Studying Insects

The study of insects is called entomology. Entomology is a sub-section of biology and is one of the oldest sciences. Man has studied the habits of insects, normally with a view to getting rid them, since the first plague of locusts landed on primitive farmers’ crops tens of thousands of years ago. However, entomology was not really recognized and studied as a science until the Sixteenth Century.

Entomology has had numerous famous devotees but the most well-known was Charles Darwin. More recent entomologists are Karl von Frisch the Nobel Prize winner for medicine in 1973 and E. O. Wilson the two time Pulitzer prize winner.

Entomologists are also often accredited with helping solve murders by studying the insects that are discovered on and in the dead body. This is quite possible and not just a trick used in Hollywood films.

The first thing to understand is that not all creepy crawlies are insects. For example, spiders are not insects, but many entomologists are not so strict and have an interest in arachnids (spiders), worms, slugs and snails.

All insects pass through a number of stages of life, but there are two kinds of insect development ‘simple metamorphosis’ and ‘complete metamorphosis’.

The first sort includes most beetles and bugs like bed bugs. They are born as eggs and hatch into larvae (nymphs), which, if not perfect copies of their parents do look a lot like them

The second sort are also born as eggs, also hatch into larvae, but they look nothing like their parents – so dissimilar in fact that if you do not know what they are, you could not imagine. The larva then grows into a pupa when it appears to become dormant, this is not the case though, there is plenty going on and when it comes out from the pupal stage it is unrecognizable. Butterflies are like this.

If you want to study insects, you have to focus because there are at least 1.3 million varieties of insects that we have discovered so far and there are plenty more to name and classify.

You would be forgiven for believing that these unknown insects, worms, slugs and beetles et cetera are all in remotest Africa or in thick jungles, but last year a carnivorous slug was found in a backyard in the middle of Cardiff in the UK.

In order to study insects, you usually have to catch them without killing them. This means nets and traps. it is easy enough to buy a butterfly net (or fishing net) and you can create your own pitfall traps for ground beetles. You will also need a decent book to help you classify your find and a magnifying glass to be able to better see it.

One word of caution though: you might think that there are too many insects and that no one really cares about them, but this is not true. There are many insects in each country that are protected and you will be breaking the law by capturing them or hurting them, so the first thing to do is find out which ones you may study and which ones it is better to leave alone.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is currently involved with finding a home remededy for mosquito bites. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Getting Rid of Mosquito Bites.