INTO THE UNKNOWN

An expedition to Brunei as a student sparked Benedict Allen’s lifetime curiosity in all creatures great and small

There is much to be admired about the woodlouse, I’ve heard it said. Sadly, I know little more for certain than that those in the garden are smallish, generally greyish, and have seven pairs of legs. Also, they are universally harmless – you might need to check that – they are a crustacean and they are found between crumbling bricks, in decaying external woodwork and, for some reason, lurking in that washed-up detritus you get at the seaside. Basically, they go about their brief existence scuttling and hiding, blissfully indifferent to our lives of joy and anguish.

Actually, I might have been able to come up with a few rather more incisive facts had I paid closer attention to my tutor at university, a Dr Mark Hassall. He was something of an expert on the endearing little isopods and indeed had devoted a fair portion of his life to them. “How strange,” I used to think to myself, “when instead he could be studying a creature of more – how might I put this? – charisma.”

But what did I know? As a student, all I wanted to be was an explorer – and to that end signed up for an expedition to Brunei. Most participants would be serious entomologists, but as a mere undergraduate, my own contribution limited to the identification of any pitcher plants – specifically, those of the genus Nepenthes.

Then, someone at the Natural History Museum asked if I might also make myself useful out there collecting fig wasps. “What are fig wasps?” I asked. He said I wasn’t to worry. “Just scoop anything vaguely wasp-like into the pots provided.” He’d sort them out.

Off I went to the steaming heart of Borneo. By helicopter our little expedition traversed the sweeping forest carpets of the untrammelled Ulu Temburong, and finally we were dropped on the gloriously inaccessible ridge that forms the border between Sarawak and Brunei. The moth collectors set up their light traps, I stalked the tangled vegetation, wondering about this marvellous, unstudied paradise – also, the whereabouts of any sun bears – as I picked off leeches and peered around for pitcher plants.

It was only on the final evening, as I looked out through the mists, listening to the wistful calls of the gibbons, that I remembered the boffin back in South Kensington awaiting his specimens. Quickly, I shoved a few wasps into one of his little pots. Back in the UK, I popped them in the post.

And that was the end of that, so I thought. Except, a letter came back telling me in breathless tones that I’d found seven – “or maybe nine!” – specimens totally new to science. Which was really great news, of course. But also utterly sickening. In just half an hour I’d retrieved quite a few creatures that were totally unknown, each with a unique unknown relationship with an unknown fig tree. I could have done so much better.

Well, education, so they say, is wasted on the young. Forty years have gone by since that excursion, and I wonder how many fig wasps we have lost since. The kingdom of Brunei has been exemplary in its preservation of rainforest but not so Malaysia, next door. Much of the treescape that I once looked out on has been clear-felled for oil palm.

It’s as well that pioneers such as Mark Hassall continue their efforts to understand the natural world regardless. And now we hear of ever more ambitious exploration projects by the likes of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. Who knows, we might all afford a trip into space one day. Indeed, we might have to – the Moon and nearer planets provide, so Elon Musk believes, the best chance of saving humanity.

But still I can’t help thinking of what remains undone close at hand. I refer you again to the woodlouse. There are, I now learn, 5,000 species – some say 7,000. They have been discovered in subterranean lakes, in deserts, and at 16,000ft. Far from being insignificant, they can teach us how they survive across almost every habitat.

Put another way, these expensive space flights are a dangerous distraction. If even the specialists aren’t done with studying a creature as familiar to us as the woodlouse, they sure as hell don’t know everything about the fig wasps of Borneo or the mind-boggling 95 per cent of living things that we haven’t yet named.

There are wonders enough to explore here on planet Earth, in my view; some of these wonders lodge under a rock in your back garden.

There are wonders enough here on planet Earth; some under a rock in your garden

Sting in the tail: the fig wasps ‘shoved into a pot’ by Benedict turned out to be specimens new to science