WEBVTT

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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,

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the combinations of insects 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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And I'm not alone.


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For centuries, some of the greatest minds 
in science from Charles Darwin

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to E.O. Wilson have drawn inspiration 
from studying some of the smallest

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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)

NOTE Paragraph

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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

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is what they can tell us
about 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 fight, 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


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than when it comes 
to one of our most

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consuming interests --
sex.

NOTE Paragraph

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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 assumptions

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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


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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 are 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

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with all of the attachments pulled out.

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(Laughter)

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They use these formidable devices like
like scoops, to remove the sperm

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from previous males that 
the female has mated with.

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(Laughter)

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So, what can we learn from this?

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(Laughter)

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Alright, it is not a lesson in the sense
of us imitating them or of them setting

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an example for us to follow.

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Which given this, is probably just as well.

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And also did I mention sexual cannibalism
is rampant among insects?

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So, no, that's not the point.

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But what I think insects do,

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is break a lot of the rules
that we humans have about the sex roles.

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So people have this idea that nature
dictates kind of a 1950s sitcom version

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of what males and females are like.

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So that males are always 
supposed to be dominant and aggressive,

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and females are passive and coy.

NOTE Paragraph

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But that's just not the case.

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So for example, take katydids, which are
relatives of crickets and grasshoppers.

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The males are very picky 
about who they mate with

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because they not only transfer
sperm during mating,

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they also give the female
something called a nuptial gift.

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You can see two katydids 
mating in these photos.

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In both panels, the male's the one on
the right and that sword like appendage

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is the female's egg-laying organ.

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The white blob is the sperm and the green
blob is the nuptial gift, and the male

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manufactures this from his own body
and it's extremely costly to produce.

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It can weigh up to a third 
of his body mass.

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I will now pause for a moment
and let you think about

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what it would be like, if human men --
everytime they had sex

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had to produce something that weighed
50, 60, 70 pounds.

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(Laughter)

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Okay, they would not be able 
to do that very often.

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And indeed, neither can the katydids.

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And so what that means,

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is the katydid males are very choosy about
who they offer these nuptial gifts to.

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Now, the gift is very nutritious
and the female eats it during

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and after mating.

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So, the bigger it is, the better
off the male is because that means

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more time for his sperm to drain into her
body and fertilize her eggs.

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But it also means that the males are very
passive about mating, where as the females

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are extremely aggressive and competitive,
in an attempt to get as many as these

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nutritious nuptial gifts as they can.

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So, it's not exactly a 
stereotypical set of rules.

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Even more generally though, males are 
actually not all that important

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in the lives of a lot of insects.

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In the social insects --
the bees and wasps and ants

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the individuals that you see everyday,
the ants going back and forth

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to your sugar bowl, the honey bees 
that are flitting from flower to flower.

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All of those are always female.

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People have had a hard time getting their
head around that idea for millennia.

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The ancient Greeks knew that there was
a class of bees, the drones, that are

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larger than the workers, although 
they disapproved of the drones' laziness

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because they could see that 
the drones just hang around the hive

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until the mating flight --
they're the males.

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They hang around the hives until
the mating flight,

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but they don't participate 
in gathering nectar or pollen.

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The Greeks couldn't figure out 
the drones sex,

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and part of the confusion was that they
were aware of the stinging ability of bees

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but they found it difficult to believe

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that any animals that bore such a weapon
could possibly be a female.

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Aristotle tried to get involved as well.

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He suggested, OK, well if the stinging
individuals are going to be the males,

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then he got confused because that would 
have meant that males were also taking

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care of the young in the colony
and he seemed to think that would be

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completely impossible.

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He then concluded that bees had the organs
of both sexes in the same individual,

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which is not that farfetched.

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There are some animals that do that, but 
he never really did get it figured out.

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And you know, even today, my students
for instance call every animal they see

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including insects, a male.

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And when I tell them that the ferocious
army ant soldiers with their giant

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jaws, used to defend the colony are all 
always female,

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they seem to not quite believe me.

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(Laughter)

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Certainly all of the movies --
Antz, Bee Movie

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portray the main character in the social
insects as being male.

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Well, what difference does this make?

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I mean, these are movies.

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They're fiction.

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They have talking animals in them,

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what difference does it make
if they talk like Jerry Seinfeld?

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(Laughter)

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I think it does matter and it's a problem
that actually is part of a much deeper

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one that has implications for medicine,
and health and a lot of other aspects

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of our lives.

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You all know that scientists use 
what we call model systems,

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which are creatures --
white rats or fruit flies

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that are kind of stand-ins for all other
animals including people.

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And the idea is, that what's true
for a person will also be true

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for the white rat.

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By in large, that turns 
out to be the case.

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But you can take the idea 
of a model system too far.

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And what I think we've done, is use males,
in any species,

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as though they are the model system.

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The norm.
The way things are supposed to be.

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And females as a kind of variant --
something special that you only study

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after you get the basics down.

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And so back to the insects.

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I think what that means, is that people
could not see what was in front of them.

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Because they assumed that the world's 
stage was largely occupied by male players

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and females would only have minor,
walk-on roles.

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But when we do that, we really miss out
on a lot of what nature is like.

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And we can also miss out on the way
natural, living things incudling people

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can very.

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And I think that's why we've used males
as models in a lot of medical research,

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something that we know now to be a problem
if we want the results to apply

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to both men and women.

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Well, the last thing I really love about
insects is something that a lot of people

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find unnerving about them.

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They have little, tiny brains with very 
little cognitive ability the way

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we normally think of it.

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They have complicated behavior,
but they lack complicated brains.

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And so, we can't just think of them
as though they're little people

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because they don't do 
things the way that we do.

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I really love that it's difficult
to anthropomorphize insects,

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to look at them and just think of them
like they're little people

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in exoskeletons with six legs.

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(Laughter)

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Instead, you really have to accept them
on their own terms

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because insects make us question
what's normal and what's natural.

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Now, you know, people write fiction
and talk about parallel universes.

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They speculate about the supernatural,
maybe the spirits of the departed

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walking among us.

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The allure of another world is something
that people say is part of why they want

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to dabble in the paranormal.

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But as far as I'm concerned, who needs 
to be able to see dead people?

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When you can see live insects?

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Thank you.

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(Applause)