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So people are more afraid of insects
than they are of dying.

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(Laughter)

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At least, according to a 1973 book 
of lists survey which preceded all those

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online best, worst, funniest lists
that you see today.

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Only heights and public speaking exceeded
the six-legged as sources of fear.

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And I suspect if you had put spiders 
in there, the combinations of insects

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and spiders would have just
topped the chart.

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Now, I am not one of those people.

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I really love insects.
I think they're interesting and beautiful,

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and sometimes even cute.

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(Laughter)

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And I'm not alone.


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For centuries, some of the greatest minds 
in science from Charles Darwin to E.O. Wilson

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have drawn inspiration from studying some
of the smallest minds on earth.

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Well, why is that?

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What is that keeps us coming
back to insects?

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Some of it of course, is just the sheer
magnitude of almost everything about them.

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They're more numerous than 
any other kind of animal.

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We don't even know how many species
of insects there are because new ones

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are being discovered all the time.

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There are at least a million,
maybe as many as 10 million.

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This means that you could have an insect
of the month calendar

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and not have to reuse a species 
for over 80,000 years.

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(Laughter)

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Take that pandas and kittens!

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(Laughter)

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More seriously, insects are essential.
We need them.

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It's been estimated that 1 out of every 3
bites of food is made possible

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by a pollinator.

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Scientist use insects to make fundamental
discoveries about everything

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from the structure of our nervous systems,
to how our genes and DNA work.

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But what I love most about insects
is what they can tell us about

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our own behavior.

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Insects seem like they do 
everything that people do.

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They meet, they mate, they break up.

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And they do so with what looks 
like love or animosity.

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But what drives their behaviors is really
different than what drives our own,

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and that difference can be
really illuminating.

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There's nowhere where that's more true
than when it comes to one of our most

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consuming interests --
sex.

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Now, I will maintain and I think I can
defend what may seem like

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a surprising statement.

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I think sex in insects is more 
interesting than sex in people.

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(Laughter)

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And the wild variety that we see makes us
challenge some of our own assumptios

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about what it means to be male and female.

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Of course, to start with, a lot of insects
don't need to have sex at all to reproduce.

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Female aphids can make little, tiny clones
of themselves without ever mating.

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Virgin birth, right there.
On your rose bushes.

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(Laughter)

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When they do have sex, even their sperm
is more interesting than human sperm.

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There some kinds of fruit flies whose
sperm is longer than the male's own body.

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And that's important because the males 
use their sperm to compete.

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Now, male insects do compete with weapons,
like the horns on these beetles.

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But they also compete after 
mating with their sperm.

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Dragonflies and damselflies have penises
that look kind of like Swiss Army knives