Now that summer is upon us, it's best we made peace with the insects around us. Why, you ask? Because….well…resistance is futile. I was reminded of this when reading Anne Rooney’s book, You Wouldn’t Want to Live without Insects. In it, she offers insect insight.
Across our globe, there are six to ten million species of insects, although scientists have only named about 900,000 of those species. Insects are found everywhere in the world—even in frozen Antarctica!
And boy, are we outnumbered. There are 200 million insects for every person on earth. About 90% of all life-forms on earth (not including bacteria) are insects.
Wrap your brain around this: the mass of all the ants in the world is greater than the mass of all the people. Still not creeped out? Then process this: In a rain forest, insects weigh more than the all the animals with backbones put together!
Of course you knew that one bat can eat up to 3000 insects a night, right? A single swarm of locusts can cover 460 square miles, destroying crops and causing famine. Each locust eats its own weight in food every day. Cockroaches can live for six weeks without any food—and four weeks without a head! Wasps can survive 180 times more radiation than humans.
After the explosion in Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant, insects survived better than other animals. Insects are often the first creatures to move back into a disaster zone.
Nehemiah 9:6: "You alone are the LORD. You have made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it.” To which I add—even insects.
And now you know why I say, it’s better to learn to live with insects than to expect to exist without them.
For Moody Radio, I’m Jon Gauger, and those are my thoughts.
Now…where’s my fly swatter?!