Open Sesame | The world of insects & arachnids

An excerpt from ‘The Harmony of Bees and Other Charms of Creepy Crawlies’ by Ranjit Lal

They’ve bitten us, stung us, devoured our food, infected us, disgusted us and given us the heebie-jeebies and sleepless nights as they wail about diseases in our ear. We swat them, spray them, and go to war on them with planes and drones. But attacks on them only make them immune all too soon, and they come back at us, better armed and more belligerent.

At the same time, they’ve dazzled us, mystified us, enthralled us, astounded us and shown us quite clearly that they’re in charge of running and maintaining Planet Earth.

Who are they? They are creepy crawlies all: insects, spiders, snails, worms–crawlers, jumpers, fliers, wrigglers, singers, builders, and runners. They’re bizarre and beautiful, and we encounter them willy-nilly every single day. Like it or not, indoors or outdoors, they are our neighbours, house-guests, squatters, and invaders, availing of our hospitality and often making us pay for it, whether we want to or not. Some, like mosquitoes, make deadly enemies indeed, killing us in our millions through diseases like malaria and dengue, while at the same time guarding precious tropical rainforests from our chainsaws. Mostly, however, creepy crawlies leave us alone. In turn, we rob them of the fruits of their toil and take advantage of their love lives to grow our crops and use them to turn waste into rich, fruity soil.

They have amazing lifestyles and life-cycles and we still don’t know how many million species there are. There are estimated to be 20 to 30 million species of insects alone, comprising 80 to 85 per cent of all living species. Some change from gluttons to skimpy sippers of nectar, some are equipped with 30,000 lenses in their eyes (all the better to see you with!), some emerge from underwater like dragons of the deep, some wear camouflage fatigues that commandos would envy. Some live and love in dung, while others eat their children and husbands, some wear the most glamorous outfits imaginable, some can jump over the equivalent of skyscrapers, some leave Hogan the Hulk looking like a wimp, and some may be both boys and girls at the same time!

We’re going to meet them in this book: ants, cockroaches, butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, termites, shield bugs, earthworms, bees, wasps, dung-beetles, flies, crickets, grasshoppers, spiders, scorpions, fireflies, mosquitoes, slugs and snails et al. After all, it’s good to get to know the neighbours!

It’s believed insects evolved somewhere between 300 and 350 million years ago and they have some remarkable qualities. They wear their hard skeletons (made of a substance called chitin), like a knight’s armour outside their bodies. This makes them tough, waterproof and provides excellent protection when dropped from great heights (without the deafening clanging that would occur if you dropped a knight from a similar height!). They were the first to fly, using either two wings, or four. An early dragonfly had a wingspan of over two and a half feet! And as everyone knows, they have three main body parts—head, thorax and abdomen—and six legs. Spiders belong to the sinister arachnid clan (along with such lovelies as ticks and scorpions). They have two body segments and eight legs, while centipedes and millipedes have several, the last perhaps 300 pairs of legs. (Wouldn’t a shoe salesman faint with ecstasy when a millipede walks into his shop and says, ‘I need new shoes, I’ve outgrown these!’)

While I will still whack a mosquito wailing dengue in my ear and will launch an all-out attack on a centipede in the shower with a toilet brush, I’ve grown tolerant of most creepy crawlies. 

Excerpted from ‘The Harmony of Bees and Other Charms of Creepy Crawlies by Ranjit Lal. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2023.