Humans and mosquitos share an ancestor in deep time. Our kinship is revealed at the level of the genes. Certainly, we are enough alike chemically so that human blood protein is useful to the mosquito.
Articles with Insects
Anopheles funestus • Photo by James Gathany, Dr. Frank Collins, University of Notre Dame (Public Domain)
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
A farewell — and a recommendation
Several weeks ago, “The New York Times” asked in the headline of its Tuesday science section — “Does Science Matter?” — then spent 16 pages suggesting an answer: Indeed it does, more than ever.
Wooly aphid • Photo by Melissa McMasters (CC BY 2.0)
Including all for the long haul
“It is not easy to live in that continuous awareness of things which alone is true living,” the naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch wrote in “The Voice of the Desert.” Krutch was a middle-aged New York City drama critic and literature professor in the late 1940s when he re-read Thoreau’s Walden, became a born-again nature writer, and moved to the Arizona desert to live with cacti and tarantulas.
Photo by Simon Kadula on Unsplash
A bee’s life tells us about ourselves
Even as kids, 50 years ago, we heard about Karl von Frisch and the dancing bees.
Photo by Mauro Tandoi on Unsplash
Bee boy showed how nature explains itself
Gilbert White’s “The Natural History of Selborne” was published in the year of the French Revolution and not long after Britain lost her 13 colonies in America. You’ll find none of these earthshaking events in the book.
Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash
Flutter of monarchs inspires gushy prose
Getting here wasn’t easy: A six-hour drive from Mexico City over sometimes terrifying mountain roads, with an overnight stay along the way in Zitácuaro; a mile-long climb by foot along a rugged trail deep in volcanic dust to 10,500 feet, then a drop into a canyon forested with fir trees.
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
The ins and outs of how insects fly
Summertime, when the livin’ is buggy.
Leafcutter ants • Photo by Pjt56 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
No cartoon world for leafcutter ants
roots. Matchboxes for beds. Bottlecaps for tables. Thimbles for bath tubs. Postage stamps for carpets.
A tiger swallowtail • Photo by Tom Raymo
Beauty and the brain
It was one of those blessed days. In the morning I saw a tiger swallowtail butterfly.
Drosophila melanogaster • Photo by Sanjay Acharya (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Lord of the flies
I opened the garbage bin under the sink to toss out a grapefruit rind. Out puffed a soft cloud of tiny insects.