Sex on Six Legs_ Lessons on Life, Love, and Language From the Insect World - Marlene Zuk [1]
Of course, not everyone finds insects scary, The Book of Lists survey notwithstanding. Those books on insects find readers, the nature channels on TV often feature bugs, and in 2009 the London Zoo hosted a "Pestival," "celebrating insects in art, and the art of being an insect." It included art, lectures, discussions, and a celebration of all things entomological. It even featured a six-legged take on the recent death of pop star Michael Jackson: Japanese artist Noboru Tsubaki made a "Vegetable Wasp," described as "a kind of cocoon for Jackson to enable him to traverse between the world of the living and the dead." Whether this effort successfully put Jackson's spirit to rest or not, metamorphosis is a powerful, and not unwelcome, image for us noninsects to contemplate. When Isabella Rossellini made Green Porno, her series of short films on animal mating, she led off with insects: dragonfly, bee, mantis, housefly. They were compelling in a way that other animals are not.
So what is it that keeps us coming back to insects? Why do they inspire such strong emotions, and what can we learn about ourselves from watching their joint-legged lives? The newest discoveries in biology, about genomes and nerve cells and the evolutionary connections between them, are best revealed by insects. This book is my celebration of a world that is alien and familiar at the same time, an invitation to the latest news about insect lives. We are continuing to make extraordinary and important discoveries about insects, routinely even finding new species. I haven't seen Green Porno, but if the segment on dragonflies is up to date, it should include a shot of the male's jagged penis as it scoops out the sperm from a previous mate, replacing it with his own. Sperm competition, in which the sperm of multiple males battle inside a female's reproductive tract, was first discovered, and is best understood, in insects, and new aspects of it are being uncovered all the time.
Insects are even teaching us about mind control, and maybe even about consciousness itself. A tiny wasp called the emerald cockroach wasp can do what many renters cannot: direct the movements of a cockroach. The wasp does this not to rid a kitchen of scuttling invaders but to feed her brood. Many wasps provision their young by paralyzing other insects or spiders and carrying them back to the wasp's nest. The paralysis, as opposed to out and out killing of the prey, helps the prey stay fresh while the young wasp larva feasts on the flesh. Of course, paralyzed insects can't put themselves into the nest, so the wasp usually has to do all the heavy lifting, staggering under the weight of her groceries as she flies back to her young. Except, that is, in the case of the jewel wasp, so named for the glittery emerald sheen of her exoskeleton. The female wasp doesn't send the roach into an immobile stupor; instead, she makes it into a zombie via a judicious sting inside the roach's head, so that its nervous system, and legs, still function well enough to allow it to walk on its own. Then, as science writer Carl Zimmer describes, "The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it, like a dog on a leash, to its doom."
For years scientists were mystified about the precision of this sinister manipulation of the nervous system. How could a single injection of venom manage to produce what neuroscientists Ram Gal and Frederic Libersat, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and the