Fascinating Insects

May 27, 2010

Interview with Hugh Raffels, author of the book Insectopedia

_______________

Mike Carruthers:
You probably consider insects to be nothing more than a nuisance but they can actually be quite interesting – take house flies.

Hugh Raffels:
And if you see slow motion film for instance at the ways that flies can huver and the ways that they can arrange their flights. They’re extraordinarily sophisticated fliers.

Hugh Raffels, author of the book Insectopedia , says the reason flies are so hard to swat is because they have an amazing ability to sense even the tiniest movement.

But also I think they have a completely different sense of time and experience time very different from us. So that when we go to swat a fly, to a fly our arm is moving extremely slowly, so for them it’s the simple matter to get out of the way. So for insects in general I think it’s like they’re living in a completely parallel universe.

And listen to this; Hugh says back in the 1920’s researchers in Louisiana conducted a study.

When they discovered that over one square mile of countryside if you imagined an air column that rose from say 50 feet to about 14, 000 feet you would have 25 to 30 million insects in that square mile.

And crickets are fascinating in some parts of the world they’re used as pets.

And those people, people who’ve trained crickets and they know how to care for them and look after them and treat them if they get sick they develop really quite close relationships with them. And I’ve seen people give some verbal commands to crickets, they can talk to them and the crickets will respond.
 

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here