Published Nov 4, 2026 2:00 PM EST It’s true that there are more insects on Earth than any other animal. They make up roughly 80 percent of the planet’s animals and include about 900,000 known species. However, those jaw-dropping numbers can make it easy to undercount our six-legged friends. Take the state of California. Over 60,000 different species of insects reside in the Golden State, and scientists have only described about two-thirds of them.