Nature's Microworlds

Episode 1

Insects Specials - Them and Us

Steven examines the relationships between people and often creepy arthropod bugs (insects, spiders and scorpions...), more primitive then vertebrates but some 80% of animal wildlife, usually just seen as creepy. Many are problematic, verminous or voracious like locusts, whose swarms can devastate whole regions, but often kept under control best by others, like spiders or Kenyan ants. Some spread diseases, like malaria mosquitoes. Many are edible, even insects, sometimes crucial for poor people, some even culinary delicatessen like various crustaceans. Bees and butterflies are indispensable pollinators. In China the silk worm and its produce became the key commodity for commercial development and cultural cross-fertilization along the Silk Road to India, Turkestans, Persia, Arabia and Europe. Furthermore, some of their efficient anatomy and constructions, like spider webs, keep inspiring designers and engineers, colony species' semi-chaotic social structure like ant hills and bee hives inspire human organizations.