Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson

There are more than 200 million insects for every human being living on Planet Earth today. As you sit reading this sentence, between one and 10 quintillion insects are shuffling and crawling and flapping around on the planet, outnumbering the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches. Like it or not, they have you surrounded, because Earth is the planet of the insects.

Long before human beings set foot on this planet, insects had already taken up agriculture and animal husbandry: termites grow fungus for food, while ants keep aphids as dairy cattle. Wasps were the first creatures to make paper from cellulose and caddisfly larvae were catching other creatures in net-like webs millions of years before we humans managed to weave our first fishing nets. Insects solved complicated problems of aerodynamics and navigation several million years ago, and learnt, if not how to tame fire, then at least how to tame light – even within their own bodies.

And just so you know: insects don’t necessarily only have eyes on their head. One species of swallowtail butterfly has eyes on its penis! These help the male to position himself correctly during mating.