The Intimate Bond Between Humans and Insects

Why insects are vital to our survival.

By Josie Glausiusz and Volker Steger
Jun 26, 2004 12:00 AMApr 12, 2023 2:50 PM

Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news
 

‘Something in the insect seems to be alien to the habits, morals, and psychology of this world, as if it had come from some other planet, more monstrous, more energetic, more insensate, more atrocious, more infernal than our own.’

—Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian playwright, 1862-1949

Such animosity hardly seems justified. Of the approximately 9 million species of insects on Earth—the vast majority undiscovered and unnamed—only about 11/2 percent do us any harm. The rest have either no direct impact or provide some very obvious and indispensable benefits to humans. They pollinate plants, including 80 percent of the world’s 94 major food crops, as well as vast tracts of tropical rain forest. They decompose our dead and all the waste that animals and plants produce, from dung to discarded skin, feathers to hair, dead leaves to rotten wood. They protect our harvests by eating the pests and the weeds that would destroy them. They are food for birds, frogs, reptiles, fish, and mammals—including, wittingly and unwittingly, humans. They aerate and enrich the soil by digging tunnels and carrying nutrients down from the surface. That, in turn, helps prevent erosion and runoff into rivers and streams.

Mosquito

It isn’t hard to understand why the mosquito is so reviled. Elegant, dainty, and deadly, it is the most common of all blood-sucking arthropods and the most important insect carrier of human disease, transmitting not only malaria but also yellow fever, dengue, West Nile virus, encephalitis, and the tiny worms that cause elephantiasis. But mosquitoes, with 3,550 species, have their place in the web of life. Birds, bats, fish, and many significant wetland species, including dragonflies, feed on them. Anopheles mosquitoes—among them A. stephensi, shown here—have arguably changed the course of human history. Over the centuries they have killed untold millions with the aid of the malaria parasite, Plasmodium, which they inject into blood along with their saliva. Prior to the widespread use of quinine, in fact, it was mosquito-borne malaria that largely protected Africa from European colonists, who died from the disease in such high numbers that the west coast of Africa was dubbed the white man’s grave. Another species, Aedes aegypti, carried yellow fever to the New World with the African slave trade and helped drive France to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

0 free articles left
Want More? Get unlimited access for as low as $1.99/month

Already a subscriber?

Register or Log In

0 free articlesSubscribe
Discover Magazine Logo
Want more?

Keep reading for as low as $1.99!

Subscribe

Already a subscriber?

Register or Log In

Stay Curious

Sign up for our weekly newsletter and unlock one more article for free.

 

View our Privacy Policy


Want more?
Keep reading for as low as $1.99!


Log In or Register

Already a subscriber?
Find my Subscription

More From Discover
Stay Curious
Join
Our List

Sign up for our weekly science updates.

 
Subscribe
To The Magazine

Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.

Copyright © 2025 LabX Media Group