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By Root 284 0

Université de la Méditerranée in France, called "a living yet docile" victim? Finally, in 2010, through a series of meticulous manipulations of the cockroach nervous system, including a kind of wasp-mimicking injection at various sites along the collections of nerve cells in the head, the researchers demonstrated that the drive to walk in response to most stimuli is seated in a tiny cluster of cells called the subesophageal ganglia. By poisoning just this minuscule part of the nervous system, the wasp is able, in Gal and Libersat's words, "to 'hijack the cockroach's free will.'" Zimmer refers to the discovery as finding "the seat of the cockroach soul." I am not so sure I buy the idea that roaches have souls to be found, nor that free will is residing in all those cockroaches lucky enough to miss an encounter with a jewel wasp, but then I am not sure about either of those things in humans, either. But the finding illustrates one of the most enthralling aspects of insects: they make difficult-to-grasp concepts, for example, souls and free will, satisfyingly literal. If we can get to a roach's motivation to walk by throwing a monkey wrench into a couple of cells, can the ability to find motivations for human behaviors be far behind?

Maybe you are convinced that insects are important simply because they invade our kitchens and crops, but you don't think they have any inherent magic. If you are one of those that think insects are important but not breathtaking, pests without inspiring passion, I want to change your mind. It's not just that insects are useful, even essential, given their role in pollination—providing what are now trendily called ecosystem services —or the use of their genetic information to cure malaria. Those practical reasons can make you need something, but not love it; no one denies our reliance on, say, soap, or drywall, but who wants to hear about their intricacies? Insects, on the other hand, can help us see another way of life, like a gloriously overblown version of cultural exchange. Travel is said to be broadening because it makes us realize that our way of doing things is not the only one, that people in other cultures live differently and get by just fine. Insects do that, too, only better. They too make us see that our way of life is not the only one—and I don't mean that we could be eating dung instead of cheeseburgers. I mean that it is possible to be unselfish without a moral code, sophisticated without an education, and beautiful wearing a skeleton on the outside. Insects can shake you in ways you never expected, and even more new discoveries about their lives have been made possible just in the last few years by the tools of genomics. So what do insects have that people haven't noticed?

Insects Are Equal Opportunity

INSECTS are the great equalizers. There is not a corner of the globe where people—rich, poor, old, or young—have not had some encounter with insects, even if only to swat a mosquito or crush a cockroach. Because of that ubiquity, insects are the easiest portal to the animal kingdom, an inadvertent reminder that other creatures live here besides us, whether we want them to or not. We are all in the same buzzing, crawling boat.

But this is not to bemoan that we are all dragged down by the assault of six-legged life on our crops or our persons, a kind of vermin-ridden misery loves company. Insects also provide a much more uplifting egalitarianism. If you want to learn about the natural world but are too young or too poor or otherwise lack an opportunity to study the stars or put droplets of pond scum under a microscope, bugs are always there for you. I grew up in the middle of Los Angeles in a modest neighborhood without creeks or woods or much in the way of encouragement to do a project for the science fair. But early on I discovered that if I lifted the hexagonal concrete pavers in the yard, ants would rush to and fro carrying their plump white pupae, and that the tiny spiky monsters on the rosebush would metamorphose into ladybugs. I reared the fritillary butterflies that