We’ve compiled 12 interesting facts about ladybugs that you might not know…

Ladybugs are a type of beetle

Ladybugs, also known as Coccinellidae, belong to the beetle family and are closely related to the firefly and June bug.

Ladybugs

Ladybugs don’t just come in red with black spots

Whilst the majority of ladybugs are the familiar red with black spots that we’ve all come to love, ladybugs can also be orange, yellow, black with red spots, brown, pink, and even gray.

There are 5000 different varieties of ladybugs in the world

Wow, that is a lot of ladybugs.  There are at least 400 different species in the US alone. They range in size from 1mm to 10mm.

Ladybugs can turn into cannibals

If there is a lack of food, healthy and young ladybugs will turn on any sick or elderly ladybugs and eat them.  However, they much prefer to munch on aphids and will only eat each other as a last resort.

Spots don’t tell the age of ladybugs

Sadly, contrary to popular belief, the amount of spots on a ladybugs back does not tell you how old it is.  Each ladybug is unique and its amount and pattern of spots will be completely different from others.

Ladybugs hibernate in winter

Once the weather starts to cool, ladybugs will stop being solitary creatures and search for companions to spend the winter with.  Swarms of up to one million ladybugs have been found huddled together in the shelter of trees, holes in bark, under roof eaves and even in houses.

Ladybug houses are great to attract ladybugs to your garden and give them somewhere safe to hibernate in the winter.

Ladybug House

Ladybugs eat a lot of aphids

Aphids and other plant mites are the ladybugs favorite food and over its lifetime a single ladybug can consume up to 5000 aphids.

Ladybugs can live up to nine months

The average adult ladybug will live for somewhere between three and nine months depending on the time of year and available food.

Which animals eat ladybugs?

Ladybugs don’t have many enemies; its spots and coloring tend to put off most attackers.  In addition, when under attack the ladybug will secrete a sticky yellow substance from its legs which both tastes and smells disgusting!  Dragonflies, parasitic wasps, frogs, spiders and some other larger insects will try to eat ladybugs.

Ladybugs are slow fliers

Most ladybugs only fly at around 15 miles per hour, a dragonfly in contrast moves at around 60 miles per hour.

Ladybugs can lay up to 1000 eggs in their lifetime

That’s a lot of eggs!  However, not all of the eggs a female lays are fertile the ones that don’t hatch because they are infertile serve as food for the larvae.

Ladybugs have four different stages to their life cycle

Starting as an egg, they then become a larva, then a pupa, then an adult.   The whole process takes around four to five weeks before they become an adult ladybug from the egg stage.

To study the life cycle of a ladybug up close you can buy one of our live ladybug kits.  These ladybug kits have everything you need to raise ladybugs from larvae and study their amazing transformation

Ladybug Kit

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We’ve come up with our top 5 suggestions for Fathers’ Day gifts that won’t break the bank, but will continue to give pleasure for years to come.

The Venus Fly Trap Desk Cube

A plant that both looks attractive and serves a useful purpose!  This carnivorous plant will snap up any flies and small bugs which dare to land in its waiting open mouth.  This easy to look after cube contains all you need to grow several Venus Fly Trap plants from seed in perfect growing conditions, all you need to do is make sure Dad waters it!

Venus Fly Trap Desk Cube

Lighted Color Changing Antworks Ant Habitat

This amazing piece of kit will not only let your Dad be able to see up close the amazing world of ants and how they go about their very busy lives, but it has the added bonus of lighting up and changing color—perfect for the home office or study as it can take pride of place on his desk!

Color Changing Ant Habitat

Red Roof Ladybug House

Is your dad a keen gardener who likes to grow his own herbs and vegetables?  What better way to keep pests and unwanted bugs away from his prized vegetable patch then an army of ladybugs!  This gorgeous handmade wooden house will give safe haven to ladybugs who will thank you by eating up lots of greenfly and blackfly that might attack the roses.

Red Roof Ladybug House

Live Hermit Crab Kit

Whilst the humble hermit crab prefers not to live with other hermit crabs, it doesn’t mean he can’t be perfect company for your dad.  This great live kit comes complete with everything your dad will need to raise the hermit crab and watch him lounging on his very own sandy beach – the hermit crab that is, not your dad!

Live Hermit Crab Kit

Sea Monkeys or Triops Kits

These strange little creatures are incredibly easy to look after and provide a real conversation starter for anyone who sees them.   We have a range of different kits ranging from outer space to prehistoric, each thoroughly entertaining and mesmerizing.

Sea Monkey and Triops Kits

Whatever you choose to buy your dad for Fathers’ Day this year, we hope you all have a great day together!

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Run by the Association for Butterflies (AFB), this day is the perfect chance to educate and inform people of how butterflies are becoming more endangered and how they play a vital role in the eco-system.  The non-profit organization want to raise awareness of butterflies and how important they are as pollinators, not to mention stunningly beautiful to look at.

We’ve come up with some suggestions as to how you can help the AFB to achieve its goal and heighten your own awareness of these magnificent creatures.

• Go outside and take photographs of all the butterflies you see.  Try to find out what they are all called using the internet or books on local butterflies.
• Learn about different butterflies from around the world using internet sites or encyclopedias.
• Plant butterfly attracting flowers in your backyard.  If you don’t have a backyard, a window box or plant container can do the same thing.
• Ask your teacher if you can draw butterflies in art class.
• See how many different languages you can learn the word ‘butterfly’, for instance in French they are called ‘papillon’ and ‘mariposa’ in Spanish.
• Learn all about the life cycle of butterflies by raising  butterflies from caterpillars with a live butterfly kit, which you can then release into the wild.

Learn all about the life cycle of a butterfly with a live butterfly kit

• Encourage butterflies to make your backyard their home with a butterfly house

A butterfly house will give butterflies somewhere warm and dry to shelter

• Look at natural and safe alternatives to pesticides in your garden, use netting over vegetables for instance.
• Watch nature programs on butterflies or visit a butterfly sanctuary if you have one local.

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The metamorphosis of a furry green caterpillar into a beautiful winged butterfly has to be one of the most fascinating occurrences in nature, and you could get to see it close up and personal.  Charting the everyday changes in this intriguing life cycle until the adult butterfly is fully grown and ready to be released.

Whilst our live butterfly kits are designed so that you can raise butterflies all year round, there is something truly special about being able to release the butterflies you’ve watched develop into the wild, or at the very least your backyard.  To see them flutter their wings and take in the summer air while they decide which direction to fly off in to start the next part of their great life adventure.

Our painted lady butterfly kits are available in different sizes, so whether you want a small size that your child can raise in the home, a medium sized one that will double up as a homeschool project for more than one child, or even a large kit that can be used for classrooms or after-school clubs, we have just the thing for you.

Painted Lady Butterfly Kits

The life cycle of the butterflies from caterpillar to adult butterfly takes approximately 4 weeks, but the caterpillars only take around 5-10 days (at normal room temperature) to move onto the next stage in their life—the chrysalis, so these kits are perfect for impatient little nature lovers.

Raising your own painted lady butterflies couldn’t be easier.  We include everything you need in the kit, from a habitat and food, to instructions on care and coloring pages, we even supply a water mister should you home get a little too warm and they get thirsty.  Once the temperature outside has reached about 55º then you can release your butterflies and watch them dance around your garden.

To help with your ‘raise and release’ lesson for the painted lady butterflies we also stock a range of products that help to further explain the life cycle of the butterfly and offer children exciting, fun and educational things to do while they are waiting for their butterflies to emerge.   Stickers, figurines, rubber stamps and framed displays help the children to understand what is happening in the chrysalis and are a nice keepsake for after the butterflies have been released.

Butterfly Life Cycle Rubber Stamps

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For children, worms can be fascinating creatures to watch—how they move and burrow their way into the earth, along with how they feel in their hands, curling up and even flipping over to move around can provide countless hours of fun and learning.

Making worm farms can be a fun homeschool or classroom project, but if you wanted something more permanent for children to watch this window into a fascinating life, then a transparent worm farming kit is just the thing for you.

Worm Farming Kit

While you’re watching the worms with your children you can educate them with one of our worm lesson plans, or wow them with great, weird and wonderful worm facts, such as these:

Worms breed on average every 7-10 days, perfect for the compost patch as they quickly grow their population!

Worms will eat their own body weight in vegetable matter each day.  Imagine eating your weight every day!

Worms have up to 5 hearts.

The longest earthworm found was 22 foot long and was discovered in South Africa.

Earthworms can live up to 15 years.

The famous scientist, Charles Darwin, studied worms for 39 years!

There can be more than a million earthworms in an acre of land.

Worms are slimy for a reason—if they dried out they would die.

According to fossils, earthworms have been on the earth for around half a billion years.

Worms have neither teeth nor a tongue to help them eat their food.

Earthworms will eat around 10lbs of organic matter every year.

Worms are favorite foods for many birds and small mammals such as hedgehogs, foxes and even bears.

wriggly worms

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Poor unsuspecting flies and other light insects which land on the bug eating plants will quickly and deftly be consumed!  These carnivores of the plant world can delight and amaze both children and adults alike and can be great as houseplants as they often need very little maintenance other than regular watering.

We come up with our three favorite bug eating plants:

Venus Fly Trap

Probably the most famous of the meat-eating plants is the Venus Fly Trap.  The plant tempts insects with a sugary secretion to land in its open jaws, but when it does it triggers the fine hairs and—SNAP—those jaws swiftly shut tight and the plant begins the process of digesting the bug.

Venus Fly Trap

Venus Fly Traps prefer boggy soil and all of our Venus Fly Trap kits come complete with all the necessary equipment and soil to create a perfect growing environment for them to flourish for years to come—just make sure they get to snack on a few flies!

Venus Fly Trap Kit

Sundew Savages

Who would have thought that such a pretty and delicate looking plant could be such a predator, but it sure can!   The Sundew Savage operates very differently to the Venus Fly Trap, preferring to smother and strangle its prey by inviting it onto sticky hairs which the insect will mistake for nectar. Once the bug is stuck it will thrash and roll around, desperately trying to escape, but only sealing its fate further as more and more sticky hairs smother it.

Sundew Savages

Pitcher Plants

Another insectivore plant is the Pitcher Plant, these particular plants like to take down bugs by drowning them first.   Flies and other insects are drawn into the long funnels called pitfall traps by the lure of sweet nectar, however they quickly find themselves trapped and because of the pitcher plant’s downward facing hairs, escape is futile.  At the bottom of the pitfall trap is a pool of liquid which drowns the bug and then dissolves it completely.

Pitcher Plant

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We here at the Nature Gift Store think all Moms deserve to be treated like queens for the day; breakfast in bed, someone else doing the household chores for the day and a nice day out somewhere, preferably with lunch!   We also think that one of the best ways to show your Mom just how much you love her is to give her a gift she will treasure forever.

If your Mom (or wife if you have small children) is a lover of nature, then why not choose a gift that is nature inspired, or better yet, comes directly from the natural world.  We’ve come up with some suggestions for gifts for the special lady in your family which she can treasure forever and appreciate the beauty of nature, whilst being reminded of her loving children.

The insect world offers some of the most exquisite and visually stunning creatures in the natural world, and what better way to enjoy them all year round than to admire them in a beautiful framed picture or made into a lovely piece of jewelry.

From tropical butterflies to dragonflies, these amazing creatures have come from special butterfly farms where they have been allowed to live out their natural life in a wonderful and safe environment before being timelessly preserved.   Not only do the butterflies have a full and healthy life cycle, but you are also doing your bit to help preserve the natural rain forest areas they originally come from and help the indigenous people who farm the insects to make an honest living without resorting to deforestation.

Dragonfly Art

This stunning picture would take pride of place on any wall and features five unique dragonflies.

Butterfly Art

Why have just one butterfly on display when you can have seven different varieties instead!    Each picture is different and unique, however all pictures will contain a truly stunning Blue Morpho butterfly as the center piece.

Real Blue Jay Butterfly Paperweight

A real insect paperweight would make an excellent Mothers’ Day gift for Mom to have at the office.  Available in Blue Jay and Monarch butterflies, and also a dragonfly paperweight these amazing gifts will have everyone talking.

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Choosing more interesting and unusual pets will certainly make them the talk of the school playground, not to mention have the class enthralled at ‘show and tell’ time.   Insects and reptiles can make wonderful pets, which so long as their habitat is cleaned regularly and they are fed and watered each day, will prove to be low maintenance and take up very little space in a busy household.

The Chinese mantis is not only visually stunning, but also a great help to farmers and keen gardeners as an organic way of pest controlling.   Many farmers will buy mantis eggs and place them in the fields knowing that once hatched the mantis will happily gorge on all the insects that are eating their crops.

Chinese Mantis

As a pet, the Chinese mantis is extremely easy to look after. They only need to be fed every other day and will eat lots of different types of insects such as flies, moths, pin head crickets and caterpillars – many of which can be found making a nuisance of themselves around your home and in the garden in the summer months.  To create a humid atmosphere, the will need the inside of their habitat misting with water every other day or every day if it’s very hot.

To begin with, the baby Chinese mantis will feed on fruit flies before graduating to larger insects.  Placing live insects into the mantis’s habitat you will be able to witness at first hand just how quick these creatures are at catching their pray, although beware – do not place insects in the habitat that are bigger than the mantis itself, or you may find the mantis gets eaten instead!

Chinese mantis will live happily for up to a year if well looked after, so whilst not a life-long pet, they will certainly entertain and educate.  Because they only need a relatively small habitat (9”x6”x6” is perfect) they can be housed in bedrooms, as well as classrooms or even offices for a great conversation starter!

Chinese Mantis Kit

Chinese mantis, like all praying mantis’s, should be solitary creatures.  After mating the female will usually eat her mate and two males will fight to the death with the victor eating his opponent.  For this reason, you should only keep one mantis in a habitat.

Our live Chinese mantis kits contain all you need to look after your new pet, with habitat, food, netting, plastic plant and stick, water mister, and care instructions.

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Using entire insects or the exquisitely colorful wings of butterflies, a variety of pendants and rings have been created.

Using only butterflies that have been raised in butterfly farms to protect the wild species found in the world’s rain forests and their habitat, the pieces of jewelry are mounted in silver plated rings or pendants to showcase the stunning color scheme of one of nature’s most amazing creatures.

From amazing blues to stunning reds, the butterfly wings of some of the most exotic species from around the world can be yours to keep and treasure forever or to give to a loved one as a special gift.

Here are some of the butterflies featured in these unique items:

The Cymothoe Sangaris butterfly comes from Central Africa.  It also goes by the name of the ‘blood red glider’ because of its red color which is rare in the butterfly world.  This butterfly loves the sun; it glides high up in the African rain forests in the mornings, then in the afternoon will pick sunny spots close to the ground to soak up the rays.

Red Sangaris Pendant

If yellow is more your color, then this butterfly wing pendant made with the wing of the yellowy orange Phoebis Philea.  Originating from the Amercias and the Caribbean, this butterfly is also known as the ‘orange-barred sulphur’ because of its blend of orange and yellow hues which it gets from only drinking nectar from red flowers.

Yellow Philea Pendant

The amber colored Appias Nero butterfly lends its wings to this unique butterfly wing pendant.  The butterfly is more commonly called the ‘orange albatross’ and is native to the Philippines and Indonesia, it is the only butterfly in the world that is entirely orange.

Orange Appias Pendant

The electric blue wings of the Blue Morpho butterfly makes the pendant very striking to the eye.  The Blue Morpho species are one of the largest butterflies in the world, ranging from 3 inches across to a staggering 20 inches across.   They are mostly found in South America but can also be found in Mexico and Central America.

Blue Morpho Pendant

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What are little boys made of?

Frogs and snails, and puppy dog’s tails

That’s what little boys are made of

What are little girls made of?

Sugar and spice and all things nice

That’s what little girls are made of.

Of course we know this is wildly inaccurate, but what doesn’t change is young children’s—both girls and boys—fascination with small creatures and insects, particularly frogs.

Spring is the perfect time to see the lifecycle of a frog.  The humble frog embarks on a remarkable journey from spawn to adult frog, and if you’re lucky enough to live near a stream, lake or other small body of water you can probably see part, if not all of the lifecycle happening.

However, if you don’t live near water, fear not, because you can still witness this amazing transformation.   Live tadpole kits are great for teaching both young and older children alike about the life cycle of the marvelous creature and can be used as either a classroom project or a homeschool project about nature.

Live Tadpole Kits

The live tadpole kits include everything you need, habitat, food, water solution, water changing cup, live tadpole and even a plastic plant for your tadpole to play hide and seek in.

The frog life cycle from spawn to adult frog takes approximately 12 to 16 weeks and there are plenty of changes to see on an almost daily basis.  These changes can be charted by photographing, videoing or drawing the various stages of the tadpole’s life so can be incorporated into other teaching subjects as well as nature.

Once your tadpole has completed its metamorphosis into a frog you will be left with an adult leopard frog which can grow from 4 to 6 inches.  If well looked after, your leopard frog should have a lifespan of around 5 years.  It will make an excellent pet which needs only a little maintenance, but will continue to educate and thrill your children or students for years to come making it perfect for classrooms or even bedrooms.

Leopard Frog and Tadpoles

Although spring is the natural time of year for frogs to start mating and begin their lifecycles, the live tadpole kits can be bought all year round so long as the temperature is above 40º and below 90º to ensure that the tadpoles survive the journey to your home or school.

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