Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera, in the superorder Holometabola. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 described species, is the largest of all orders, constituting almost 40% of described insects and 25% of all known animal species; new species are discovered frequently, with estimates suggesting that there are between 0.9 and 2.1 million total species. Found in almost every habitat except the sea and the polar regions, they interact with their ecosystems in several ways: beetles often feed on plants and fungi, break down animal and plant debris, and eat other invertebrates. Some species are serious agricultural pests, such as the Colorado potato beetle, while others such as Coccinellidae eat aphids, scale insects, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects that damage crops. Some others also have unusual characteristics, such as fireflies, which use a light-emitting organ for mating and communication purposes.
René Jules Lalique was a French jeweller, medallist, and glass designer known for his creations of glass art, perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks, and automobile hood ornaments.
Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are amongst what are possibly the most ancient living groups of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago.
Rachel Ruysch was a Dutch still-life painter from the Northern Netherlands. She specialized in flowers, inventing her own style and achieving international fame in her lifetime. Due to a long and successful career that spanned over six decades, she became the best documented female painter of the Dutch Golden Age.
The Ant and the Grasshopper, alternatively titled The Grasshopper and the Ant, is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 373 in the Perry Index. The fable describes how a hungry grasshopper begs for food from an ant when winter comes and is refused. The situation sums up moral lessons about the virtues of hard work and planning for the future.
Maria van Oosterwijck, also spelled Oosterwyck, (1630–1693) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, specializing in richly detailed flower paintings and other still lifes.
Insect mandibles are a pair of appendages near the insect's mouth, and the most anterior of the three pairs of oral appendages. Their function is typically to grasp, crush, or cut the insect's food, or to defend against predators or rivals. Insect mandibles, which appear to be evolutionarily derived from legs, move in the horizontal plane unlike those of vertebrates, which appear to be derived from gill arches and move vertically.
Jan van Kessel the Elder or Jan van Kessel (I) (baptized 5 April 1626, Antwerp – 17 April 1679, Antwerp) was a Flemish painter active in Antwerp in the mid 17th century. A versatile artist he practised in many genres including studies of insects, floral still lifes, marines, river landscapes, paradise landscapes, allegorical compositions, scenes with animals and genre scenes. A scion of the Brueghel family many of his subjects took inspiration of the work of his grandfather Jan Brueghel the Elder as well as from the earlier generation of Flemish painters such as Daniel Seghers, Joris Hoefnagel and Frans Snyders. Van Kessel’s works were highly prized by his contemporaries and were collected by skilled artisans, wealthy merchants, nobles and foreign luminaries throughout Europe.
The Reading Public Museum is a museum in Reading, Pennsylvania, located in the 18th Ward, along the Wyomissing Creek. The museum's permanent collection mainly focuses on art, science, and civilization and contains over 280,000 objects. It also has a planetarium and a 25-acre (100,000 m2) arboretum.
Beetlewing, or beetlewing art, is an ancient craft technique using iridescent beetle wings practiced traditionally in Thailand, Myanmar, India, China and Japan. Notable beetlewing garments include Lady Curzon's peacock dress (1903) and a costume dress worn by the actress Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, depicted in the painting Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (1889).
Annemieke Mein is a Dutch-born Australian textile artist who specialises in depicting wildlife. She was the first textile artist to be member of Wildlife Art Society of Australasia and the Australian Guild of Realist Artists. The subjects of her sculpted textiles are birds, frogs, gum and wattle blossoms, and insects such as moths, dragonflies, wasps and grasshoppers. Her fndness for insects and her sympathetic images, often greatly enlarged and showing normally invisible colours and textures, have revealed new aspects of the everyday world.
In the 10th edition of Systema Naturae of 1758–1759, Carl Linnaeus classified the arthropods, including insects, arachnids and crustaceans, among his class "Insecta". He described the Insecta as:
A very numerous and various class consisting of small animals, breathing through lateral spiracles, armed on all sides with a bony skin, or covered with hair; furnished with many feet, and moveable antennae, which project from the head, and are the probable instruments of sensation.
It's Tough to Be a Bug! is a 9-minute-long 3D film based on the 1998 Disney·Pixar film A Bug's Life, using theater lighting, 3-D filming techniques, audio-animatronics and various special effects. Flik, a character from the movie, hosts the show and educates the audience on why bugs should be considered friends. It was the first Pixar attraction to open in a Disney park.
Human interactions with insects include both a wide variety of uses, whether practical such as for food, textiles, and dyestuffs, or symbolic, as in art, music, and literature, and negative interactions including damage to crops and extensive efforts to control insect pests.
Insects have appeared in mythology around the world from ancient times. Among the insect groups featuring in myths are the bee, fly, butterfly, cicada, dragonfly, praying mantis and scarab beetle.
Insects have appeared in literature from classical times to the present day, an aspect of their role in culture more generally. Insects represent both positive qualities like cooperation and hard work, and negative ones like greed.
Insect names have appeared in music from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" to such popular songs as "Blue-tailed Fly" and the folk song La Cucaracha which is about a cockroach. Insect groups mentioned include bees, ants, flies and the various singing insects such as cicadas, crickets, and beetles, while other songs refer to bugs in general.
Lucien Gaillard was a French goldsmith and jeweller, who worked in the art nouveau style.
Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge (1688) is an oil on canvas painting by the Dutch painter Rachel Ruysch. It is an example of Dutch Golden Age painting and is now in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington, D.C..
Within Japanese culture, insects have occupied an important role as aesthetic, allegorical, and symbolic objects. In addition, insects have had a historical importance within the context of the culture and art of Japan.
