BUGS!

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23577, 13 August 1938, Page 21

BUGS!

By Will D. More There is contempt in the very word. You can call a man a bull, a bear, a monkey, even a dog—although it is hard to know sometimes why the dog deserves it—and you have not yet said the worst about him; but call him an insect and you fling the very dregs of contempt in his face. He is something loathesome, repellent, a crawling thing lower than the belly of a worm. As a matter of simple truth, insects are not in the least contemptible, by any standard of judgment you may name. In agriculture, manufactures, industry, social organisation, hygiene, genetics, they anticipated the thoughts of man hundreds of thousands of years before he began to think at all. Their cleverness we call instinct, rate it lower than reason, and stand dumbfounded at the wonder of it. They are super-intelligent, possess and use executive powers beyond our brainiest business executives, solve problems in chemistry and physics imposible even in our best equipped laboratories, have found the solution of complex social problems that drive modern statesmen to despair, and use instruments of perception more precise and sensitive than any science has yet created. The list is endless, the items amazing, their fascination infinite in its variety. The glow worm, for example, uses the kind of anaesthetic that modern surgeons can only dream about. Its patient—usually snail—is unaware the anaesthetic is being given, and the sleep it induces is so profound that nothing can ever disturb it. It is an old tale but true that ants keep cows and grow mushrooms, but not so well known that all the methods of air-conditioning used in modern coal mining, were known, to social bees before man had discovered that coal would make a fire. Francis Bacon, in the days when men used salt to preserve meat, is said to have caught his death of cold experimenting in the possibilities of chilled meat by means of snow, and Brydone was given a monument for showing the economic value of frozen mutton; but this was ages after the solitary wasps were keeping meat fresh for weeks by harmless chemical injections, and the hive bee was making honey that keeps sweet indefinitely. Wasps knew all about hydraulic mortars, and the making of fine pottery before man knew how to chip a flint. Moreover, the first paper-maker was neither an Egyptian nor a Chinaman, but a common wasp. A little over 800 years ago men discovered how to make paper from rags; more recently they improved upon the process and made it from wood-pulp But a wasp was making paper from wood-pulp before man learned how to write. And building a city of it, damp-proof, absolutely sanitary, with a population of anything from 30,000 to 60,000 inhabitants.

As an example, of an insect's executive powers, consider the termite—the white ant. A quarter of an inch long, shapeless as a sausage, stone blind, without' weapons, unable to fly—and according to the Bureau of Entomology of the United States Department of Agriculture, it costs property owners in the United States of America £10,000,000 annually! It it a national disaster rating little less than fire, flood and tornado, brought about by miraculous executive organisation and devotion to a common cause. A termitary is a community run with machine-like precision, by a superbrilliant executive brain, whose whereabouts science cannot discover. Nobody can say whether such a brain exists at all, but the annual bill for board and lodging is presented just the same. An insect that costs £10,000,000 a year is, to say the least, worthy of respect. A man called an insect could feel complimented, especially if he took any stock in strength and agility. The common flea—Pulex irritans—jumps 100 times its own height. If the next Olympic champion does as well in proportion to size he will make a high jump record of 50.0 feet. Suppose a navvy could shift earth equal with an ant, again in proportion to size, he would sling a hefty long-handled shovel carrying a load of not less than half a ton. If the same navvy entered into competition digging holes with the Golden Hunter wasp, or the red spider-killer wasp, to be even equal he would have to dig six shafts 20 feet deep and four feet square, taking less than two days for the job, using no tools but his teeth and finger nails. This sort of comparison may be exhausting, but not contemptible. These are but the beginning of wonders. "Feeler," the common name for the antenna of insects, is not without its significance. But one hesitates to explore it. The famous Liars' Club of Memphis has recorded no story equal to its incredibilities. Insects talk to one another, over great distances, by radio communication, using their antennae as transmitting and receiving apparatus. Fabre's famous experiments with the Great Peacock moth have proved it. He came to the definite conclusion there was no other explanation of the incredible mystery Forel says that antf do the same; experiments have proved it. Said Fabre: "Let science, instructed by the insect, give us a radio sensitive to odours, and this artificial nose will open a world of wonders." But here is a miracle to stagger the imagination. Radio music we,know: television we expect to know. Even then the insects will knock spots off us—they transmit perfumes and odours by wireless. The "feelers" themselves are amazing .things. They are the insect's smelling organs, the nerves of which are contained either in minute pits or projections, and the common grass bee —the cockchafer mother of the grass grub—has anything over 20.000 of them. A nose with 20.000 nostrils! Also, in some mysterious fashion, they are organs of vision. Blind an inseot with a mask of opaque varnish, and it will find its way home as easily as an aeroplane rides down a radio beam, cover its antennae with pitch and it is lost. It cannot find food, home nor recognise its best Mend Remarkable! The word isn't strong enough. A French investigator into blindness has recently demonstrated the fact that the human skin may be trained to see though normal sight fail, and has been met with the usual shout of incredulous scorn. Insects knew about it ages ago. Maeterlinck thinks that white ants •' more than the bee or any living creature on earth are heralds of our own destiny." Let us hope, for comfort's sake, he is mistaken But the fact remains that insects have solved complex social problems which civilisation cannot yet master. The population problem, for example. The hive bees have mastered the mystery of absolute sex control; The queen gives birth to sons or daughters at her own sweet will. She mates once only, but possesses a tiny interna] pouch in which the male life germs are stored. It leads to the oviduct, and she opens or closes it when she pleases. She alone decides if an egg shall be impreg-

nated to produce a female or not to produce a male. Green fly have almost dispensed with the male altogether. Under the strictest laboratory conditions, they produced 94 generations without need or birth of a single male. Up to the tenth generation they numbered 1 and 29 noughts. After that,, the investigators gave up counting. Huxley reckoned that 10,000 green fly weighted one grain avoirdupois, and, by the tenth generation, if allowed to produce unhindered, the weight of one married couple's family would equal that of one million billions of men, each weighing 20 stone. And this, if you please, is one man's family! What would Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin give for the secret?

Whilst our scientists and thinkers are fumbling with the theory of the influence of the ductless glands on character and social caste, the bees and ants have solved the problem. They create literally character and social caste by diet. The quality of food fed to larvae decides whether the adult shall swing a shovel or sit on a throne. Bee bread for the worker and royal jelly for the aristocrat is the rule. If a bee-master finds royal jelly in his hive, he can create queens as he wills, but the brain of Lord Rutherford couldn't analyse it and discover the recipe. But imagine a state of society where the emotions desired by government were produced by injections or by diet? It would have the advantage of saving the country the costs of general elections.

What of the graver social problem —the elimination of the unfit? Society's ominous and increasing burden of defectives and the feebleminded. Our nearest approach to a solution is the bitterly debated suggestion of sterilisation. ' Insects have solved it, millions of years ago, byeuthanasia. Defectives do not live beyond birth. The right to live depends upon the power to work: when that fails—in queen or worker —death follows a social necessity.

The next time an evilly disposed person calls you an insect, retaliate by thanking him for the compliment.