A Decade of Curious Creatures

These wondrous, peaceful insects have been the subject of art, philosophy and poetry across the world for thousands of years, from the Shang Dynasty to Homer. That’ll come as no surprise to anyone who has spent a hot summer or ten in climes where their powerful songs of fire have cascaded though landscapes and hearts.

Thaumetopoea pityocampa is a moth species that is highly destructive to pines and cedars from North Africa to Central Asia. Their numerous white nests high in the pines are a common sight as short winters transition to spring. They’re best known for their behaviour of descending from their nests in meticulously formed lines, but they’re also notorious for their severely irritating harpoon-like hairs – harmful to humans and deadly to pets. In 1916 the French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre famously described an experiment where he created a ring of these caterpillars that circled a flower pot for seven days. It later turned out that the conditions of the experiment gave them no other choice. Such is life.

Passer domesticus are often described as dull-coloured, stubby beaked and annoyingly noisy – the poor things! Nevertheless, house sparrows are among the most common birds in the world, having spread alongside Homo sapiens to almost every corner of Earth. They’ve been spotted near the tops of American skyscrapers and deep in Yorkshire mines. Unlike the song sparrow, Melospiza melodia, house sparrows are not known to mimic other species. But, in this world, everyone’s different.

Ixodes scapularis, over the course of its two to three-year life, goes through four life stages. At each stage it must drink a blood meal to transition to the next, though it can go many months between feeds. Ticks attach to their hosts through a behaviour known as ‘questing’. They perch themselves on the tips of tall grasses and patiently wait. Well known as vectors of serious illnesses, most notably Lyme disease, fear of these almost microscopic creatures keeps people the world over inside shops and houses on beautiful spring days.

Like most Mexican Palestinian British Americans, when I ponder the complex relationships between Mutillidae, Sphecius speciosus, and the Cicadoidea, I think about the crucial role of forgiveness in transcending cycles of injustice and hatred.

Though Vespula vugaris, the so-called common wasp, does not make honey (according to some), there are numerous species of wasps that do. That said, honey-making wasps tend to only produce in small amounts, insufficient for human cultivation. Brachygastra lecheguana, for example, found in Central and South America, produces very fine honey indeed. However, eat it at your peril when Datura species are blooming.

The nuptial flights of the common black ant, Lasius niger, occur in Europe during the summer months of July and August. After mating, the males soon die, and the queens discard their wings, dig out chambers and begin laying eggs. They spend the rest of their lives, among the longest of any insect, continually laying eggs for their colonies. German entomologist Hermann Appel kept one Lasius niger queen alive for almost 29 years.

Carparachne aureoflava is a huntsman spider found in the Namib Desert. Like most Sparassidae, they do not use silk to capture prey. However, they do use it for other purposes, as we’ll see. To escape predators, these spiders famously cartwheel down the sand dunes of their environment at speeds of up to a metre per second. This story explores the idea of a Carparachne aureoflava cartwheeling her merry way to lands where friendly cacti and succulents gently grow in place.

Most of the 5,000 and counting species of Scarabaeinae, the ‘true dung beetles’, feed exclusively on dung. They are born in a turd, and they live, work and die in faeces. They’re not the only ones.