Bugs vs. Us Humans

It's complicated.

My 10th Sonata is a sonata of insects.
Insects are born from the sun—
they are the sun’s kisses.
–Alexander Scriabin

Welcome to my slightly self-indulgent second issue of the month covering buggy ’ n’ bunny topics I find interesting. I’ll return to dispensing writing and editing advice in the next issue. I appreciate your feedback, now and throughout the year.

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Bugs have been around for such a long time that the numbers are beyond imagination, kind of like guessing how many stars are in the skies or how many people succumbed to the Black Death. Insects scurried on, in, and above the Earth 400 million years ago, going twice as far back as the earliest date the oldest dinosaurs plodded along.

We arrived a mere 200,000 years ago. That number sounds impressive—at least it does to me—but what it means is that bugs are 399 million 800 thousand years older than we are.

For about 199,850 of the 200,000 years we’ve been around, our relationship with them was straightforward. They were irritating and sometimes deadly and there was nothing we could do about them. So that’s what we did.

But in the late 1880s, everything changed. Why? The Panama Canal. During construction of that game-changing project, approximately 16,000 workers died from diseases like malaria, largely carried from the muddy muck by mosquitos and other insects. We fought back with various experimental attacks. And then, American know-how being what it is, we landed on the gold star: insecticides.

Game On. From insecticides in general, we zeroed in on DDT, and then DDT zeroed in on bugs.

From then on, “there’s nothing we can do” became “oh hell yes there is.” Our new mantra from the 1940s well into the late ’60s became Kill them. Kill them all. This was quite understandable: during this era, DDT saved perhaps tens of millions of lives that would have been lost to malaria, typhus, and other diseases. Another number that is almost beyond understanding. But you get the gist: a lot.

(All this was rich fodder for Hollywood. Big Bug movies ruled through the ’50s and ’60s. You never know where Art is going to come from.)

And then, Rachel Carson started telling the world what was happening with DDT and other environmentally destructive behaviors and products. That went well; see “Rachel Carson’s Critics Called Her a Witch.” But, demonic as she was painted for a long time, gradually, as Americans’ attention spans are wont to do, we moved on.

Next up: the burgeoning environmental movement that Carson is often credited with seeding. In the 1970s we started to see the bigger picture: ecosystems! Who’d a thought? Now, imagery and arguments became about how everything fits together, helps and hurts together—is, in a word, crucial. Poster animals abounded: bears, big cats, birds. But bugs? Not so much.

Until the honeybee. Honeybees! Furry and honey-drenched, these keystone species support, with the aid of other pollinators, the reproduction of 80 percent of the world’s flowering plants. They became the first bug to be adorable enough to put on posters, reflecting how awful it would be to lose not so much them as what they do.

This wider telescopic view brings us more or less to Now. Face-to-face with climate change—happening not maybe or sometime or soon, but now—we have at last caught up to the notion that bug diversity, along with pretty much every other thing on the planet breathing or photosynthesizing, is not only OK but, in fact, mandatory.

Insects maintain healthy soil, recycle nutrients, pollinate flowers and crops, and control pests.

As Catrin Einhorn says in a New York Times article, “It’s tough being an insect. They get swatted, stomped and sprayed without a thought. Their mere presence can provoke irrational panic. Even everyday language disparages them: ‘Stop bugging me,’ we say.”

But, she continues, “Bees, butterflies, and beetles pollinate plants, enrich soils, and provide a critical protein source for species up the food chain. The United States Forest Service puts it simply: ‘Without pollinators, the human race and all of earth’s terrestrial ecosystems would not survive.’ ”

Even mosquitos? Well, it’s a stretch, but yeah. When, back in the previous century, I edited the member magazine for a science museum, I wrote several stories about animals for the kids’ section, often featuring ugly or scary critters. They always included a “but here’s what’s good about them.” For the story about bats, that “good” quality was the fact that they eat a gazillion pounds of mosquitos every day.

But when my digital pen turned to mosquitoes? I had nuthin. I mean, I could always rely on the reverse: they provided food for bats, right? But that seems a little like cheating, right? What would stop a smart-aleck kid from suggesting that the message here was not that both animals were needed, but that neither were?

Even the expert I interviewed couldn’t come up with anything. Correction: he had one thought. I suppose, he opined, you could say that by spreading infectious diseases, mosquitos keep the human race in check. I was inclined to agree with him, but if I included that in the story, it would never make it past my editor.

Now, a quarter into this century, we’ve figured out that even mosquitos matter. We think of them as an annoyance at best, a carrier of serious and even deadly diseases at worst. But they play a key role in many ecosystems. Male mosquitoes eat nectar and, in the process, pollinate all manner of plants. These insects, as noted above, are also an important food source for many other animals, including not just bats but also birds, reptiles, amphibians, and even other insects.

I’m not a foodie, but I read headlines. Even at the top of that food chain—us—insects have a long history as dietary choices in various cultures. And gourmet chefs in the American land of hamburgers can now be found serving up cockroaches and ants and other insects with a flourish of garnish and, I’m guessing, a hefty bill. Prefer cooking to eating out? No problem; you can get ’em online and cook ’em up at home, too. They’re even being touted as alternatives for a planet that cannot much longer afford the environmentally disastrous costs of meat consumption, which include potential world famine in the not-too-distant future.

I’m a vegan, so my hat goes off to those brave souls, and for anyone who can come to appreciate, for example, a Mexian salsa made from ant butts. But we’ve all gotta draw the line somewhere. Me, I’ll stick to enjoying salads on my plate and honeybees flittering around my garden, while they’re still there to flit.

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Lagniappe: If you’re in the vicinity, check out the Bronx Zoo for a special Valentine’s Day event featuring that most romantic of all creatures: Cockroaches. Can’t make it live? No worries: check out the adorable merch.