The Smaller Majority

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…

Celebrate blattodeans

In 1994 I took a tropical ecology course in Costa Rica, which was my first exposure to a Neotropical rainforest. The course itself did not convince me to become an ecologist, but at the same time it ignited my fascination with Neotropical biodiversity that has remained strong to this day. While there I made an…