by Ralph Nader
The avowed purpose was to educate humans about the value and innocence of the insect world. Both the Monarch Butterfly and the Honeybee agreed with the Earthworm that the message to humans must be that insects—having such brief lives—are more interested in perpetuation than in their immediate survival. Humans can be told this, using the findings of their entomologists, who point to the sacrifice of ants for the colony, and the fact that the male insect’s immediate mission once reaching adulthood is to mate, as two examples.
With the signage phase of the parade complete, the insects themselves started coming onto the scene. There was neither rhyme nor reason for the order of appearance. The Monarch Butterfly, with its vast perspective of the insect world during its length migrations, foresaw the futility and delay of trying to negotiate positioning between the often wrangling insects.
First came the mayfly, who had no time to lose. With its two wings, long body, and a number of tails, the adult mayfly flies only for a few hours, living for a day or two before dying. Those human viewers who see themselves as insect aficionados or students quickly looked up these vital statistics, as they intended to do for all the parade participants.
Next came the hoverfly, the master flier, showing its unique ability to stay in one spot in midair and also fly backward. What a display for the viewers, who never have seen such versatility up close.
Then a surprise, the only insect so far discovered to wean its young passed by proudly with its attached babies.
The next part of the show demonstrated the ways in which insects defend themselves from attackers or predators. First came the click beetles, who from a mobile joint in their thorax can fling themselves high into the air, while making a loud cry during their flipping to confuse their enemies. Along came the yellow-and-black-striped cinnabar moth caterpillar eating ragwort, which is poisonous to other animals, another way of saying, if you eat me, you’ll be very sorry.
“Here comes the bumblebee,” cried some human children. No, it is a European bee beetle that mimics the bumblebee in the ways it feeds and in appearance as a defense. More overt in its defense is the bombardier beetle, which managed to squirt a volatile liquid from its abdomen, which turns to a gas that causes any adversary to experience blisters. Not to be outdone, along came other species of ants and worker termites, who turn off predators with their noxious secretions.
Then came the mandibulates: cockroaches, crickets, and earwigs, slicing and chewing their leaves, dry wood, and algae. With great fanfare and insect music came the “useful insects” with the greatest of public relations burdens. Insects as a whole promote recycling of decaying matter in equatorial forests by breaking down or decomposing vegetation and improving soil quality and fertility. Bees produce honey and wax from their hives, which have many uses. Streams of grasshoppers, stinkbugs, locusts, dragonfly nymphs, and midges strolled alluringly by to remind human viewers of their tastiness as food protein, which is appreciated in many places in the world. There followed the tiny hymenopteran parasitic wasp that humans use as biological control against crop-destroying insects. The TRIAD’s Honeybee made sure that the crucial pollinating insects were given front-and-center attention.
Mating always fascinates humans, and the damselflies, with their “copulatory wheel” forming a circular position when they mate, do not disappoint as they do their thing across the screen.
Even more astonishing to humans are insects where the female eats the male after mating. Such ingrates include the South American mantid that sometimes doesn’t even wait but eats its smaller male mate during mating. This cannibalism was actually performed on the screen, thanks to the foresight of the Earthworm. Two seventeen-year-old teenage lovers wrapped around each other on the sofa watched bulge-eyed. The girl looked at the boy and said, “Aren’t you lucky?”
Other viewers gasped as they watched the giant Brazilian wandering spider crawl by, a venomous hulk the size of a dinner plate and aggressive to humans too.
Ratings shot up during portrayals of both the insects’ mating and their usefulness to the overall natural environment.
Alternative Programming
The INSECT TRIAD was canny enough to present an animated program guide, listing the foreseeable order of the parade, so that viewers could temporarily change channels when insects they couldn’t stomach were passing in review. Moreover, for these viewers the Human Genius provided a special alternative, an adjunct website, where other animal programming was being projected.
The first entry on this website was a walk-through tour of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. Its super-motivated director, Kirk Johnson, selected specimens out of millions housed that would arouse viewers’ interest in the animal kingdom of their ancestors.
He chose first a pair of elephant-sized giant ground sloths, ones rendered extinct millennia ago. When the tree sloths, most of whom had tuned out from the Insect Parade, saw their gargantuan ancestors, they were filled with both pride and envy. Millions of contemporary viewing sloths were moved as nothing has moved them before. Two sloths from the jungles, holding back their emotions, asked Mr. Johnson all the obvious questions bursting forth from aroused sloths everywhere. “When did our large ancestors live? What caused them to go extinct? How did their genes get replaced by the genes that produced much smaller sloths? Did our large ancient relatives eat what we eat? How large were the families and how long did they live? Could they fend off their predators better than we are trying to do? How can we thank you enough for illuminating our distant past?”
Kirk Johnson was almost taken aback by the intensity of the sloths’ interest. After all, sloths are not known for their excitability. But he answered each question.
As to how they could thank him? That was easy. Just lead him to more sloth fossils anytime, anywhere.
Johnson is a fossil maniac, having written many books and articles on his fossil hunts around the planet. The Human Genius was pleased with such handiwork but was determined not to overdo such “offsets.”
Insects Keep On Truckin’
Back on the main channel, the most potentially human-disturbing segment had come up. March of the the ravaging insects. The Human Genius foresaw what was needed and provided explanatory information to accompany the parade of what many humans call the marauders.
Here comes the locust amid widespread booing around the world. As explained by the Human Genius, locusts can indeed swarm into and eat vast acreage of crops in areas of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. One gigantic swarm was as large as the state of California. They eat to live, as do humans, commenced the explanation. They feel no animosity toward humans or their domesticated animals, whose food supply is depleted. But when the periodic swarms come, birds multiply due to the abundance of food and humans turn these locusts into tasty morsels whose protein comes as a gift.
Next up are the flies, the omnipresent nuisances that can pick up and carry disease-bearing microbes from dung heap to dinner table. The house fly traipsed across the stage. It needed no explanation for humans, but there are eighty-five thousand different fly species and some are useful. Following the house fly came the vinegar fly, which humans use for research into animal genetics.
Yet again the mosquitoes were on the screen. They have been labeled by humans as the most lethal insects of them all. Many stung mammals would agree. There are various species of mosquitoes. Some, like the common European mosquito, are relatively harmless. Yes, when they bite, they suck blood, but they are food for bats and birds. Another mosquito followed, the inland floodwater mosquito that inhabits southern Canada and is found across the U.S. and down to Central and South American countries. This species can help spread disease.
Most human viewers have swatted mosquitoes but have never gotten a close look. A close-up peek offered something of a surprise, drawing some ahs and oohs. The human audience saw, in the words of one text, “attractive males having feathery antennae and with black-and-white body patterns. They show an arched, springy
body posture with long hind legs that seem to push the body up in the middle. The thorax is rather a gold brown with grey scales. The legs have pale ‘knees.’ The relatively small head faces down. Adult females feed on humans and animals, but the males feed on nectar.”
The third and last species was Anopheles gambiae, the dreaded malaria mosquito, found mostly in Africa below the Sahara. These insects carry the deadly malaria protozoan, Plasmodium falciparum, the lethal and elusively mutating parasite that takes almost a million human lives a year, mostly children and pregnant mothers.
The mood among human viewers turned sullen and fearful. The mosquito was eager to say that none of this was really its fault. Sure, it is simply the carrier, transferring the parasite in its saliva when feeding on human blood. It picks up this parasite as a larva in pools or as an adult female. The mosquito had pleaded with the viewing humans, saying that it gains nothing from this parasite, cannot get rid of it, and would welcome more research to render harmless in any way the parasite, even being more than willing to sacrifice its short life in the process. “If the parasite goes extinct,” said the mosquito, “the mosquitoes will thrive in the following generations, given their resilience over time.”
The scientists at the Walter Reed Army Hospital shook their heads, thinking that for years their work, while promising, still has not overcome this pesky parasite. Having made its case, the malaria mosquito departed thinking that humans will not separate it from the parasite when laying blame until the scientists can extinguish the parasite.
No sooner did the malaria mosquito leave than several species of spiders forced their way out of their line to get on the screen, upsetting the TRIAD and their programmers. But it was too late. The arachnids scampered onto the stage amid human viewers crying “creepy” and “eeee.”
While there was a certain lack of organization in the order of the march, the INSECT TRIAD had decided that they would never put two groups of insects that humans irrationally hated on in a row. They would keep them spaced between more loveable or at least not-disliked types, but the spiders were overturning their well-laid plans.
Interactive Bats
Even as the spiders were causing havoc in the parade, there was an exceptional program being broadcast on the alternative channel. The whole idea of it had come yesterday while the insects were planning their event.
The TRIAD’s Owl had been reflecting about the one-way nature of the TALKOUT. Humans could only watch and they were given no way to help. It was purely “educational TV.” The novelty of the event was beginning to wear off, along with the awestruck wonder of communicating animals. After all, humans have long been exposed to nature programs full of wildlife in various activities. Hundreds of millions have pets that they love. Humans, the Owl knew, liked to be asked for help. Especially the human children.
“So why not,” the Owl thought, “invite the children of the world to help save the bats of the world from their deadly fungus, their lost habitat and their awful image problem that makes so many humans turn away in fear and disgust?”
The Owl contacted the Human Genius who thought it was a great idea for many reasons, not the least of which was to keep the show throbbing and interesting. The Human Genius found a piece in the Washington Post that was directly on point. It addressed children, disabused them of their acquired bat myths—they are not blind, they don’t suck blood—and laid out a program to help bats because “bats are important and they’re in trouble.”
As the only flying mammal, bats control mosquitoes. A small brown bat can eat up to a thousand mosquitoes in just an hour. For variety, bats dine on moths and beetles, ones that can damage food crops. One species of bat—there are 1,200 species—in South America helps pollinate plants. The ability of bats to move at night is based on their making sounds that bounce off hard objects and let bats veer away. It is called echolocation.
Bat educator and rescuer Leslie Sturges says that children are entranced by bats. “They often think they are adorable,” she adds. Sturges speaks to them about bat language, which involves a series of buzzes, clicks, and trills, used to communicate with each other. “Bats have friends; they are super smart,” she says. Children are empathetic about bats, and become especially concerned when she describes the deadly white nose syndrome (the fungus disease) that has killed five million hibernating bats in the United States. Ms. Sturges has formed a bat club for kids so they can become a voice for bat protection.
The Owl devised an alternative bat parade on the alternative channel, which would be oriented directly at kids and would have an interactive component. As the various bats marched by, the Owl made sure all this information was communicated to the human children, so that many would join Ms. Sturges’s Club.
Spiders’ Time in the Sun
The insects were very upset by the boorishness of the arachnids, not only because they had grabbed the limelight before it was their turn, but because they were so different from the garden variety insect. Arachnids have a two-segmented body, four pairs of walking legs, and are without antennae or wings. To insects, the arachnids make up for these deficiencies with ample amounts of gall. The wiser insects realized, however, that spiders seemed to be getting fairly substantial ratings, so they told the insect world to quiet down and watch.
The arachnids decided to lead with their best story, that of the spider aranae, which produces silk that emerges from the tip of its abdomen. From this material comes their webs in which they trap their prey and paralyze them by a poison lodged in a pair of poison glands in their front jaws. The silk is amazingly strong and flexible. They paraded their silk but could not explain its astonishing qualities for humans. Then something unscheduled happened. A human commentator appeared, a first, who, shall we say, proceeded to fill in the blanks:
“My fellow humans, this spider fiber is stronger than steel. Yes, steel! Stronger than bone at the same weight and twice as elastic as nylon. Listen to this: ‘A spider web made of strands as thick as a pencil would be strong enough to stop a jumbo jet in flight,’ wrote professor of medicine Shigeyoshi Osaki at Nara Medical University in Japan, according to the Wall Street Journal. He ‘showed how a four millimeter-thick piece of string made up of 190,000 strands of spider dragline could support his weight.’ There are start-up companies trying to recreate spider silk (biomimicry).
“Real spider web has been gathered for centuries and ‘used as fishing line’ or to dress wounds for its antibacterial properties,’reported the Journal. ‘If these companies succeed in biomimicry, recombinant spider silk can be used in the making of tires, bumpers, electronic parts, artificial blood vessels, dissolvable sutures and artificial ligaments.’”
The commentator then thanked the spiders and urged them to take a bow for the great emerging future of spider silk biomimicy. On cue, the spiders performed a spider flourish and departed the stage. The human commentator said they were a credit to the thirty-five thousand species of spiders that collectively can bask in their momentary glory—one that will long be remembered.
Grand Finale
As the Insect Parade came to a close, the INSECT TRIAD—the Earthworm, the Monarch Butterfly, and the Honeybee—felt it was high time to make a larger point. They hitched onto the waves of appreciation that were generated by the parade to offer an enduring plea against what they considered the ultimate crime for their phylum: the heinous use of insecticide, what the commercial human exterminators call pesticide.
Unlike human genocide, the TRIAD delicately noted, insecticides can bring down the planet as a living organism. Other human races and ethnic groupings can carry on after a brutal genocide, but who carries on the functions of the insects in the ecosystem when they are no more?
The human audience knew it had been educated by the insects in ways they could not be by any entomologist or classroom instruction. The INSECT TRIAD had combined the personal touch and emotional intelligence with hard empirical information. The DVD of this hour will find robust circulation among humans
for many years, predicted the satisfied Human Genius.
Afterthoughts
The INSECT TRIAD had the taste to put together this parade without allowing a place to the truly disgusting order Siphonaptera (or fleas), whose entire existence is parasitic on hosts—mostly mammals—without any yet known redeeming value. Other insects called them blood-feeders with only their survival and reproduction at stake.
A standard text writes, “Fleas are highly specialized and unusual insects . . . Fleas are a nuisance to their hosts and can provoke allergies. They also act as vectors of bacteria, protozoans and viruses. Rat-fleas can carry the organisms that cause diseases, such as plague and murine typhus, which have killed large numbers of people.”
But what the INSECT TRIAD did not know, the Human Genius gently informed them, was that any living organism has DNA from which human scientists may someday discover new knowledge. Whereupon a still-skeptical INSECT TRIAD took off: the Honeybee returned to its hive, the Monarch Butterfly joined its flock on its way to Mexico, and the Earthworm partook of a long delayed meal four inches underground.
Watching this finale, the Human Genius inwardly mused how clever the INSECT TRIAD really was during their presentation. Like human animals, the INSECT TRIAD managed, for the most part, to keep the dark sides of the insect world off the screen. They brought on some of the frightful aspects, such as the malarial mosquito, just enough to appear fair-handed. Moreover, the INSECT TRIAD manifested heroic self-restraint.
For example, the Honeybee could have brought onto the screen the giant Japanese hornet that not only kills about seventy people a year in Japan but goes after honeybees as their favorite prey, big-time. The Japanese hornet can fly up to fifty miles a day searching for honeybee colonies or hives. When the scouting hornet finds one, it deposits a pheromone to attract other hornets for a mass attack. Each hornet can kill forty honeybees a minute. Together they take only a few hours to annihilate an entire hive, mostly by using their huge mandibles to decapitate their victims. The TRIAD Honeybee found it hard to hold back the opportunity to expose this killer before the whole world. But it did, for the larger good of the program.