January
1997
Editorial: Bugging
Out
By Martin Rowe
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I have a T-shirt which lists the
number of known species. There are 6,000 similar species of reptiles,
28,000 similar species of lower chordates or fish, 9,000 of birds,
100,000 of mollusks and a measly 4,000 species of mammals (one
of which is us). The smaller the animals get the more there seem
to be of them: 65,000 species of smaller insect orders, 103,000
of hymenoptera (i.e. ants, bees, wasps), 112,000 of lepidoptera
(i.e. butterflies and moths).
But the winner by far is bugs. Although numbers vary, my T-shirt lists
some 290,000 different species of beetles. Given that human beings
constitute one species and that there are about five billion of us,
who knows how many individual beetles there are out there? Their sheer
volume and omnipresence is enough to make us all bug out.
This edition of Satya is dedicated to bugs, all those creepy-crawlies
who, as psychologist James Hillman notes,
insist upon invading our psyches and spaces with their plenitude and
monstrosity, who freak us out and live off us; who bug us. It would
be nice to think that the world of bugs is one area where human beings
are not making a difference; that bugs will survive us. Like parents,
they will wait out our childish rampage through this planet, and then
settle down to feast on our bodies. But, as the current chronic shortage
of honeybees attests, that may not be the case.
The number of honey bees is at a record low because of a parasitic
bug that is killing them off. Honey bees are the most efficient pollinators
the world has ever known, spreading diversity and fecundity wherever
they go. It is not too much to say that we depend upon their pollination
for all our food. In short, no honey bees means severe food shortages.
Searching around for causes, scientists are recognizing that the cloning
of one predominant strain of bee as with plants has left it more vulnerable
to mass disappearance when it is attacked than if there were a wider
genetic base. Resistance to pesticides, insecticides, and herbicides
is creating more resilient life-forms which may be antipathetic to
bees (and humans). In sum, by messing around with the least considered
components of life the bugs, the bees and the plants we are messing
around with the most (our own survival as a species).
Thats the message from the bugs. They really are this planets workers
the ones who keep everything turning over, the composition and decomposition
of matter. They literally make things matter. Thats why I like to think
that its not so much the case that bugs are our parasites (in our hair,
in our cupboards, in our face) as we are theirs. Their resistance to
our attempts to destroy them is not to be lamented; instead their insistence
on surviving is their attempt to teach us how to survive. Listen to
the bugs; as their name suggests, they convey secret knowledge.
