Minibeasts are simply small animals: spiders, snails, slugs, beetles, centipedes, worms, earwigs, caterpillars – and thousands of other types of minibeast that exist all over the world. Officially, minibeasts are called invertebrates, which are animals without a backbone, and these are the most numerous type of animal in the world. In Britain alone there are over 25,000 species of known invertebrates.Unlike vertebrates (animals with a backbone), they do not have a skeleton inside.

This makes them soft and bendy, and because of this, some of them have hard shells to live in. Some, like insects and spiders, have a thin, strong outside covering called an exoskeleton – this means they have protection for their bodies. They also have legs, and often wings, which let them move more quickly and easily than other minibeasts.