Make insects feel at home
Want to help the Earth? Think small
Imagine a world without insects. No creepy-crawlies. No cooties. Nothing to swat at barbecues, smoosh at picnics or scrape off windshields. A pest-free existence! Ah, the sweet life sans the fly swatter. Sounds terrific, right?
Wrong.
If insects disappeared, humans would be doomed.
The food webs that support amphibians, reptiles, birds and us mammals would collapse. Most flowering plants would go extinct, which is a problem if you enjoy eating. While we starved, piles of detritus would build up like heaps of rotting trash. Our planet would turn dystopian without bees, caterpillars, ants, beetles, butterflies, moths, flies and all the rest.
That's because insects are the farmers, garbage collectors and, ironically, the exterminators of the natural world. As the esteemed biologist E.O. Wilson put it, they are “the little things that run the world.”
Insects pollinate the flowers that become the food we eat and that keep our surroundings colorful and compelling. When other living things die, insects are part of the cleanup crew, the decomposers of organic matter that keeps soil
healthy.
But what about problem insects like aphids and mosquitoes? Turns out less than 1% of insects are harmful. And the other 99% can help keep the bad guys in check. For instance, one dragonfly can eat hundreds of mosquitoes in a
day, ladybugs gorge on aphids and lacewings snack on mites.
Insects are also food for larger critters and key indicators of healthy streams and soils. Biologists call all their important functions “ecosystem services.” That translates to $57 billion worth of services for you and me — for global biodiversity, food security and human livelihood.
Insects also possess some supernatural talents. Ants can lift and carry 50 times their weight. Many beetles have built-in antifreeze pro