Newspaper in education: Recommended reading
Do insects respect humans?
Daily art by Ashley Holmes
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Editor’s note: This is the fifth of eight chapters in The Daily’s original serial story “The Bug Campaign: Just a little respect!” Look for it every Tuesday in the Living section.
The story so far: A crowd of agitated insects is trying to figure out how to get humans to respect them. A raid into a home ended in disaster for a band of rogue cockroaches. The insects cannot seem to organize, and some begin looking at each other as food. A hungry mud dauber has spied a fat caterpillar in the crowd and is on the attack.
The mud dauber flies fast but the caterpillar just manages to dive under a piece of bark.
Nezara sighs in relief. “Caterpillar lives another day, at least until it goes through metamorphosis,” he says.
The mud dauber’s effort reminds the insects left in the yard that they must seek food. They scatter, many ducking to avoid predators while searching for their favorite meals.
A few insects turn back to Nezara and L.W.
“We think talk is good. We’d like to help,” say two Pleasing Fungus Beetles with identical red and black markings. They have bits of mushroom on their mandibles and speak in unison.
An Owlet Moth flutters overhead, and a Camel Cricket blinks in the sunlight.
“We’ll listen to your ideas,” they say.
“But first, how did you understand what the human said?” asked the moth.
The beetles, L.W. and cricket lift their antenna and look toward Nezara.
Nezara hesitates. How did he understand human speech? He just shakes his head, and his antennae and mandibles vibrate.
“I don’t know. I just did. But isn’t it a good thing to know what humans are saying?”
The cricket rubs its legs, creating a loud sawing sound, before answering.
“I think so. It’s kind of scary, though,” the cricket replies.
Moth settles on a leaf.
“It certainly is. For some reason, I understand it, too,” Moth says. “And I learned from humans’ newspapers to read and write some. What I learned leads me to another question. Do we respect humans?”
Nezara is surprised. “Why should we think well of them?”
Moth explains that she lived for a while in the humans’ home, charmed by the lights.
She tells of seeing how hard humans work to feed their families.
“They are so big it takes a lot of food. Someone has to grow their food and harvest it and sell it. They have to cook it and store it. It’s a lot of work. We don’t have to do that.”
“No ... I never thought of that. I guess they can’t help being big, just like we can’t help being small,” Nezara says.
“Well, we have to look for food, but we don’t have to buy it or plant it. I guess they must have it kind of hard,” L.W. agrees.
“Yes, and do you know they study us? They have to, to know how to keep us out of the food they grow and store. They know all about something they call the food chain.”
Moth describes the book named “Insect Pests” she saw a human studying.
“There were lots of insects in there,” she says.
“Now don’t be shocked, but they even collect some of us to learn from. They, uh, sometimes they put us on display after we, uh, die.”
The insect group’s multiple eyes stare at Moth.
“You mean, they keep dead insects in a museum?” one asks.
Bug Chapter 5: Learning activity
Parents — (Note: If your child is able to read the story independently, modify these activities to reinforce your child’s reading skills.)
Read the chapter aloud. With your child, find the names of different types of insects mentioned. Talk about insect collecting and why people study specimens.
Plan a trip to the library to find books about insects or to Cook’s Natural Science Museum in Decatur, which has collections of insects and animals. (Alabama Course of Study: Demonstrates vocabulary growth through reading and listening to literature.)
Click here for story index.
