LIVING FOSSILS AMONG YOUR FOOD

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33448, 1 February 1974, Page 14

LIVING FOSSILS AMONG YOUR FOOD

By

DAVID GUNSTON)

Chances are. you’ve some living fossils in your house. What’s more, they’ll most likely be right there in your kitchen cupboards, among your food. For these fossils are those largely harmless but generally detested creatures commonly — and aptly — known as silverfish. Under an inch long, with a huge three-fold tail, this odd insect has a tapering body covered with shiny silvery scales, and as it skims across flat surfaces at immense speed, it does rather resemble a miniature sardine. Its legs are not immediately visible, its gait is a lightning glide rather than a wriggle, its head is small and its eye prominent — so we think it more of a fish than an insect. In fact, the silverfish is a unique creature, belonging to the group of primeval insects. For eons ago, creatures exactly like it were the forefathers of all the vast and teemingly varied insect world we know (and suffer from) today. All the earliest insects were wingless, as silverfish still are. Not long ago. the fossilised remains of creatures almost identical to our kitchen silverfish of todav were found embedded in rocks in the Swiss Alps. They were nearly 200 million years old, and their existence in this form so long ago proved beyond all doubt the theory that silverfish, and their relatives, the bristletails, were indeed the forerunners of all the

bees and ants, locusts, fleas, butterflies and the rest that so outnumber the human race today. And whereas all these creatures developed wings, either permanently or at some time in their evolution, the friendly, if forbidding, silverfish never have, even to this day. As weli as those three long tails, the silverfish possesses very long sensitive feelers, and a large biting mouth set deep inside its head. These features explain its most likely presence in your kitchen, for the silverfish is by nature a food scavenger. It prefers floury and sugary things, but will eat most dry food crumbs. But don’t think the presence (whether realised or not, for these insects keep well out of sight as a rule) of two or three silverfish in your kitchen is a sign of neglectful housekeping. Their appetites, although voracious, are satisfied by the tiniest amount of stale food, and where you might sweep or wipe a ledge or rack clean to the human eye, the beady eye of the hungry silverfish is sure to find a' few more fragments. So in that sense they ar helpful rather than harmful creatures.

Lacking the usual three body sections, and the usual cycle of egg, grub and fly, the remarkable creatures earn their unobtrusive keep wherever they are found, and with their ancient history, they deserve some respect, too.

In any case, unlike most of their descendants, they are seldom present in sufficient numbers to be classified as pests.