"Welcome to the Natural History Museum." "When I was a kid I used to love catching insects, they have always fascinated me." "So this is the episode I've really been looking forward to." "This time, the team are in the museum and out in the countryside, facing their phobias..." "Oh, don't let it scurry." "..and encountering the wonder of all that creeps and crawls." "To me they're the most fascinating creatures on earth, and I can't wait to get my hands on some of the 28 million weird and wonderful insects they keep right here in the Natural History Museum..." "the Museum of Life." "As a child, I was amazed by the sheer variety of insect life." "Nobody knows exactly how many insect species there are in the world, but current estimates suggest they could represent up to 80% of all species on Earth." "That's a huge challenge to collectors - but all collections have to start somewhere." "This book of pressed insects dates from 1690, and is thought to be the oldest collection of insects in the world." "It's very well preserved, but it is quite delicate so..." "Oh, my Lord, look at that." "It's the oldest part of a great museum collection that now has specimens from half of all the known insect species." "Scientists now believe that collecting and studying insects is central to our ability to understand and conserve the health of the planet." "At the edge of one of the world's largest cities, a stone's throw away from the M25, lies one of the most intensively studied habitats in Europe - this small woodland in Surrey." "Kate Bellingham joined museum entomologist Max Barclay." "He has a record of 200,000 insects collected on Bookham Common over the last 120 years." "Bookham Common provides an almost complete picture of how life responds to everything from extinction to climate change." "Although this common has been studied in great detail, there's one place Max has never been able to look - the treetop canopy." "Nobody has really looked at what's in the canopy of oak forests in southern England, and our experiments in the tropics have shown that an enormous amount of biodiversity lives in the canopy of the tree." "Even though it's only one species, this is just a single oak tree, oak is one of the richest and most diverse trees in terms of number of species, and there are hundreds of species of insect associated entirely with oak trees." "And it's the insects that make their home in the canopy of this 200-year-old oak that Max wants to get his hands on." "I'm not sure HOW we'll be reaching them, but it involves 12 large collecting funnels and the help of fly expert Erica McAlister and entomologist Claire Ozanne." "Do you get these made up special, can you buy them?" "The Natural History Museum design." "When I first joined the museum this technique was quite new, and they were trying it out all over the tropics, in places like Borneo..." "Borneo and Sulawesi." "I'm told this technique calls for scientific precision." "By placing the funnels in a grid formation, this experiment can be replicated in future on any oak tree." "If you could hang that one about a foot apart." "This alcohol will pickle and preserve their miniature quarry." "Yep, lovely." "Now it's over to Claire, expert in a technique they call tree misting." "Our colleague Claire has brought a device called a mister, which is going to blow a chemical up into the tree..." "A fine mist of pesticide will swiftly dispatch the insects." "The protective suit is a precaution, even though the substance IS biodegradable and harmless to birds and mammals." "It's the latest technology in entomology." "Max has been waiting for this moment for years." "I've been coming to this common since 1995." "We've always been aware that this is something that's never been done, and my old friend Ian Menzies, whose collection we now have, he's been coming here since the '50s." "And we used to talk about doing this, and unfortunately he didn't live long enough to see it, but I'm glad that we're going to get it done and fill in the final piece in the jigsaw really." "The fine spray of pesticide reaches 15 metres up into the branches." "Tree misting calls for an accurate aim and precise timing." "The idea is to collect only a sample of the canopy insects." "What's the value in studying insects?" "Well, insects are incredibly diverse." "For example the beetles, the group that I'm studying, there are 4,000 species in the UK, and the flies that Erica's working on, there are 7,000." "So altogether that's 11,000 species of insect, compared to just a few species of mammal or bird." "And so when you've got that many species you can see much more detail about the habitat." "You're looking at much, much better resolution." "This improved resolution is like zooming in to the individual pixels of the habitat, helping us understand how it works." "Max hopes the tree misting will uncover more of this fine detail." "I've got no idea what's going to be up here in the canopy." "We could be finding something very interesting that generations of entomologists haven't found here before." "And that's pretty exciting, I think." "As the pesticide does its deadly work, a bounty of tiny insects rains down from the canopy gathering in the funnels below, and there's no holding Max back." "Well, there's a fair bit in here." "Some great big barklice..." "This one's got a ground beetle in it." "A ground beetle?" "Some way from the ground!" "It's got a snipe fly..." "Some interesting little soldier beetles..." "There are moths, earwigs." "Oh, there's quite a lot." "This one's really, really full." "That's what we call insect soup, and it's only when you start sorting it out under the microscope that you see it's full of interesting things." "A few weeks later, and the insect soup is coming into focus." "You can see them so much more clearly." "That's right." "I mean, when we get the insect soup back the first thing we do is we sort it all out." "So we'll end up with a stack of tubes, each one containing a different group of insects." "And a bowl of insect soup like that is going to have about 12 people to identify everything that's in it." "So, any exciting moments?" "There's one beetle here..." "It doesn't look like much, but it's a very interesting beetle." "'You've got a job to convince me on that one, Max!" "'" "It's only about two-and-a-half millimetres long, but it's a species called Cis coluber, and there's only half-a-dozen records from the UK." "It's not a common species." "And as the very first discovered at Bookham Common, it tells its own story." "They must be looking after the habitat well, because otherwise these rare beetles wouldn't be able to live there." "The Cis coluber reveals that this oak canopy is alive and well, and that even after 120 years of intensive study, there are still new discoveries to be made." "In the Natural History Museum collections, there are also discoveries waiting to be made." "Max has a murder mystery." "One beetle has been found in the collection that appears to have been shot." "He's bringing it to forensic scientist Heather Bonney, to see if she can solve the mystery." "Now, there's a bit of a story behind this beetle." "Why have we brought it down to the X-ray room?" "Well, a colleague of mine noticed about a year ago that this beetle has got circular holes in it." "And erm...it's quite well known that in the Victorian times occasionally people who were out shooting birds for specimens would see a flying beetle and take a shot at it." "And this is a Goliath beetle, one of the largest in the world, and they fly very high in the canopy, they're very difficult to collect." "Now, you're a forensic scientist and you're used to dealing with human remains, aren't you?" "Yes." "So this is a bit different." "Have a look at that." "I mean, it does look like it's peppered and the holes are perfectly round." "It does." "These ones on the back look like entry wounds, they're certainly not exit wounds where something's come out." "This one at the top, we seem to have some bending in of the outside of the beetle, which means that it's been pushed inwards." "And then on the other side we have this larger hole, which has the characteristic appearance of an exit wound." "Right." "So it looks like the beetle's been shot from the top." "Right, so it's not that the beetle necessarily has been flying over and somebody's shot it - it might have been crawling on the ground and it's been shot." "It looks more that way." "Wow, that adds something to the mix then, doesn't it, because you said these beetles fly very high." "It's clearly been shot in the back." "It's been shot in the back, yes." "But you're using techniques that you would use in, say, solving a murder or something like that..." "Yes. ..and applying it to an insect." "On a beetle!" "Excellent." "So if we X-ray this then, what will it tell us?" "The number of entry wounds on the beetle doesn't match the number of exit wounds." "That could be explained by the fact that the beetle was open and flying at the time, so pellets may have gone straight through, but it may also indicate that there's still some pellets inside." "Heather may be able to prove once and for all that the beetle was shot by X-raying it to see if the pellets are still inside." "Is this new?" "No!" "Yeah, it looks pretty ancient, but obviously does the job..." "Yeah." "So we switch on the machine, and decide the voltage we want to use." "And then I have to use my fingerprint to switch the power on..." "And then it sets off an alarm, and then when the alarm finishes the X-rays goes on." "On the X-ray we can see the innards of the beetle, but we can also see a small, very opaque area here, which looks like it might be some sort of metal object." "So in fact this beetle was definitely shot... but was it shot flying or was it shot on the ground?" "Unfortunately it's in a part of the beetle that doesn't move when it's flying." "This area that Heather's talking about is against the leg." "Yep." "Which is one of the strongest parts of the exoskeleton, so that would be strong enough to stop a bullet, if the pellet was coming from, as Heather originally suggested, from the top of the beetle, ie. it was shot in the back." "The century-old case is closed." "The victim was not only shot, but shot in the back." "Today, collecting still goes on." "The result is a vast collection that needs a vast amount of care." "My name is Blanca Huertas," "I'm the curator of the butterflies here at the Natural History Museum." "I've been interested in butterflies since I've been a small girl." "I'm from Colombia." "That's one of the first things that you see flying around you." "The butterfly collection in the Natural History Museum is the world's biggest and most comprehensive one." "We have 90% of the species represented in this collection." "We collect butterflies in places where no human has been before." "Once we had to hire a helicopter to help us to access to the mountain." "So the helicopter came, dropped us from a height and left us for a week." "This collection is impossible to replace." "I've been here five years, and there are drawers that I haven't seen before." "Setting butterflies definitely is a therapeutic thing to do." "It is a dying art, because not many people can do it any more." "Just doing the antennas." "This is one of the tricky bits." "If the antenna breaks, that's a big problem because you can't fix it." "A butterfly collected today will look exactly the same as one someone collected 250 years ago." "And here you are." "This has actually been a big challenge for me, and it's been a great responsibility to be in charge of the collection." "Every day you need to expand your knowledge, and know every single question that people comes to." "So it's a big responsibility." "Still, I can manage." "When I was younger I used to be a fanatical insect collector." "Insect collecting has always been popular amongst naturalists - one, because they're easy to catch, and two, there are still loads to be discovered." "One of the greatest insect collectors was the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace." "But Wallace should be famous for a different reason." "In fact, he should be as famous as that man down there." "Charles Darwin is THE natural history superstar." "Across the world his name, his image and his work is widely recognised." "The same cannot be said for Alfred Russel Wallace." "Broadstone in Dorset was Wallace's final home, and if Wallace is remembered anywhere it's going to be here." "Do you mind if we ask you a quick question?" "Have you ever heard of a man called Alfred Russel Wallace?" "No." "No." "No." "Never heard of him." "Has he got plenty of money?" "He's dead now." "Is he?" "Yeah." "Ooh." "I'm starting to wonder if I'm even in the right place." "Ah, here we are." ""Alfred Russel Wallace." ""Naturalist, scientist, explorer, writer," ""social campaigner, humanitarian..."" "and then in big writing," ""co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection."" "That's it - co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection." "One of the greatest scientific theories of all time was made by Charles Darwin... and Alfred Russel Wallace." "Here are the facts." "In 1858, while suffering from malaria on a remote Indonesian island," "Wallace suddenly had the idea of natural selection as the mechanism for evolutionary change." "He was so excited he immediately rushed a message to the leading naturalist of the day, Charles Darwin, asking if he'd pass his theory on if he thought it was "sufficiently interesting"." "But what Wallace didn't know was that Darwin had exactly the same idea." "So there we have it, two towering geniuses sharing one great idea." "Well, here we are back in the museum - and here's Darwin, but where's Wallace?" "Darwin." "Darwin." "Darwin." "Darwin." "Darwin for Kids." "Darwin." "Darwin." "Darwin." "Darwin loves me." "Darwin binoculars." "Mini jigsaw, of..." "Darwin." "Even Darwin's feathery pen." "That's not Darwin." "That's Wallace." "It's the only book in the shop about Wallace, and it's written by museum entomologist George Beccaloni, otherwise known as Wallace's Rottweiler." "You don't strike me as anything like a Rottweiler." "Well, kind you should say that!" "George believes Wallace NEEDS a Rottweiler, to give him back the recognition he deserves." "While Wallace and Darwin had their great idea presented to the world jointly," "Darwin was present, while Wallace was on the other side of the world in Malaysia collecting insects." "By the time Wallace returned," "Darwin had published the idea in his own book, On The Origin Of Species, rocketing him to international fame." "I have a feeling actually that Darwin might have been a bit guilty about what happened in later years." "And in later years when Wallace had fallen on very hard times," "Darwin was instrumental in getting Wallace a government pension." "He went to enormous trouble to actually petition Gladstone and got lots of signatories to get this pension, so that Wallace wouldn't have to live in poverty." "So he had a conscience." "Yep." "But George has ensured that Wallace isn't completely absent from the museum." "He's successfully lobbied to get a piece of his hero's legacy into the collection." "Wow, I could spend days in here." "So here it is - the Wallace family archive." "How fantastic." "Wow." "Look at the colours, that's amazing." "That's fantastic." "If you want to see how passionate he was about collecting, have a look at this wonderful quote from his famous book The Malay Archipelago." "OK." "This bit here?" "Yeah." ""The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable..." ""On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings," ""my heart began to beat violently," ""the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting" ""than I have done when in apprehension of immediate death." ""I had a headache the rest of the day."" "Wow, he WAS an enthusiast, wasn't he?" "He certainly was." "Fantastic." "I actually have THE specimen, the one described in that passage." "Oh, really?" "Oh, let's have a look." "I did some research and found it in our main butterfly collection." "And I believe you can actually see there's fingerprints on the wings..." "You're kidding." "Where it took it out of the net, presumably." "Yep." "And this is the original one he's talking about in the book?" "Yep." "He sounds a bit melodramatic, but you can understand the excitement of being the first person to see this." "Absolutely." "I definitely would have had a headache if I'd discovered that." "The amazing thing is that he didn't seem to mind missing out on all that fame." "In fact in his letters he actually implies he was rather pleased not to have been put in the public eye." "Perhaps it actually gave him more time to work on his extraordinary collection, which of course was his real passion." "He could have been buried in Westminster Abbey next to Darwin, but his family declined." "Instead he was buried in the local graveyard here in Dorset, close to trees and countryside, and of course his beloved insects." "When it came to insects, Wallace was the supreme authority." "When Darwin confidently predicted the existence of a moth that nobody had ever seen before, it was Wallace who helped him work on his theory." "There are many strange objects locked away in the museum stores... ..but this is one of the strangest." "It's known as Darwin's sphinx moth from Madagascar." "Darwin didn't know anything about the moth to start with." "He was working on pollination in orchids, and he was sent some orchid flowers, and among these was this Madagascan Star orchid." "The orchid had an extraordinarily long tube." "Darwin deduced that the only creature in Madagascar that could pollinate this flower was a type of hawk moth." "One with a tongue long enough to reach 30cms down to the nectar." "He knew of no example of a moth that had a long enough tongue to pollinate this." "But he made a prediction that such a moth WOULD one day be found." "Darwin's prediction in 1862 was based on the idea that the orchid and the moth must have evolved together - and neither could exist without the other." "It was only a matter of time before this hypothetical moth would be found." "Darwin's cause was taken up by Alfred Russel Wallace." "It was so clear to him that it must exist, that he said it was an absolute certainty that if people went to Madagascar, sooner or later they were bound to find this moth." "Wallace published a picture of what he thought the moth looked like - a sort of wanted poster for the mystery pollinator." "Darwin's moth was eventually found - but not until 1903, 20 years after Darwin's death." "The prediction that he made all those years ago has proven eventually to be entirely, completely correct." "Thanks to Darwin, the moth was officially named "the predicted one"." "Insects have evolved to exploit almost every environment on Earth." "But being at the bottom of the food chain, survival depends on an insect's ability to defend itself." "Some insects have evolved armour." "While others sting - a feature that has dented their popularity with people for thousands of years." "But that's not the case for John Noyes." "He's fascinated by insects' ability to sting... and holds the title of the most stung man in the museum." "Right, some amazing insects here - but all these guys will sting, won't they?" "Well, they do, I mean, all of these guys do sting, and there's an official scale for how intense the pain is, and it goes from one to four." "Now the least one, number one on the scale, will be the sweat bee." "So how would you describe that pain?" "You'd hardly feel it, you know, it's just a sort of slight tingle." "The next up is the fire ant which has gone to the US for the past 30, 40 years." "That has quite a nasty sting." "Maybe a little bit worse than stinging nettles." "You do notice it." "That's quite fierce." "And then the paper wasp would come up somewhere about three." "That's like being hit by a squash ball when somebody hits it pretty damn hard." "I've had that, and that is really sore." "Then four would be the so-called pompilid wasp." "These attack tarantula spiders or smaller spiders, and these big ones are found mostly in South America." "And the sting on it is like a sharp pin, isn't it?" "Isn't it?" "You could imagine that going into you somewhere - it'd be really pretty painful, let alone the venom it would inject." "So these guys would be on the top scale of pain." "About four, in terms of wasp stings." "And then bullet ants - you get them in Central America, that's supposedly four plus." "I was quite a bad kid in school, and I used to get caned by the headmaster quite often, and I would think that's quite similar to being caned." "And the pain lasts in these about a day." "Good God." "A whole day of pain." "I've only been stung once by these guys, and that's enough." "But the worst one... was this bull ant." "I think it's worse than the bullet ant." "I was stung by one of these in Australia once, on my heel, and I could feel it for at least three days." "Three or four days?" "It was an incredible pain." "And the pain is extreme?" "Initially the pain I would say is about the same as the bullet ant, then it gradually gets smaller and smaller." "I mean, these bull ants - they're aggressive, they'll chase you." "No!" "And some of them jump." "I don't know whether this actual species jumps, but some will jump, and they can jump maybe 18 inches." "I mean, they won't chase you very far and of course you can outrun them after a couple of paces." "But they'll follow, you know, a dark shadow or dark movement, and I guess some of them will follow it for maybe 30, 40 yards from the nest." "Good Lord." "That far." "I keep honey bees, and I've been stung on the nipple which was very, very painful, and I've been stung in lots of other sort of areas, and I can understand with a honey bee" "if you get in the way messing around you're going to get stung." "Same with a wasp." "It's painful, but it's not overly painful." "But why would insects this size really need to have such aggressive venoms?" "Initially the sting or the venom was to paralyse or immobilise prey, because the ancestors would have been parasitic prey, and they'd sting the prey to paralyse it so they could lay eggs in them without the prey running away," "or they'd immobilise it completely, like the pompilid wasps." "Yeah." "Do you get entomologists who try their mettle by putting the insects on them, who can take the hardest sting?" "I don't know any personally, but there's one chap in the States called Phil de Rees, who purposely got stung by various wasps and a scorpion just to find out what the pain was like." "That would be a quite good entomological drinking game - are you tough enough?" "I suppose it would be, wouldn't it, yes!" "Alongside the insect collections are some creatures that for many people are even more unpopular than stinging insects." "But even the ones we find hardest to love have found one fan here at the museum." "My name is Jan Beccaloni." "I work as the curator of arachnids and myriapods." "Myriapods are things with many legs - centipedes and millipedes." "Arachnids are things with two body parts and eight legs." "Not just spiders, but scorpions and tics and mites and other groups like that." "So here's a specimen of a scorpion that's been in alcohol for over 50 years." "People get excited about lions and tigers being predators, and how they capture their food, but for me, seeing a small predator and thinking about how that is the top of ITS food chain, I find very fascinating." "I've had a bit of a love affair with spiders all my life actually, and I can blame my parents for this." "When my sister and I were very young, my mum always got us interested in natural history, and I always remember her showing us the little stripey black and white jumping spiders, and how they were in the sunshine and how they moved and looked at you," "because they've got very good eyesight." "I used to come to the Natural History Museum quite regularly, and I always thought how wonderful it would be to work here, never actually realising that I would." "The specimens in the collection come from all over the world, and many of them are over 100 years old." "This specimen here was actually collected in 1896." "Within the collection we've got very small specimens such as mites." "What we can see here is a follicle mite." "They actually live in the hair follicle in people's faces around their nose and in their eyelashes." "What I find most interesting about them is the fact that they're so highly evolved to their microhabitat, so you can see that their sheath-like body actually sits into the hair follicle, and the legs are over the top holding them in." "They suck out the juices of the cells beneath." "Now, if you're scared of heights, you can stay on the ground, but if you don't like creepy-crawlies, life is going to be a bit harder." "It's reckoned that for every one of us on the planet, there are one-and-a-half billion of them." "That accounts for ten quintillion individuals." "Now I didn't make this number up, it looks like this." "So we're well and truly outnumbered." "Which doesn't help the millions of people in the UK that have a phobia of insects and spiders." "For many of us, bugs and creepy-crawlies are the stuff of nightmares." "What is it about them that frighten us so much?" "Is it because they hang around in dark little corners, or that they're so different to us?" "Now, I find some bugs absolutely fascinating, but I have to admit others make me a little bit uncomfortable." "So to find out if bugs really should be feared," "I've come to the Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity." "Here, members of the public are encouraged to send in unusual bugs for identification, and the man who opens the morning post is entomologist Stuart Hine." "Are you ever a bit scared about what you might find in these envelopes?" "Without doubt, yeah." "Special delivery this one." "They sometimes are." "I've certainly opened jiffy bags with live scorpions in." "Fortunately nothing too venomous." "But the latest bug scaring the British public is the false widow spider, a famous of the infamous black widow." "Amongst the spiders in the UK, it's without doubt just about as bad as it can get in terms of spider bite." "And this one is believed to be a false widow spider." "And is it?" "It isn't, no, it's a fairly common spider, one of the commonest, in fact, around our homes." "It's a very similar pattern, it's a very similar shaped spider." "In this case, certainly not." "Now, let's be honest - the vast majority of bugs we are likely to encounter in Britain are going to do us no harm whatsoever." "Why, then, are we so scared of them?" "It's the fear of the unknown." "Some of these giant creatures here, you never see." "I mean, these are without doubt the kind of creatures of nightmares." "But where does our fear come from?" "While some may argue it's genetic, stemming perhaps from distant ancestors who regularly encountered dangerous bugs, Stuart feels it's probably a little closer to home." "You know, we pick this up from our parents." "Children don't seem to have this kind of fear." "They grow up exploring the world around them, so they're always poking, testing things to see what it might do to them." "CHILDREN:" "Wow!" "If a child goes near a spider and sort of pokes, their parents shouts sort of "Don't" or "Stop", it's enough, so an awful lot of it without doubt has to be learnt behaviour." "You're not scared of spiders?" "Is anybody else in your family scared of bugs?" "My mum." "Your mum is?" "What does she do, does she scream her head off as well, does she?" "She hoovers them up." "And I think Stuart may be on to something, as it seems" "I can't help transferring my own personal phobia on to these kids." "What about cockroaches?" "I don't like cockroaches at all." "Oh, I'm scared of cockroaches." "So if our fear is learnt, then surely it can be unlearnt, and as you may have noticed I'm not exactly keen on cockroaches." "I've reluctantly agreed to try and overcome my fears." "But I've asked to be eased in gently." "Whoa..." "Although I WAS thinking of something more like a butterfly, not one of the largest and most feared spiders on the planet." "A red-kneed tarantula called Sarah." "She uses these huge fangs to inject neurotoxin venom into her prey, but I've been told not to worry, as her handler Jan Beccaloni assures me I'll be fine." "Never held a tarantula in my life before, so..." "OK." "The key to this is no sudden movements." "So what kind of signs should I look out for if she does become upset?" "If she were to rear back like that, with her fangs poised to strike, then you would know she's upset." "SHE EXHALES Let's do it." "OK." "Put your hands out flat on the table, and here you go." "Hello, Sarah." "Please don't bite me." "There you go." "Actually, her little legs feel really nice." "Ironically, although people are more scared of these, these are the less harmful ones." "Cool." "I think I'm good with tarantulas." "But I believe you've got more stuff to show me." "Oh, yes." "My nemesis, the Madagascan hissing cockroach." "When I was really young, I was wearing shorts, I was in Trinidad, and this big cockroach ran up my leg and ever since the scurrying and the fact that they can move fairly quickly freaks me out, I have to admit." "They like to touch things, they like to feel pressure around their bodies, so they all congregate together like that." "There's a little cockroach convention going on there." "Yeah, I see the convention." "Now, Jan is doing her best here, but I have to admit" "I'm not really listening." "Ohhh..." "And it's protected...." "Oh, don't let it scurry." "Ooh..." "Did you hear that!" "Oh, it didn't like that." "Come back." "Sorry about that." "And that's why I don't like cockroaches." "Oh..." "She doesn't like you!" "I tell you what, it proves the point - a learned experience like mine and mind over matter has just completely taken over." "There may be one or two creepy-crawlies that will never win me over." "But Stuart Hine has no such problem." "He appreciates them all." "They're the masters of this planet." "They do so much and they contribute to so many elements of it." "They contribute to our pollination." "In some cases they clothe us." "They also help to control each other's numbers." "If it weren't for things like spiders and wasps, we'd be up to our armpits in flies and maggots, so the world as we know it would not exist." "So that's a very good example I suppose of reasons why we shouldn't be stamping on them." "Stuart believes there's one other way that insects could prove to be useful - though personally I'm not entirely convinced." "As the population of Britain continues to grow, some day we may have to find new ways to feed ourselves." "Stuart is staging a one-man campaign to persuade us that insects could be part of the answer." "Hello, ladies and gentlemen." "All had lunch?" "ALL:" "Yes." "Yeah, so have I." "Why should we eat them, what is good about them?" "Is there anything..." "Protein levels, fats?" "Absolutely." "They've got the three, let's say, constituent parts anyway." "We've got protein, we've got the fats and we've got the carbohydrates." "Who would actually like to try some?" "'Stuart's technique is to get people eating insects 'as quickly as possible, starting them off gently with mealworms...'" "Mmm..." "Very nice." "There you are!" "Very nice." "Right, what else have we got?" "'..before moving on to something a bit more spicy.'" "Thai green crickets." "So these are crickets, and..." "Oh, poor things have lost most of their legs, which are the best part." "I can just feel the wing going down my..." "AUDIENCE GIGGLES" "Now, the next little delicacy we have here...are baked ants." "Now, these aren't regular ants, these are quite enormous ants." "Oh, my God, look at the size." "Leafcutter ants." "Arguably more of an acquired taste, this one." "A bit more chilli..." "He's like a lizard, isn't he?" "Oh, no..." "You're going to put them off." "Honestly, that's delicious(!" ")" "LAUGHTER Um..." "Oh, no." "Actually, it's not bad." "That's it, choose a nice big fat juicy one." "Have a chew..." "Do you want one?" "MAN:" "Got a sauce(?" ")" "I quite like it." "You like it?" "Yeah." "It has a slight chocolate taste or coffee or something." "It does..." "Actually, no." "A-ha!" "I was wondering." "Yeah, you got to the soft bit there, didn't you?" "Yeah, not that nice." "Go for it." "I don't want to see it flying out again." "Any good?" "I don't really like it." "JIMMY LAUGHS" "Do you think that once you get over the idea of insects, the flavour is quite nice - even though as I'm seeing that this young lady is trying to spit her tongue out...?" "This is somewhat exceptional for people to come and do this today." "But if you go to the markets of Malaysia and Asia particularly, it's not a case of what they eat, it's a case of what they DON'T eat." "And the insects in those market places are absolutely dripping with great big bugs and beetles and spiders and scorpions, and all sorts of things." "And of course you do get these giants." "Now, who's still hungry?" "So, we're going to get a volunteer to eat this now." "If we have..." "No, only joking!" "You're all going, "I might go and see the Darwin Centre now..."" "Now, that is a hissing cockroach." "It's a hissing cockroach." "HISSING Hear that?" "It loves you." "Isn't that incredible?" "Size of the insect." "But that would have great nutritional value." "Exactly." "This isn't messing around, this is something real and tangible." "Half a dozen of those on your plate and I think you'd agree you've got a pretty hearty meal." "It's just a way of somehow dressing that up in a way that would be palatable, so sauces and things is what we need as an accompaniment to that." "Whether or not you're sold on the idea of eating insects, after half an hour in Stuart's company, people just can't wait to give them a go." "Mmm..." "Very good." "Very good." "Out in the natural world, the idea of eating insects is anything BUT alien." "Insects are a vital part of the food chain, with billions being eaten by birds, fish and other animals every day." "It's a fact that's providing scientists with a new insight into the health of the countryside." "Rivers drain over 80% of the Earth's land surface." "On their way to the sea, they support a huge variety of animals and plants, and give rise to some of the world's greatest cities." "But the health of Britain's rivers is being threatened by a cocktail of pollutants, chemicals used in farming, industrial run-off and illegal dumping." "With over a thousand rivers, keeping an eye on their health is a massive task." "The Natural History Museum's backing an inspired project to monitor and safeguard the health of Britain's rivers, and to do that they've got the help of an army of volunteers, people who know the rivers probably better than anyone - Britain's anglers." "'This stretch of the Monnow river in Herefordshire looks pristine...'" "Oh." "I'm all tangled up." "'..but the anglers here are being taught how to read the warning signs below the water's surface.'" "This is a caddisfly, a cased caddis..." "I've gone back to school with a group of local anglers who are finding out it's not fish but riverflies that are the key." "Head teacher for the day is museum research entomologist Steve Brooks." "I hope some of you will take it a little bit further than this and get interested in the insects in themselves." "Maybe you'll even spend more time looking at them than fishing." "These larvae are the first things to be hit when the river is polluted." "Fewer larvae means fewer fish - and that of course means unhappy fishermen." "Well, anglers have got a vested interest in the rivers." "They spend a lot of money on their kit, and they spend a lot of money on their licence fees." "And so if the fishing isn't any good, they want to know why." "And they're on the river a lot, they spend half their lives on the river, so they're ideal for having a look at what insects are there and working out what the water quality's like." "With larvae identification school over, it's down to the banks of the Monnow for the next lesson." "Haven't worn waders for ages." "Our quarry, the riverfly larvae, are found nestling amongst the rocks on the riverbed." "To count their numbers, I need to master the subtle art of kick sampling." "This looks a good place to take a sample." "There's a good strong current." "Yeah, that's ideal." "So put the net down, and then literally just displace the stones." "So we're going to take a three-minute kick sample, so you need to time me while I'm doing the kicking." "Ready...?" "OK, go." "So I just dislodge the stones." "So why is it three minutes?" "It's just to standardise the sampling, so that everybody's doing the same amount of effort." "So if you have a go now..." "Yeah, sure." "Gosh, nearly went in." "I think that's about three minutes now, so shall we call it a day?" "Yup." "So I just tip it all in?" "Yeah, tip it in." "Push it around a bit." "There's all sorts of little creatures whizzing about all over the place." "This is a flat-bodied stone clinger." "Looks a bit scorpion-like in a way." "Yeah." "These are the ones that are very sensitive to pollutants, so they'd be the first things that would disappear." "I mean, this is an olive, so the olives will tend to stay in the river after the stone flies and the flat-bodied ones have gone." "So are people expected to actually to look at a tray like this and count every single one?" "Presumably not." "No." "We estimate the abundance, and then if this number suddenly dropped from hundreds to tens or from tens just to singles, then you know there might be a problem." "To an untrained eye this looks like a healthy river." "Would you say it is?" "Well, I wouldn't say you're untrained, you've been on the course all day!" "No, I agree, it looks pretty healthy, you've got high abundance of most of the groups, and all of the target groups are present there." "Yeah." "Can't really hope for anything better." "So, it's a clean bill of health for the Monnow." "And as appreciation of insects spreads, the health of the river can easily be monitored long into the future." "The fact is that insects are useful in a huge range of ways." "They're a key part of the global food chain." "They're pollinators." "And they're the world's cleaner-uppers." "And it's this last role that's now being put to good use behind the scenes at the museum." "Now, look at the size of this beast." "It's incredible." "Now, you can imagine how you'd go about cleaning up a skeleton this size, but how on earth would you go about cleaning up such a tiny skeleton like this?" "It's a job that falls to a team known as the smallest workers in the museum." "And they don't find anything grisly about the job at all." "Hi, Patrick." "Hello, Jimmy." "Good to see you." "Right, where are these insects?" "'Patrick Campbell is the man in charge.'" "Oh, my God, look." "So we've got a big perch in here which they've cleaned." "You can see them all scurrying around, the adults are the darker ones with the harder outer shell, and the larvae tend to be brown..." "Yep. ..with hairs all over them." "They look like little furry bears, don't they?" "Dermestes maculatus are flesh-eating beetles which are proving invaluable in preparing skeletons for the collection." "And these are important creatures, not only for you to actually strip these skeletons right down till they're pearly white, but also in the wild they help break down all the dead bodies of animals that have been run over and put the nutrients back in the soil." "You can see how clean they've made this perch, it only took about three or four days to get it down to that sort of level." "I've got my head a bit too close, you need a peg on your nose." "There is a bit of a smell, yes." "A bit of a smell(?" ") You're joking." "You get used to it." "These cabinets aren't just boxes to keep the beetles in." "Basically you are replicating in here the perfect environment for those beetles." "It's a five-star hotel." "They've got the food." "They can get on with breeding, warmth..." "Moisture." "There's no need to take them for walks or anything." "That's great, isn't it?" "Fantastic." "So we've got our dried specimen here." "So what will we do with them next?" "I was thinking of putting that one in there." "He's going to go in this..." "Cabinet A?" "Cabinet A." "Here we go, all ready to go." "We've got a lump of flesh here which they're feeding on at the moment." "Oh, yeah, look at those." "Can I grab one of those?" "Just pick one of those up." "I mean, this guy here..." "I'm not sure about holding a flesh-eating beetle larvae." "Look at that." "If you feel asleep and fell in there that would be your lot, wouldn't it?" "The role of insects in decomposition has lead to a whole new science, and one which the museum has embraced." "By looking at the development of maggots at a murder scene, scientists are able to say when death probably occurred." "Forensic entomology, as it's called, is now a crucial weapon in the armoury of the police." "The secrets of forensic entomology have largely been unravelled through work conducted not on humans, but on pigs." "Now that's changing, thanks to an extraordinary research facility in Tennessee." "Museum scientist Amoret Whitaker has spent years studying dead pigs in order to understand the decaying process, but here she's able to work with real human remains." "It's a really good resource for people like me to come along and actually be able to work on the bodies while they're decomposing." "It's the only chance that I get to see the decomposition process right from fresh right through." "So it's a really, really important resource, and just the only one in the world." "I should warn you that what Amoret is about to show me is both graphic and potentially disturbing." "Even as a medical doctor, I'm feeling a little anxious." "Just looking over there behind me, I can really smell it now, there's a mottled dead body." "And behind me I've just seen a car, a sort of disused car." "I didn't really pay attention to it - but I'm sure they're rotting a body in the boot of the car cos that's where I guess you sometimes find murder victims." "I thought it'd be a really big area and we'd get a gentle introduction sort of walking through the woods, but there's a dead body there, a dead body there, and it's just amazing really." "I wasn't really prepared for this." "This body came in yesterday, so this is very, very fresh, but if you look over to the left here..." "Anything under black plastic is a body." "'There's no denying this is a tough place to be.'" "How old would you say this body is, Amoret?" "Over a year old." "Over a year old." "It's quite a moving sight that, isn't it really?" "'But I'm reassured by the fact that all those who donate are fully aware of how their bodies will be used.'" "They quite often spend a lot of time talking to the donors on the phone, to tell them exactly what's going to be done with their bodies." "You know, it's very open." "They don't want people donating who aren't absolutely 100% sure that that's what they want to do." "This is one of your pig/human studies." "This is one of mine." "'Recently, however, the work of forensic entomologists 'has been undermined when it's presented in court.'" "Courts are beginning to question whether the data that we produce from our work on pigs is actually valid for humans." "Amoret is now comparing the action of insects on pigs and donated human corpses, to see if pigs really do give information that can be applied to a human crime scene." "What's important for me is when the first eggs are laid - are there eggs being laid on the pigs and on the humans pretty much at the same time once they've gone out?" "And are the larvae going to develop at the same rate?" "I have to say, I think of myself as someone with a pretty strong stomach, but that is..." "that's tough, isn't it?" "'There's no disguising that this is a grim task, 'but I'm inspired by the way Amoret approaches her work.'" "I give all the bodies names, just because... rather than thinking of them as Man One, Pig One." "So this is Merlin, cos I thought he looked like a wizard." "Yeah, that feels appropriate." "'The longer I'm here, the more I'm really coming to admire the people who've donated their bodies.'" "Amoret's way of rationalising it as" ""he's a kind of home for insects now" is rather nice." "So there's a sort of confusion of things, and it's also physically extremely difficult to look at and confront, but doing it in a kind of professional, businesslike way is much easier." "Yeah, this is one of the harder things I've had to look at really." "Does it smell bad?" "It does smell bad." "You've accustomed to it, have you, can't smell a thing." "Yeah, I'm still very grateful for my cold." "I think the whole point about the forensic entomology is that the appearance is deceptive, and only by looking at the larvae can you actually say... and from what Amoret's saying, the larvae from the pig and the human we expect to agree." "So the best clock for working out the period of time between death and how you find the body is in fact the insects and not the general appearance." "Do you find any of that hard?" "Yeah, I do." "I do, yeah." "That's a relief." "'Under cross-questioning in court, it's been too easy for defence lawyers 'to undermine Amoret's evidence, by pointing out that her research was conducted on pigs.'" "But are you starting to see that pigs might be useful in this kind of thing?" "Oh, certainly, yeah." "I mean, I'd be quite concerned if the flies were landing on the humans but not on the pigs, if the pigs were like two days behind the humans or vice versa." "But it's all looking good at the moment." "Yeah, certainly from what we've seen so far, yeah, looks like it's the right thing to do." "It's really exciting." "It's been quite a big few days for me." "Good, good." "Well, nobody else is doing it, this is the only..." "I'm the only person as far as I know who's doing this kind of work." "And it's just really good background research, not just for us at the Natural History Museum and the work that WE do, but once it's published for forensic entomologists all over the world." "So, you know, this may have been tough to watch, and it's been really tough to be here at points, but I want you to believe these people really retain their dignity, they really do." "They've done quite a difficult and brave thing, I think, donating their bodies to do this kind of thing." "But for me just to be here for a few days, working with Amoret in this new science, which IS helping to solve crimes already, has been a real privilege working with both her and of course with the people who donated their bodies." "They're a crucial part of the global ecosystem." "They're among the strangest and the most beautiful of creatures." "Insects saw the dinosaurs come and go, and it's reckoned that there are insects that could survive the fallout from a nuclear explosion." "In a world of change, we ignore them at our peril, and the kind of work that goes on here means that every day we're benefiting more and more from insects - evolution's greatest success." "Next time, we unravel the secrets of the Koh-i-Noor diamond..." "That is absolutely spectacular." "..get to grips with a celebrity... ..and see how the collections are helping save a species." "The trick is not to let it run off." "For the last programme of the series, we're seeing how the museum is shaping the future for all of us." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"