Extraordinary Insects
The Fabulous, Indispensable Creatures Who Run Our World
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4.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
This enthusiastic, witty, and informative introduction to the world of insects and why we could not survive without them is “a joy” (The Times, London) and “charming...Highlighting them in all their buzzing, stinging, biting glory” (The New York Times Book Review).
Insects comprise roughly half of the animal kingdom. They live everywhere—deep inside caves, 18,000 feet high in the Himalayas, inside computers, in Yellowstone’s hot springs, and in the ears and nostrils of much larger creatures. There are insects that have ears on their knees, eyes on their penises, and tongues under their feet. Most of us think life would be better without bugs. In fact, life would be impossible without them.
Most of us know that we would not have honey without honeybees, but without the pinhead-sized chocolate midge, cocoa flowers would not pollinate. No cocoa, no chocolate. The ink that was used to write the Declaration of Independence was derived from galls on oak trees, which are induced by a small wasp. The fruit fly was essential to medical and biological research experiments that resulted in six Nobel prizes. Blowfly larva can clean difficult wounds; flour beetle larva can digest plastic; several species of insects have been essential to the development of antibiotics. Insects turn dead plants and animals into soil. They pollinate flowers, including crops that we depend on. They provide food for other animals, such as birds and bats. They control organisms that are harmful to humans. Life as we know it depends on these small creatures.
“Delivering a hail of facts with brio and precision” (Nature) Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson shows us that there is more variety among insects than we thought possible and the more you learn about insects, the more fascinating they become. Extraordinary Insects is “a very enthusiastic look at the flying, crawling, stinging bug universe world, and why we should cherish it” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).
**Note: This book was previously published under the title Buzz, Sting, Bite.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Conservation biologist Sverdrup-Thygeson exudes an infectious enthusiasm for all things entomological in this curiosity-provoking primer. She presents a series of short, mostly self-contained, accounts of insect behavior, often emphasizing their connection to the larger world, grouped into such chapters as "Six-Legged Sex: Dating, Mating and Parenting," "Eat or Be Eaten: Insects in the Food Chain," and "From Silk to Shellac: Industries of Insects." Moffatt's translation readily conveys Sverdrup-Thygeson's enjoyment of her subject, with playful and evocative descriptions and an amused tone the long, bundled-up sperm of the male Drosophila bifurca fruit fly, at full length "20 times as long as the creature itself," resembles "what happens when the kids make dinner and forget to put enough water into the spaghetti pan." Stressing the sheer number of different insect species, she observes that entomologists have named newly discovered ones after pop music stars (the Beyonc horsefly), and Harry Potter characters (the Ampulex dementor wasp). A short final chapter explicitly about conservation raises concerns while still maintaining a light touch. Sverdrup-Thygeson's unforced humor and ability to quickly highlight salient information makes this a perfect selection for science-loving teenage readers as well as adults.
