Amy Stewart - Wicked Bugs

WICKED BUGS

ALSO BY AMY STEWART

From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden

The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms

Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincolns Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities

THE LOUSE THAT CONQUERED NAPOLEONS ARMY & OTHER DIABOLICAL INSECTS

Amy Stewart

ETCHINGS AND DRAWINGS BY

Briony Morrow-Cribbs

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

2011 by Amy Stewart. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Design by Anne Winslow, with thanks to Jean-Marc Troadec.

Reproduction of the Schmidt Pain Index (pages 137138) reprinted by permission of Justin O. Schmidt.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stewart, Amy.
Wicked bugs : the louse that conquered Napoleons army & other
diabolical insects / Amy Stewart ; etchings and drawings by
Briony Morrow-Cribbs.1st ed
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-56512-960-3
1. Insect pests. 2. Arachnida. I. Morrow-Cribbs, Briony. II. Title.
SB931.S83 2011
632.7dc22 2011003629

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition

To PSB

END NOTES

In 1909, the Chicago Daily Tribune ran an article titled If Bugs Were the Size of Men. It began with this ominous statement: All the powers of destruction that were ever invented by man are puerile and absurd compared with those with which nature has invested insects. The reporter went on to ask what would happen if some mighty magicians wand should be waved over the world tomorrow and mankind be reduced to the size of insects, while these tiny creatures should reach the size of men.

Chicagoans must have read with alarm of the calamities that would befall them if they were to trade places with bugs: the giant Hercules beetle was not just formidable, but immoral, with a taste for drinking and brawling; bark beetles would mow down massive fortresses; armies would be helpless against the artillery of the bombardier beetle; and spiders would destroy elephants... a mans only possible salvation would be that he was too insignificant to attack. Even lions would cower in fear against these new winged and multilegged enemies.

The reporters intent was, undoubtedly, to make the point that insects are powerful in their own way and to suggest that only their diminutive size keeps them from conquering the world.

If only that were true. In fact, insects have changed the course of history. They have halted soldiers in their tracks. They have driven farmers off their land. They have devoured cities and forests, and inflicted pain, suffering, and death upon hundreds of millions.

This is not to say that they dont do good as well. They pollinate the plants that feed us, and they are themselves food for creatures up and down the food chain. They do the vital work of decomposition, returning everything from fallen leaves to fallen heroes back to the earth. Any number of insects, from the blow fly to the blister beetle, have proven useful in medicine. And they prey on one another, keeping pests in check. We could not live without them. In fact, indiscriminate pesticide use and destruction of insect habitats is far more harmful than simply learning to live alongside them and to appreciate their finer qualities.

BUT THIS IS NOT a book celebrating their virtues. As with Wicked Plants, I have devoted myself exclusively to the dark side of the relationship between nature and humans. Some might say that people already harbor enough hatred of insects and need no further encouragement. And those of us who are staunchly on the side of bugs, sweeping them gently out of the house with a word of kindness and refusing to allow chemical sprays into our gardens for fear of disturbing their dinner, might be disinclined to explore their criminal history.

However, our affections can be as misleading as our phobias. The common garden spider on your windowsill deserves applause for her good deeds, but the bloodsucking assassin bug you encounter on a South American vacation should be given a wide berth. Learning to make such distinctions doesnt require an entomology degree; a little common sense and an open-minded curiosity is all you need. I hope that Wicked Bugs inspires bothand delivers a few spine-tingling thrills along the way.

I am not a scientist or doctor. Im a writer who is fascinated by the natural world. Within each chapter, I set out to tell a deliciously frightening story and to offer just enough information about the habits and lifestyles of each creature to make them easier to recognize. This is by no means a comprehensive field guide or a medical reference book; please do not rely upon it to definitively identify a bug or diagnose an ailment. For that, there is a list of recommended reading and resources at the end of the book.

Of the thousands of species I could have included, I chose those that intrigued me the most. I use the word wicked rather broadly, encompassing the worlds most painful insects, such as the bullet ant, which gets its name from the fact that its bite feels like a gunshot wound; its most destructive insects, like the Formosan subterranean termite quietly chewing away at the seams of the floodwalls around New Orleans; and disease vectors like the Oriental rat flea that brought the Black Death to Europe. Insects that destroy crops, drive people from their homes, or simply drive people mad all found a place within these pages. Some of the stories are grotesque, and some are tragic, but in every case, I was left awestruck by the power and intricacy of these tiny creatures.

Entomologists will be quick to protest that the term bug is misleading, and they are quite right. Most of us use the word to describe any number of tiny slithering and crawling creatures; we deploy it with even less precision when we use it to refer to an illness like the stomach flu, a flaw in a computer program, or a listening device hidden in a lampshade. None of these are, from a scientific perspective, accurate. Strictly speaking, an insect is a creature with six legs, a three-segmented body, and usually two sets of wings. A true bug is a subset of insect in the order Hemiptera that has piercing and sucking mouthparts. An aphid, therefore, is a type of insect that we can properly call a bug; an ant is not. Spiders, worms, centipedes, slugs, and scorpions are not insects at all but arachnids and other classes of creatures that are only distantly related to insects. I could not resist including a few of them in this book and beg the forgiveness of scientists for employing the amateurs definition of the term