🐝 Bugs and other animals without backbones

Most animals on Earth have no backbone at all. Insects have six legs and a hard outside instead of bones. Octopuses, jellyfish and lobsters have no backbone either, so they are here too, even though they are not bugs.

The biggest and the smallest here: the giant Pacific octopus and the leafcutter ant

🧒 our measuring child, 4 ft1.2 m🐙 Giant Pacific octopus, 7 ft2.1 m long🐜 Leafcutter ant, 0.3 in7 mm long🔍 Pip the pangolin zoomed in 100 times on the leafcutter ant

⚖️ Compare them

What makes an animal without a backbone?

No backbone: no bones inside at all.
Insects have six legs and a body in three parts.
Many have a hard outside, like a suit of armor, instead of bones.
Octopuses and jellyfish have soft bodies and no backbone either.

10 animals here

Record holders here

Fastest: the common green darner, 37 mph60 km/h1
Heaviest: the American lobster, 44 lb20 kg2
Lives longest: the American lobster, 100 years100 years2

Bugs and other animals without backbones for kids, A to Z

🦞 American lobster: A sea animal with two very different claws and a hard shell.
🦀 Blue crab: A crab with paddle-shaped back legs that make it a great swimmer.
🪲 Common eastern firefly: A beetle that flashes its own light to talk to other fireflies.
🦋 Common green darner: A green dragonfly that, like birds, may fly far south for winter.
🐙 Giant Pacific octopus: The biggest octopus: soft, clever, and able to change color in a blink.
🐝 Honey bee: A busy bee that makes honey and helps flowers make seeds.
🐜 Leafcutter ant: An ant that grows a fungus garden on leaves it carries home.
🦋 Monarch butterfly: An orange butterfly that flies all the way to Mexico for winter.
🪼 Moon jellyfish: A jellyfish with no brain, no heart and no bones at all.
🐞 Seven-spotted ladybug: A tiny red beetle that helps gardeners by eating plant-munching aphids.

National Park Service, Species Spotlight: Dragonflies, checked 30 October 2026.
NOAA Fisheries, checked 30 October 2026.