SIC-What's Bugging Me

Science In The City

DEAR SCIENCE WORLD,
Why are bugs important? To me they're gross. What do you think?                                                                           

Thanks,
Grossed Needs Answers Today (GNAT)                                                                                       

GNAT, I want to answer your question with a story about me and bugs.

I saved a life today. It’s one of my fatherly duties (along with “teaches son to make bodily sounds with his arm pits”). I don’t know much about this life I saved. What it feels; how it views the world; what it thinks about; or even, where it lives. What I know is I saved a spider from being eaten by Suzy, one of my cats.

Even though I released this spider to my front lawn, it has scurried into my consciousness. It’s got me thinking about bugs. By bugs I mean (and please pardon the geek-speak) all forms of terrestrial arthropods — land animals with jointed legs and an exoskeleton , such as  insects, spiders, mites, millipedes, centipedes, isopods and their like. The more I think about it, the more bugs bug me. I’m not talking about the bugs that startle me, sting me, or that I think are pretty. I’m talking about the invisible, hidden teeming millions of bugs in my life that I never think about.

So where do unseen bugs creep into my life? Let’s start with my food. The grains, fruits and nuts in my morning cereal, the tomatoes in my salad, and the beans on my dinner plate were pollinated by bees, butterflies and bugs of other kinds. I have to nod my antennaeless noggin to these bugs and say, “Thank you”.

My life with bugs gets even more personal. My very skin is ‘Home, Sweet Home’ and a 24/7 diner to millions of bacteria, fungi and bugs. They chow down on flakes of my skin and suck back my skin oil. Hmmm…maybe I should claim these creatures as dependants. Better yet, I should charge them room and board!

Bugs also go inside me, deep inside. Part of me — maybe a bit of bone, a minuscule of muscle or a gram of guts—is made from the molecules of bugs. I am part bug, like Jeff Goldblum’s character in The Fly, but without the spiky hair, compound eyes or Hollywood fame.

Billions of bug molecules enter my private domain and become a part of me because I eat bug bits. Not intentionally…at least not since the Grade 3 when I ate a mealworm to score a prized hockey card. My breakfast, my lunch, my supper, even my snacks, all contain bits of eggs, wings, and fragments of exoskeleton. These bits are dead, sterilized, and in amounts tiny enough to be acceptable to government food agencies. Since I like to eat food that comes from plants (tomato sauce, raw and cooked veggies, potato chips, bread…) I cannot escape gobbling bug bits. Think I’m making this up? Check out the side bar for numbers from Health Canada.

GNAT, bugs are an important part of my life and, even though they may be gross to you, they’re an important part of your life too. The famous biologist and coiner of the term “biodiversity”, E.O. Wilson, believes that without insects, the rest of life on Earth would disappear within a few months. The more I think about that, the more bugs don’t bug me. We owe a lot to bugs — without them, we humans could not survive. A world without people…now that’s really gross!

ROB LUNDE, Resident Expert and Bug Rescuer