The Top 5 Smallest Insects Alive

**Due to the fact that many of these insects are rather rare, we were unable to find non-copyrighted photographs of all of them. Apologies for the inconvenience.

5. Scarlet Dwarf Dragonfly

Scientific Name – Nannophya pymaea

Size – 12-17mm long (0.472in – 0.669in) and a wingspan of 15-20mm (0.591in – 0.787in)

Habitat – Subtropical areas of Asia and Australia

Dragonflies are known for being larger insects in general. In fact, the prehistoric ancestor of the scarlet dwarf, the Meganeura Dragonfly, had a wingspan of about 2 feet (609.6mm), making the tiny size of these insects rather surprising.

4. Midget Moths

Scientific Name – Elaphria fuscimacula

Size – 3mm wingspan (0.118in)

Habitat – Southeast United States – stretching from Texas through Florida

Also called pigmy moths, these tiny moths are members of the Nepticulidae family and feed on the leaves of plants.

3. Ground Mantis

Scientific Name – Bolbe pygmaea

Size – 10mm long (0.394in)

Habitat – Australia

Just like dragonflies, mantises tend to be larger insects, the largest of which measure about 6in long. They are predatory creatures, which makes the diets of the ground mantis vary differently from their cousins due to their size.

2. Microtityus Minimus Scorpion

Scientific Name – Microtityus minimus

Size – 10-12mm long (0.394in – 0.472in)

Habitat – Subcoastal desert of the Dominican Republic

The smallest species of scorpions belong in the genus Microtityus and average about 12mm in length.

 1. Fairyfly Wasps

Scientific Name – Dicopomorpha echmepterygis

Size – 0.127mm long (0.005in)

Habitat – As parasites, these insects stick with their hosts, bark louse. In particular, they spend a majority of their lives inside the eggs of bark louse where they live and feed. As bark louse lay their eggs within the bark of trees, this is where fairyfly wasps can be found.

Even as adults, these tiny parasitic wasps are smaller than a paramecium, a single celled creature. Due to their insanely miniscule size, it is very difficult, if not impossible to see them with the naked eye.

Citations

10 smallest insects of the world (2020) TopTenScience. Available at: https://toptenscience.com/smallest-insects-of-the-world/ (Accessed: September 9, 2021).

ELAPHRIA FUSCIMACULA (no date) North American Moth Photographers Group at the Mississippi Entomological Museum at Mississippi State University. Available at: http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=9675 (Accessed: September 9, 2021).

Fitzgerald, A. and Wason, E. (no date) Dicopomorpha echmepterygis, Animal Diversity Web. The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. Available at: https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Dicopomorpha_echmepterygis/ (Accessed: September 9, 2021).

Hizan, N. and Hijas, B. (no date) Nannophya pygmaea Rambur, 1842 (SCARLET Dwarf), Malaysia Biodiversity Information System (MyBIS). Available at: https://www.mybis.gov.my/art/219 (Accessed: September 9, 2021).

The Largest Complete Insect Wing Ever Found (2007) Harvard Magazine. Available at:

https://harvardmagazine.com/2007/11/dragonfly-html (Accessed: May 2020).

Praying mantis (2021) Pests.org. Available at: https://www.pests.org/praying-mantis/ (Accessed: September 9, 2021).

Rein, J. (2014) The world’s smallest scorpion, The Scorpion Files Newsblog. Available at: http://scorpion-files.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-worlds-smallest-scorpion.html (Accessed: September 9, 2021).

Rein, J. O. (no date) Frequently Asked Questions about Scorpions, The Scorpion files. Available at: https://www.ntnu.no/ub/scorpion-files/faq.php (Accessed: September 9, 2021).

Smallest insect (no date) Science Literacy and Outreach at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Available at: https://entomology.unl.edu/scilit/smallest-insect (Accessed: September 9, 2021).