When it comes to the stuff of which nightmares are commonly made, it’s difficult to find a more commonly employed foundation material than the creatures contained in the Phylum Arthropoda, particularly those included in the Classes Insecta and Arachnida; in common parlance – insects and spiders. Different from us in so many ways – number of appendages and location of the skeleton respective to the vital organs being only two of the most obvious – arthropods present the average person with a near-perfect conundrum: living, autonomously mobile creatures whose perceptions, habits, and motivations are all but a complete mystery. From this lack of understanding has sprung fear and a willingness to accept even outlandish explanations to fill the void. For this reason, the popular understanding of the natural histories of those species living in closest proximity to us has long been heavily burdened by incorrect information. Fortunately, May R. Berenbaum’s The Earwig’s Tail: A Modern Bestiary of Multi-Legged Legends greatly lightens the load of entomological ignorance under which so many of us unknowingly labor. Read the rest of this entry »

How does one go about writing an encyclopedia of insects? In terms of species, the sheer numbers of those thus far described by entomologists alone would fill several volumes if nothing more than their names were recorded. Then there is the question of for whom it should be written. For entomologists – most of whom specialize and thus any one of which might only be expected to read a small portion of it; or for the interested amateur, who despite even a profound enthusiasm, may quickly tire or become bewildered amid explanations of each taxonomic Order and Family? For Hugh Raffles, author of the recently published Insectopedia, the answer was to approach the problem from a dramatically unconventional perspective – establish its central theme as being the many times and places, historic as well as contemporary, commonly as well as little known, in which the lives of humans and insects intersect. Read the rest of this entry »

The search for the solution to what Sir John Herschel famously called the “mystery of mysteries” – how new species come to exist – has brought a myriad of remarkable creatures to the attention of science. From Deinonychus to Darwin’s Galapagos finches, every discovery has added another clue to the assembled body of knowledge that may someday yield the solution. Yet after reading Sean B. Carroll’s Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species, the reader is left with another tantalizing question to ponder in addition to Herschel’s mystery; that question being which are really the more remarkable – the creatures that have been discovered in the one-hundred-fifty year old quest for the mystery’s answer or the “creatures” (meant rhetorically and with the greatest possible respect, of course) who made the discoveries. Read the rest of this entry »