soil and allow them to move.

Worms absorb oxygen through their thin, moist skin.

Worms are eaten by many birds, but also by hedgehogs, badgers, foxes, moles, snakes and

amphibians.

The biggest earthworm is the giant Gippsland earthworm of South Africa. The largest are over 6.5m

long and as thick as an adult human thumb!

Ants

Ants are often considered a ‘keystone’ species – they are critical for our

ecosystem! Ants live in a colony of thousands of individuals. They all have

different jobs within the colony such as collecting and distributing food,

building, cleaning, nursing young or defending the colony. The workers are

all female sisters, but unlike the queen ant, they are infertile.

For a couple of days each year (around July/August in the UK), fertile ants grow wings and fly around.

This is the start of a new ant colony. The flying females will become the new queens.

Many ants are farmers. They farm aphids, keeping them safe from predators in exchange for their

‘honey dew’, a sweet substance which the ants ‘milk’ (stroke) from the aphids. Similarly, leafcutter

ants from the Americas collect leaves to grow their favourite fungus in.

Ants communicate using smell. They can convey complex messages to each other by emitting

pheromones.

There are more than 10,000,000,000,000,000 ants on the planet at any time. That’s a lot of ants …

Some ants have been found to be able to lift 5000 times their own weight. That’s the equivalent of a

human lifting 50 lorries at the same time!

Bees

Bees are essential for life on Earth because they are such good pollinators - that means they help plants to reproduce, creating the vegetables and fruit we eat. There are around 270 species of bee in the UK. These include 246 species of solitary bee, 24 types of bumble bee and the honey bee. Solitary bees do not live in a colony but honey and bumble bees do. Not only do bees produce honey, they also produce propolis (a glue-like substance used to seal their homes), wax to make honeycomb and royal jelly for their young!

Only the female honey bee has a sting. This stinger doubles up as an

egg laying tube known as an ovipositor.

Unlike bumble bees, a honey bee can only sting once. This is because the honey bee sting is barbed

and some of the bee’s internal organs get pulled out when the sting is used, killing the bee.

One of the reasons honey bees are so successful is that they have their honey as a store of food, even

during the winter when there aren’t any flowers to get nectar or pollen from.

Bees communicate through pheromones and honey bees also use the ‘waggle dance’, in which they

wiggle their abdomens to describe the direction and distance to nectar sources.

Ladybirds

Ladybirds (ladybugs) are a beautiful and predatory type of beetle from

a large family called coccinellidae. Not all ladybirds have spots, but if

they do, the number and pattern of spots on a ladybird shows its species

(not its age). Ladybirds are said to be a gardener’s friend because their

favourite foods are aphids, white fly and mites which can be a problem

for gardeners and farmers.

Young ladybirds (larvae) are odd and look like mini, spikey alligators. They

pupate and form an exoskeleton, before hatching into an adult.

Though their favourite food is soft-bodied insects, ladybirds are more omnivorous than previously thought.

Their stomachs have been found to contain honeydew, nectar, plant sap, pollen and a variety of fungi.

Ladybirds hibernate and will often come into buildings in autumn. They will hide in bark, stone, under

logs or wherever they might find shelter.

The harlequin ladybird is an invasive non-native species, originating in Japan. It outcompetes native

ladybird species and eats their larvae. The harlequin ladybird has highly variable colours and patterns,

hence the name.

Common garden spider

There are an estimated 35,000 species of spider across the world

including the legendary tarantula and the deadly black widow. Spiders

have a reputation for being frightening but almost all UK species are

completely harmless … unless you’re an insect!

The common garden spider is likely to live in your garden where it

weaves a sticky web designed to catch flying insects. When an insect gets

stuck, the spider feels the web trembling and darts in. Most spiders kill

their prey with a poisonous bite. Don’t worry, it might be poisonous to

flies, but this one certainly isn’t poisonous to you!

Spiders have eight legs, which puts them in a group called ‘arachnids’ along with scorpions,

harvestmen, ticks and mites.

Spiders also have eight eyes! The incredible jumping spider is thought to be able to see even more

colours than humans.

The common garden spider’s web can be up to 40cm wide but Darwin’s Bark Spider has been known

to create massive webs spanning 25 meters!

Most spider poison is too weak to affect humans but when a common garden spider injects venom

into a fly, it paralyses it, enabling the spider to wrap it up in a cocoon of silk. The poison then turns

the poor insect’s insides into a liquid, a tasty snack for the spider to eat later!

Millipede

Millipede means ‘thousand feet’ (which they don't have). They usually have about 100-200 legs, two pairs of legs for each segment of their body. Like worms and other detritivores (animals that feed on dead plant matter), millipedes are important soil makers. They use their strong mouth parts to break up dead vegetation and turn it into nutrient rich soil through their droppings.

They have simple eyes used for detecting light and dark.

Millipedes defend themselves from predators by creating chemicals

that smell or taste nasty. If you have a millipede in a pot, lift the lid and sniff

the pot. Some people describe it as smelling like ‘germolene’.

Pill millipedes roll themselves into a tight ball to defend themselves from predators.

Millipedes are known to live for up to 11 years in captivity. Some people keep them as pets!

Centipedes

Centipede fossils have been found dating back more than 430 million years, making them one of the very first land-based predators. Centipede means ‘a hundred legs’, which they don’t have. They have approximately 30 legs, one pair of legs for each segment of their body. Centipedes are fast, ferocious hunters and they prowl the leaf litter and undergrowth, looking for prey. Centipedes have venomous pincers on either side of their head which they use to subdue their food. Don’t worry though, British species are far too small to be dangerous.

If a centipede loses a leg it can grow a new one to replace it.

Common centipedes can live for up to three years.

The biggest centipede is the Amazonian giant centipede, from South America. It is up to 30cm in

length and eats other invertebrates but also small mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds!

Snails

Snails are an ancient and bizarre animal belonging to a family of

invertebrates called molluscs, which includes squid, octopus

and slugs to name a few. Snails are gastropods which means

‘stomach-foot’. They slide along on their tummies using

powerful muscles. Snails eat plants and many gardeners

consider them a pest. However, snails provide an abundant and

nutrient rich food for many other animals including mice,

squirrels and birds.

Snails leave a trail of slime (called mucus, yuk!), which eases friction and helps them slide along the

ground.

The biggest snail is the African land snail, which is a similar size to a football at 25cm across.

If the weather is too cold or too hot, snails hide in their shells and make a type of seal over the

entrance. They will stay there until the weather suits them better.

Snails, like other molluscs, have a radula, a serrated ‘tongue’ with thousands of tiny teeth.

Woodlouse

Sometimes known as pill bugs or slaters, there’s more to a

woodlouse than meets the eye. Woodlice are tough little creatures

that play a vital role in an ecosystem. They can be found almost

everywhere and especially like dark, damp places. Be sure to look

under loose stones, bricks or old logs and leaf litter.

Woodlice don’t pee! Instead of urinating, woodlice get rid of waste in their body by exuding an

ammonia gas from their shells.

Woodlice are actually crustaceans – their closest relatives are lobsters and crabs. Woodlice are the

only crustaceans that are adapted to life on land (other crustaceans always live in or near water).

Woodlice breathe in a very unique way using specialised gills. Usually only water-dwelling animals

have gills but woodlice have adapted theirs to work in air.

Woodlice have a segmented body, an exoskeleton and 14 legs. Some species, known as roly-poly or

pill woodlouse, are able to curl their body into a ball to protect themselves against predators.

Woodlouse extracts nutrients from dead, decaying leaves, roots and fruit.

Woodlice have two small, tube-like structures on the rear end of their bodies called uropods. When

in danger, these uropods produce a nasty-smelling substance that makes other animals think twice

about eating them!

About Wild Things!

Wild Things! is an award-winning Scottish charity seeking to overcome educational, social and economic

disadvantages through fostering a mutually beneficial relationship between communities and the natural

world. Get involved and stay up to date via our website and social media:

wild-things.org.uk

email: enquiries@wild-things.org.uk

# 01309 690 450

Working from home phone: 07895654085