The Cambridge Entomological Club meets every month at Harvard University, and always has interesting speakers who regale its members with tales of adventure and insects. Last night our speaker was John Himmelman, a renowned naturalist and author of many children’s books and field guides, including two on singing insects of the Northeast. It was a…
Author: Piotr Naskrecki
Armored katydids, or Koringkriek
This week a French translation of my book “Relics” is being officially released in France. The one difference from the original version, other than the language of course, is the cover. I was thrilled to see that the publisher decided to place on it one of my all-time favorite animals, the South African armored katydid…
Life-saving beetles
Growing up in Poland, a country with relatively mild but still not particularly pleasant winters, I was always on the lookout for the first signs of the return of insect life, and one of the most welcome sights in the spring was a beautiful, metallically violet oil beetle (Meloe proscarbeus). I was so used to…
The scariest animal that will never hurt you
Of all the animals that you may encounter in a tropical rainforest, none evoke a more visceral, negative reaction in even the most ardent nature lovers than the tailless whipscorpions. They are members of the order Amblypygi, and among all arachnids they are probably the most undeserving of fear or repulsion. To begin, they are…
Nine months and counting
About nine months ago I began to document the growth and development of a baby, and a few days ago this beautiful being completed a journey from her virgin conception to adulthood. She is a praying mantis (Taumantis sp.) She emerged on February 1st, along with about 150 of her sisters. She never had a…
Be glad that we are big
If there existed a technology that would allow us to shrink all people on Earth to the size of insects (just like in the movie “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”), two things would almost certainly happen over the next few years. First, nearly all our environmental problems would be solved because the use of natural…
The Smaller Majority 