Insects that make our skin crawl

Published Jan 13, 2012

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”Be very afraid,” it says on the back of this book. I was already. They didn’t have to warn me. There are an awful lot of insects in the world: ten quintillion of the little blighters, or two hundred million for every one of us.

If you arranged all living creatures on earth into a pyramid, almost all of it would be made up of insects, spiders and the like. All other animals, including us, would form only the smallest section in one corner.

And yet Amy Stewart, whose sequel this is to the equally compelling Wicked Plants, cannot bring herself to squash a “bug”.

She has too much respect for them to do that. She’s gone native. Her book is an insect-phobe’s worst nightmare.

The Asian giant hornet is found in Japan, and is about three inches long. Its sting, according to the world’s leading expert, felt like “a hot nail through my leg”. They feed their young with dead insects, and the larvae respond with a “kiss”, consisting of a few drops of clear liquid.

Japanese researchers gave this liquid to mice “and graduate students”, and discovered that it was the perfect performance-enhancing drug. It can’t be banned because it’s “natural”. The (Japanese) winner of the Olympic marathon in 2000 said she owed it all to “hornet juice”.

The Brazilian wandering spider is an aggressor with a fearsome bite, which causes “a flood of immediate and severe pain, which can be followed by difficulty breathing, paralysis, and even asphyxiation”. It can also cause priapism, a persistent erection. Might not be fatal, but could be very embarrassing. Brown marmorated stink bugs make life hell for residents of Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the autumn.

Open your kitchen cabinet, they’ll be sitting in the dishes. Find them in drawers or under the bed, and hear them scuttling across the attic in their hundreds.

When Christmas comes, the bugs climb the tree and “take their place among the ornaments”. They smell like rotten fruit, but they release their odour only when you disturb them, or step on them, or Hoover them up. And this smell functions as a signal to attract other stink bugs to the home.

Cockroaches don’t bite humans, but they do feed on “fingernails, eyelashes, skin, calluses of hands and feet, and food residue about the faces of sleeping humans”. The good news is that most of these insects live in countries that aren’t this one. Shut your doors and windows, batten down the hatches, and we’ll be fine. - Daily Mail

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