What is the Smallest Insect?
The smallest insects are fairy flies, which are insects that parasitize other insects' eggs by laying their eggs inside them. Fairy flies are only 1/5 of a millimeter in length. Many beetles are less than one millimetre in length, and the North American Feather-winged Beetle Nanosella fungi, at 0.25mm, is a serious contender for the title of smallest insect in the world. Other insect orders which contain extremely small members are the Diptera (True Flies) and the Collembola (Springtails). The "feather-winged" beetles and the "battledore-wing fairy flies" are smaller than some species of protozoa (single cell creatures). Megaphragma caribea a hymenopteran parasite from Guadeloupe, measuring out at a huge 0.17 mm long is in contention for the smallest insect.

What is the Smallest Winged Insect?
The Tanzanian parasitic Wasp comes in as the smallest winged insect with a wingspan of 0.2 millimeters.

How Fast can Insects Fly?
The male deer bot fly is reputed to develop flying speeds of up to several hundred miles per hour, but this may be just an exaggeration. The tabanid fly, which is related to horse flies, has been clocked in at 90 miles per hour. Hawkmoths, from the Sphingidae family, have been timed at a a solid 33 miles per hour. A horsefly (Hybomitra hinei wrighti) was recently clocked at 145 km/h! Dragonflies of the Anax parthenope species have been clocked in at almost 18 miles per hour. Honeybees fly at about a moderate 7 miles per hour, and have to beat their wings 190 times per second to do it. Speeds vary amongst butterfly species (for some reason the poisonous varieties are slower than non-poisonous ones). The fastest butterflies (skippers) can fly at about 30 miles per hour or more. Slow flying butterflies fly at only 5 mph. Insect airspeed is affected by mass, size, age, gender, feeding, water content, activity type, temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind, oxygen level, ascent angle and even habitat isolation. More research needs to be done in order to determine the fastest insect.

How Fast can Insects Flap their Wings?
Insects with the fastest wing beating frequency are the no-see-ums (very tiny midges) which beat their hairy wings 1,046 times per second, or 62,000 beats per minute, the record holder for an animal with the fastest fluttering wings. Male mosquitoes don't even come close with wings that beat 450 to 600 times per second. Cabbageworm butterflies are perhaps the slowest with wings that beat only 9 times per second.

Which Insects are the Fastest Runners?
As you may have guesses the fastest runners in the insect world are cockroaches, which can move almost one foot per second - translating to a little over 3 mph or 50 body lengths per second. This would be equivalent to a human sprinter running the 100 yard dash in 1 second or approximately 200MPH! The fastest Caterpillar comes from the Mother-of-Pearl Moth (Pleurotya ruralisat); It has a defense reflex where it can roll away at enormous speeds of up to 15 inches per second!

How Far can Insects Jump?
Fleas jump 200 times their body length, proportionate to a human clearing a 70-story building. Grasshoppers jump 80 times their length, akin to a human jumping 1 1/2 football field lengths. Inch long Flea beetles can jump up to 2 feet, like a human jumping over 15 cars. And a 1/2 inch Click beetle can catapult itself about 1 foot.

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