(upbeat music) - Yeah, this is pretty fun.

I caught a cicada and two purple butterflies.

- When we're outside we never know what's gonna happen.

- Look at that one.

- [Narrator] Grasshoppers like this one are just one kind of insect.

Insects are diverse.

That means they come in many colors, shapes, and sizes, and do lots of different jobs.

They make honey and spin silk.

They clean up dead and rotten things.

They pollinate flowers, helping plants make the fruit and vegetables that we eat.

And they are food for other living creatures, even humans.

- I love insects.

I love collecting insects.

We're gonna go over to my house, which is just down there.

And you guys are gonna get to see my insect collection, which is awesome.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Catching insects on this episode of Nature WY.

- So today we'll see lots of butterflies.

We should see most of these.

We might be lucky and see a monarch.

We will probably see some moths.

We'll see, hopefully dragonflies and damselflies.

We've already seen these grasshoppers and locusts.

We'll definitely see some type of bee.

- Yes.

- May we see the shiny bees?

- The metallic bees?

We'll probably see them, yeah.

And then we'll also see beetles of some sort.

So we should see most of these things.

- [Narrator] Even though insects look so different from each other, they share a few things too.

- What is an insect?

What's an insect?

So I want everybody to think about that for a second.

Okay, think about it.

And you're gonna keep it in your head.

What is an insect?

All right.

- An insect is an animal that is small, has six legs, three on each side.

There is insects that are on the ground and then insects that are in the air, and ones that are in the air of course have wings.

- [Narrator] Xander is exactly right.

- So those are really great points to point out about an insect.

So they have three body parts, so put three fingers up.

They have a head, just like us.

They have some thing called the thorax, the middle part.

Yeah.

And then the abdomen is the back part.

With our head we also have something else.

- I think it's the antennas.

- Yeah, so they can feel, they can taste, they can sense their surrounding.

- Well, let's go catch some bugs.

- Are you ready?

Are you guys ready to catch bugs?

- [Narrator] Fact, all true bugs are insects, but not all insects are true bugs.

- We have a couple of different ways we can collect.

If I knew what it was and I were comfortable, I could scoop it with my hands and look at it.

And you guys just did that with all kinds of insects, which is amazing.

If I were at home, I have these little plastic containers.

Okay, I could put my plastic container down, scoop it up like this, and then take a look at it.

This is just a fish tank net.

And I have used this net to collect things and I just sweep or flip it over on the grass like this, if I wanna collect something.

So with this class, we have these amazing nets.

They make it very easy to catch things that are flying.

So if I wanna catch something, then I can sweep it through the air, and then I turn it around and sweep back and forth like this, until I'm sure that the insect is in the back of my net.

And then I fold my net over like this.

So then I can grab the base of the net and whatever I have is in here.

One thing that you don't wanna do is, let's say you're collecting something, you're swinging your net.

You've got something in the bottom of your net, you flip it over, and then you do this.

What's in there?

And it flies right up into your face.

You don't wanna look into the net to see what you've caught.

So you're gonna flip it over.

You can put it on the ground and then look through the bag to figure out what you have.

- Dedrick you've did an awesome job getting this bumblebee.

Look at that.

- If it's something that flies, I'm gonna lift my net up like this until it flies up.

And then I'll grab the net and keep it trapped in the end.

We will have jars like this.

We're gonna put the net on top of the jar, and then you slowly work the net down until whatever it is is inside the jar.

And then this is the tricky part, and this is sometimes where things escape.

You have to take the lid and slide it under and trap your insect in the jar.

- There you go.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

There you go.

That is a big bumblebee.

- Yeah.

- If you catch a bee and you're looking at it, could it sting you through the net or no?

- Whenever I collect bees, I put my net down and I hold the back part and keep the bee up in this area just to keep it away from my hand, even though I've never had that experience of getting stung through the net.

But just to avoid it.

If I see something on the ground that I really wanna catch with my net, I'm gonna sneak up on it.

I'm gonna try to keep my movement really low.

And then I'm gonna go swoop.

If it's not something that flies, I can grab my jar or my container, and I can lift it up and catch it in a smaller container, like that.

- I caught one.

Yes.

- Very cool.

- That was awesome.

- It was awesome.

- [Narrator] Insects are all around us.

With your careful eyes and slow approach, look on flowers and leaves, under rocks and logs, in the air or on the ground.

Find an ant nest, and sit and watch, or find some containers or a bug net and try your hand at catching insects.

Chances are you'll make your own amazing discoveries as you explore yards, city parks, or wild Wyoming.

For instructions on how to collect insects and tips to identify what you found, visit wyomingpbs.org/naturewy.

From Science Kids and all of us at WyomingPBS, we invite you outside to safely discover insects living near you.

Thanks for watching.