insects, like shield bugs, stinkbugs, bedbugs, pond skaters, cicadas, aphids and scale insects. They all have beak-shaped mouths that serve as a kind of drinking straw they use to suck up their food – often sap from plants, although a few are predators or blood-suckers. So, although we commonly use the word ‘bug’ to describe any sort of tiny critter, the true bugs are a specific group of insects. True bugs of the most familiar suborder, Heteroptera, are similar to beetles in body shape, but are identifiable by triangular marks on their backs.
And just so you know: spiders aren’t insects. They belong to the same phylum, arthropods, but a separate class, arachnids, which they share with other creatures such as mites, scorpions and harvestmen (known as ‘weaving women’ in Norwegian because they move two of their eight legs as if they were pushing a shuttle to and fro across a loom).
Millipedes, centipedes and wood lice aren’t insects either. To take the simplest hallmark, they all have too many legs and belong to various other groups of invertebrates. Nor are the super-cute springtails insects, despite having six legs, although they are nearly insects. That said, insect researchers are huge fans of a teeming, multi-legged community, so springtails and arachnids are often allowed into the fold when we discuss insects anyway. That is true in this book too.
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