Bugs
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- Category: Blog Friday - Steve
I have always tried to instil in my children a healthy interest in bugs, and there is possibly no better place to stimulate this interest than where we currently are, the hills of northern Thailand. There are bugs everywhere! The diversity and sheer volume of bugs reinforces the point that this is their planet, they just happen to let us live on it (actually this is the bacteria’s planet and if they ever “decided” to get rid of us they could do it very easily).
We have seen huge caterpillars, with equally vast butterflies and moths. The beetles have been wonderfully diverse, weird and wonderful, odd horns, bright colours. The crickets make a sound noisier than a car alarm. The real action stars are the ants, busy, busy, busy. We saw leaf cutter ants building nests, we seen beefy green ants ripping apart unfortunate moths and endless tiny black ants consistently marching somewhere. Fireflies light up the night skies.
Ned has always been the most interested and happily spots and prods insects of every sort. Eve is interested, but it is not a passion, while Dickon jumps a foot high if taken by surprise by something too fluttery. Ned has also had a lifetime ambition to eat bugs, which northern Thailand has delivered on, with a range of crickets and bee larva being happily munched on.
Personally I think bugs are a wonderful introduction to nature and that many of them have a beauty it would be hard to find elsewhere. Evolution has resulted in some wonderful adpations,beetles disguised as wasps, wasps disguised as beetles and so on. The larva that eats other insects alive from the inside is a favourite of small boys.
If only we could get to like the mosquito. Knowing it is only the girls that bite, to get blood to feed their babies does not make the consistent battle against stings any easier. It is one bug I’d be happy to live without.
