Recently, on the island of Great Exuma in the Bahamas, I came upon a small abandoned house in the woods not far from where I was staying. A tangle of sea grape made the place almost inaccessible — like Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
Articles with Insects
Abandoned Bahamian house • Photo by Trish Hartmann (CC BY 2.0)
A mosquito of the genus Anopheles • Jim Gathany/CDC (Public Domain)
The bite that binds us
Here’s something to think about while you’re slapping mosquitoes this summer. We have more in common with these creatures than you might think.
Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) • Photo by Melissa McMasters (CC BY 2.0)
From the beetles’ point of view
A famous story in the history of science has the classical scholar Benjamin Jowett ask the biologist J. B. S. Haldane what he had learned about God from his scientific studies.
Photo by Prabir Kashyap on Unsplash
Dining on energy at the ants’ table
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work,” writes the Pulitzer prize-winning poet Mary Oliver.
Photo by Prince Patel on Unsplash
Co-existence ends with corn flakes
Scientists kill many animals in the course of medical and biological research, and most of us are content that they do so. We are also content that it’s not ourselves that do the killing.
A wooly bear caterpillar • Photo by Amy (CC BY 2.0)
A furry gram of divinity, curled up in your hand
Woolly bears are on the march. Double time. Making tracks. Trucking.
The Goggle Eye, or Cercyonis pegala • Photo by D. Gordon E. Robertson (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Playing the name game by other rules
Tradition has it that Adam was allowed by the Creator to name all the creatures of the Earth.
Photo by Deva Darshan on Unsplash
The Energizer bunnies of evolution
Anyone who has watched a dragonfly scout a summer pond has seen one of the wonders of evolution.
The dung beetle at work • Photo by Andi Gentsch (CC BY-SA 2.0)
In praise of nature’s small sweeper-uppers
A new television commercial contrasts the fun of drinking Pepsi with the boredom of attending college classes. In the classroom sequence, a tweedy professor drones on about “dung beetles.”
A red admiral • Photo by Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash
Watching the beautiful flutter by
On vacation recently, I was walking along a bog road in the hills of western Ireland. It was 8:30 a.m., the grass wet with dew, the sun burning off the last morning mists. I was accompanied by a dozen red admiral butterflies, fluttering from grass tuft to grass tuft a few yards ahead, pausing now and then to spread their showy black, white, and flame-orange wings, soaking up sunlight, drying out, adjusting their thermostats.