Arthropods in film Arthropods in film Arthropods, mainly insects and arachnids, are used in film either to create fear and disgust in horror and thriller movies, or they are anthropomorphized and used as sympathetic characters in animated children's movies. There are over 1,000,000 species of arthropods, including such familiar animals as ants, spiders, shrimps, crabs and butterflies. Early 20th century films had difficulty featuring small insects due to technical difficulties in film-stock exposure and the quality of lenses available. Horror movies involving arthropods include the pioneering 1954 "Them!", featuring giant ants mutated by radiation, and the 1957 "The Deadly Mantis". Films based on
Threatened arthropods of endangerment beyond the amount of land consumed by the fragmenting agent. As an example, consider the construction of a highway, whose width is an effective barrier to arthropod migration. Many arthropods never migrate more than about 200 feet from their place of birth, so a freeway or dual carriageway effectively fragments many arthropod colonies such that they cannot interact. Studies have shown the greater vulnerability to extinction where habitats are fragmented. The following is a very small fraction of the potentially hundreds of thousands of endangered arthropods, limited to species which have been formally recognized as to their special