An insect is scientifically described as a member of the class Insecta. So how many different species of insects are there? There is currently no precise number of known species. However, scientists have verified that there are over 1,000,000 different species of insects. Interestingly, there are some experts that believe the number is likely much higher. They believe there could be around 30 million more insect species we still have yet to discover.
Insects make up about 80% of all species in the world. So what are the numbers for their entire population? According to ESA member Dr. E.O. Wilson from Harvard University, there are approximately 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 quintillion) insects living on our planet. This number makes the human population of over 7 billion look extremely small.