This is such an important book to read, especially since the bees are dying. I think that we should all be required to read more books like this that help us to see the importance of some of the smallest inhabitants of this world. This book was enlightening and opened my mind and eyes to the importance of insects and what they do for us every day.

Buzz, Sting, Bite by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, professor at Norwegian University of Life Sciences near Oslo and scientific advisor to the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, may sound like a title for children or young adults. However, the adult book informs the reader about half the animal kingdom as it looks at insects. Anne points out in her introduction that insects live in the Himalayas, in computers, in Yellowstone’s hot springs, and in the ears and nostrils of much larger creatures.

Anne’s look this species is amusing and entertaining as well as informative. Nuisances turn out to require another look as blowflies cleanse hard-to-heal wounds, mealworms digest plastic, and scientists are currently evaluating whether cockroaches can be used for rescue work in collapsed and polluted buildings. The sloth ecosystem turns out to be much more interesting than I would ever have expected from such a slow animal. I won’t spoil it for you except to say it involves the sloth, a moth, and alga who all do each other a good turn. Then there is the pinhead-sized chocolate midge without which the cocoa flower would not pollinate, and where would we be without chocolate?

I found great satisfaction in her stress on the importance of hollow oak trees since it validated my decision to keep the one in my back yard. In the rotting wood, live red velvet mites, pallid beetle babies, enormous scarabs, and tiny springtails. She claims that more individuals live in these ancient trees than there are human inhabitants in Oslo.

If this were a people movie instead of an insect book, the rating would be PG-13 if not R with its racy mating practices. While this book is a witty and enjoyable look at the animal world for adults, I just wonder if kids were told they weren’t old enough for it yet, how many of them would soon be enjoying an education about tiny animals.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Enjoyable quick read. I felt like the author could have written more on each topic but I can see how the short sections could be beneficial for drawing in new science readers. Luckily her sources are pretty easy to find for those who would like a more detailed read.

Buzz, Sting, Bite provides a deeper understanding of the world of insects and their importance to every day life. It reads as an entertaining guide to everything insect and as a love story to these often misunderstood creatures.

Every part of an insect is incredibly fascinating. Their bodies are a completely random selection of parts and features that seem straight out of science fiction. With such a long history of existence, every part of them has been honed by evolution for a specific purpose. What we get is a diverse planet of insects that seem to defy logic in their makeup.

Beyond anatomy, every aspect of an insect’s life is on display. We see their wild sex lives, built around knocking out the competition as efficiently as possible. We see their somewhat terrifying food chain, and we see their relationships with animals, humans, and the ecosystem. The author presents it all excitedly, eagerly bringing the reader in on the many cool aspects of these small creatures that surround us.

We like to think we’re high and mighty as a species, but the entirety of human history is a tiny blip on the insect timeline. It’s a fact I’ve never really thought about, but one that shows just how resilient these millions of species are. We may laugh at and mock them but we don’t even register in their history of the world.

In the end, Buzz, Sting, Bite is the kind of book you’ll be happy you read. There’s so much to know, and gain a deeper respect for insects and their strange history.

Review will be published on 7/2/19: https://reviewsandrobots.com/2019/07/02/buzz-sting-bite-book-review

Did you know that tiny ants, collectively, outweigh us humans? Did you know ants started agriculture more than 50 millions year before we did? That ants and other little creatures are helping us find new antibiotics? Maybe you did know that already. But I guarantee you, most of us have no clue how much is going on in our world, hidden in plain sight, or ignored, unheeded, unappreciated, by humans.

"My humble plan is to convince you that insects are fun, fabulous and incredibly important... ;-)" -- @annesver

Mission Accomplished!

My own mission, entomophagy, led me to Twitter's @annesver. What a lively presence Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, aka @annesver, brings to the much-maligned world of social media! Of the 8,000+ "tweeps" I follow, not even the top one percent are as enlightening, entertaining, pithy, and erudite as this professor of life sciences in Oslo, Norway. Just as bugs are hated, Twitter is reviled and blamed for short attention spans--but I see so many good things in bugs and in tweeting humans. Brevity is the soul of wit, after all. Saying a lot with only a few words is doable, thanks to the challenge of spreading a message to the world with only 140 characters.

Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson takes a fun, conversational, anecdotal approach to insects in "Buzz, Sting, Bite," the English translation of a brilliant thesis that defends bugs and bees and creepy, crawly things. She challenges our universal dislike of our little friends.

I kept thinking of the phrase "Don't bug me," which incriminates bugs as pesky and annoying. Maybe there is no such idiom in the author's native tongue. No surprise that the Norwegian title is more fitting: "The Planet of the Insects: About the weird, useful and fascinating creeps we cannot live without" ("Insektenes planet: Om de rare, nyttige og fascinerende småkrypene vi ikke kan leve uten"). Americans must require sensational headlines, I guess, hence, Buzz-Sting-Bite, which connotes all that we hate about bugs, whereas the Norwegian title celebrates their place on this planet and their vital necessity for us to exist here at all.

The book delivers stunning examples of what happens when creepy maggots and flies are absent from a place where non-native species have been introduced. Like, the four cows and two oxen that arrived inAustralia in 1788 with a ship of convicts from the UK. Consider that "The excrement of a single cow covers an area the size of five tennis courts each year." Consider the absence of beetles in Australia that could play street-cleaner. To see what happened next, read Chapter Six of this book. "Somebody has to do the cleaning," all right, and we humans have so little appreciation for the janitorial duties of the lowly bugs among us.

The list of amazing insect facts is so long, so comprehensive, I will not attempt a mention of them here. If you don't read the book (a big mistake, in my opinion), at least glance at the author's Twitter feed, e.g., @annesver 16-Feb-2019

-- The world's dung beetles are, if you'll excuse my language, literally in deep sh^t...

She also posts photos and facts, e.g.,

-- cute wingless cranefly getting by in the cold by producing its own antifreeze
-- Ancient oaks, incredibly important insect habitats and awe-inspiring legacies
-- ants herding their little “sugar cow” aphids
-- beetles hiding under a “wig of poo”
-- tastier strawberries via insect pollination
-- entomophagy (ancient human practice of eating insects) can save the planet

I cannot say enough to urge everyone to read this - out in Norway, UK, US +17 more, Pub Date 02 Jul 2019. Thank you #NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and above all Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson
for an ARC of this jewel of a "PopSci" book on insects.