Why I Like Bugs
Mr . Dragon
As anyone who gets to know me can attest , I like bugs more than the average person . ( I am using the word “ bug ” in our everyday , non-technical sense for just about any land-dwelling creepy-crawly . This includes insects ; arachnids like spiders , scorpions , and mites ; and even some crustaceans like the pill bug or roly-poly ). While I meet like-minded people at Falk more than in many other venues , I know a lot of you have the basic questions : “ You like that thing ? Why ? How ?!” It will be hard for me to answer these in a brief essay , but I will do my best to boil down my answer to three reasons : they fuel my imagination , they provide an easy-to-see window into evolutionary theory , and we all depend on them for our survival .
I think that with the right perspective you can find even the grossest , ugliest bug to be beautiful and inspiring . Many of us love exploring fantasy and science fiction worlds in books , movies and games . Maybe you love imagining strange creatures on alien worlds . But try as they might , our fantasy authors and illustrators can ’ t make up wholly new creatures — some aspects of their creations are always grounded in the living world of Earth ’ s creatures , which are more varied , surprising , and inventive than we typically realize . There are creatures walking , flying , and swimming unnoticed all around us that are just as strange and wonderful as anything you have ever seen in fiction . The next time you see a strange bug , I encourage you to observe it instead of backing away . Maybe get out a magnifying glass or a sketchpad . If you are feeling brave , look up scanning electron microscope photos of bugs and you can imagine what it would be like to live with these amazing animals towering over you , Honey I Shrunk the Kids-style . You might see what I mean about them inspiring aliens .
When I look at microscopic images of bugs , I am also reminded of the complexity of all life . We humans tend to have a self-centered perspective that puts us at the pinnacle of nature . We marvel at the complexity of our bodies : what a perfect-seeming pump our heart is , how fascinating that mineral stones in the tubes of our inner ear give us a sense of balance , how staggering it is that our oh-so-complex brains allow us to think and talk and write essays . Seeing bugs magnified is a reminder that they too are exquisitely adapted for the environments that they operate in . They too are made of trillions of cells working together , and they have organs , behaviors , and sometimes even social structures just as complex as ours . A bee can ’ t write a sonnet . But can you see ultraviolet light or tell your family how to find food by explaining its distance away from home and angle from the sun with a dance ? Didn ’ t think so .
Looking at many bugs is also a good way to notice a deep evolutionary feature shared amongst all bugs , worms , and creatures with backbones : the segmented body plan . Although scientists have understood the basics of evolution by natural selection for over 200 years , it was still a challenge for a long time to explain the mechanistic details of how body plans could change significantly from generation to generation . One of the key breakthroughs towards understanding this process was the discovery of a set of genes called Hox genes in the 1980s . In brief , Hox genes act like master switches , which turn other genes on and off during development . Scientists first figured out how the workings of Hox genes , which guide development of an organism segment by segment , in fruit flies . If we imagine the genes speaking , they might say something like , “ This segment is going to be the head – turn on the genes for eye and antennae development . These next three sections make the thorax , turn on the leg-growing genes here ,” and so on . One small mutation in the timing or operation of these genes can change how the body segment develops , which might help or hurt the animal in its particular environment . The
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