Showing titles in Nonfiction

Get up close to nature with naturalist and TV presenter Chris Packham CBE and encounter the amazing animal superheroes that will help us save the world.

Did you know that a woolly bear is a type of caterpillar? People have sometimes used these caterpillars to predict the weather by looking at their stripes! Learn about these interesting creatures and what their life is like before they make cocoons and morph into their final form—the yellow tiger moth!

When a young boy visits his friend, Mary, he finds out it’s honey harvest day! Even though Mary’s family lives in the big city of Chicago, they have honeybees in their backyard. Follow along to learn about beekeeping and lots of cool stuff about the honeybee!

Two ants have lost their queen’s pink sprinkle! Now they must go on an adventure to find their queen’s sugary snack. They need to ask all the other creatures that live around them if they have seen it! Will they ever be able to find the sprinkle?

Have you ever wondered how insects defend themselves from predators? Some, like the stick insect and katydid, use amazing disguises to help blend into their surroundings! Others, like wasps, hornets, and some caterpillars, use a painful venom to discourage attackers. If you were a bug, what sort of defense would you use?

Have you ever heard of a bug hotel? There are some insects that help plants by spreading pollen and improving the soil, but they don’t always show up in every garden. To help encourage them to move in, some gardeners build little houses for them!

When a young boy happens across a tarantula, it scares him at first! But then he and the tarantula have a conversation, and he learns about the differences between insects and spiders—like the spider’s unique body, which is comprised of a combined head/thorax, abdomen, and palps—as well as some interesting facts about other arachnids!

Yo and Jennifer are having a cookie picnic when some uninvited guests show up – ants! Yo and Jennifer learn more about their new ant friends, like what they eat and where they live.

Do you know how to tell if a creepy-crawly is an insect? Is a spider an insect? What about a millipede? Listen to learn how and put your skills to the test!

Garden spiders belong to a group called orb weavers, which spin wheel-shaped webs. Some webs are funnel-shaped and some are very sticky. In this essay about different kinds of spider webs, listeners will learn all about nature's masters of silk weaving.

Spiders are nothing to fear! Even though they are carnivores and hunt all sorts of bugs, many spiders cannot harm humans. Spiders can only eat their prey by using their venom to liquefy a bug's insides—in other words, they make bugshakes! Follow along to learn more about common spider mealtime habits.

Do you know how new flowers are made? It’s a process called pollination, which is what happens when pollen is moved from one flower to another! The flowers rely on animals like bees and hummingbirds to do this for them, and in return, they offer the animals delicious nectar to eat. What is your favorite pollen-moving animal?

Did you know that spiders are not insects? Insects have only six legs but spiders have eight. Unlike insects, spiders do not have antennae. Tarantulas may look terrifying, but they are relatively harmless to humans.

In the 1870s, grasshoppers known as Rocky Mountain locusts destroyed crops and farms across the Great Plains states, then were never seen again. Where did these bugs come from and where did they go? That's the great grasshopper mystery!

Fran is a fire ant with a very important job—she’s a nurse ant! When the nest’s queen lays eggs, it’s the nurse ants’ job to raise the eggs into larvae and pupae so they grow up to become healthy worker ants to help build and run the nest.

Why do spiders spin their webs? According to the ancient Greeks, it can be traced back to the myth of an arrogant young woman who angered the gods.

Quino butterflies depend on dwarf plantain plants to survive. Climate change and habitat destruction have made it difficult for these plants to grow well, but quino butterflies have been able to adapt quickly and survive.

If you accidentally sat on an anthill, and little black ants started to crawl all over you, would you stay there? Of course not!

When you look, always look twice, and maybe even listen. You're bound to see a thing or three that everyone else is missing.

Discover where Aranya finally finds a good place for her spider web!