What Is the Strongest Insect in the World?

Curious Kids Every Day: A Daily Educational Podcast

This episode of Curious Kids Every Day explores the concept of relative strength in the insect world. Host Josh compares the lifting capabil

Key takeaways

• Relative strength is measured by comparing an organism's moving capacity to its own body weight.
• Some ants are capable of carrying up to 20 times their own body weight.

Main topics

• Relative strength
• Ants

Notable quotes

Relative strength just means comparing how much a thing is able to move with how much its own body weighs.

Conclusion

The episode provides an engaging educational takeaway on how scientifi

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) What is the strongest insect in the world? Hi, welcome to Curious Kids Everyday. I'm Josh. How are you doing today? It's so good to hear from you. Hey, have you ever seen an ant lifting a piece of food over its head? Like something huge? Well, not huge to us, but huge compared to the ant. Ants are so strong. Have you ever seen any other insects performing feats of incredible strength? Are ants the strongest insect in the world? Hmm. Or are there stronger ones? I was thinking about this today because I got a question from a curious kid named Owen. Owen was curious, what is the strongest insect in the world? Well, it's actually not the ant. There is a stronger insect. You want to learn about it today? Speaker 1 (1:15) Okay, well, first we need to decide what we mean by the word strongest, okay? Because if I were to ask you, who's stronger, you or an ant? Well, of course, you're stronger than an ant. You can pick up way more weight than an ant can. But see... An ant weighs almost nothing. So when researchers compare the strength of creatures that are completely different sizes, like you versus an ant, they talk about something that we call relative strength. Can you say relative strength? Speaker 1 (1:58) Relative strength just means comparing how much a thing is able to move with how much its own body weighs. So basically, how big you are and how much you can move. And when we measure strength that way, well... Ants are a lot stronger than humans. An ant can carry something that weighs many times more than its own body. Some ants can carry 20 times their body weight, which would be like if you could pick up a pony. Can you imagine picking up a pony? Imagine if a pony climbed up on your back and rode you around. That's kind of what it's like to be an ant. Speaker 1 (2:50) But believe it or not, an ant is not the strongest insect in the world. Not even close. Do you know what is the strongest insect? Well, it's a beetle. More specifically, a horned dung beetle called Anthopagus taurus. Can you say Anthopagus taurus? Researchers tested how hard these beetles could pull things, and the