Female insects use a wide variety of different strategies to lay their eggs. Larvae hatch from the eggs. A transformation trick during the pupal stage, metamorphosis, gives most insects enormous advantages over many other creatures: While they are pure feeding machines as larvae, as adult insects they are almost exclusively concerned with reproduction. Despite their variety of shapes, insects have a common blueprint: a protective outer shell, a body composed of three segments, six legs, and usually two pairs of wings. Insects were already conquering the skies 300 million years ago, long before the time of the dinosaurs.