"No man's land." "The Australian outback place too barren for human to cultivate leaving that clear for the massed for insects." "At certain times" "Australia locusts breed in unthinkable numbers." "Out here, though, they have little impact on the human world the two dominant forces on the planet just each other by." "But when the young locus hoppers get their wings head for places are at cultivated they clash with humans." "It's a plague..." "a war two very different world." "Army worm caterpillars of march in East Africa that 'army' is too small for them." "Army worm moths reproduce in their billions when conditions are just right." "The problem is that when humans plant crops they create perfect conditions." "And when they've ravaged one field they march to next a relentless tide eating machines." "African farmers suffer for years of drought alternant with years of plague for it seems just can't win." "And it's not just farmers" "insects have invaded city since cities first exist people have always fought back." "One of the longest running feuds has been with cockroaches." "They contaminate food, cause diseases and generally of human sensibilities." "Whenever and wherever humans have built homes cockroaches have moved in with them." "Humans have invested much time effort and technology into the ideal of a clear cockroach free world but cockroaches appreciate human technology." "They live just as happily rigs and nuclear submarine as in hotel basements." "Humans spend billions of pounds each year on this problem." "They've manufactured deadly chemicals that can exterminate millions of but millions aren't enough." "Some always survive the few that are resistant they and spawn whole new population of poison proof insects." "The war escalates more and more money is spent on creating new and ever more lethal chemicals." "Some of most dangerous substance ever known are insecticide." "In trying to live insect lives humans saturate the homes their fields the world with toxins." "Perhaps, after all sophisticated chemical engineering can never be final solution." "Despite all human ingenue there's still only one guaranteed method of kill cockroach." "Some of the worst insects problems of all are create when humans take insects places they shouldn't be" "Tiger mosquitoes, for example have been accidentally introduced the United States from Asia" "They breed in still water." "Any still water" "And the small pools that collect in old tires are perfect" "So perfect, that old tyre dumps in the southern can swarm with tiger mosquitoes and their larvae" "It's a problem that human scientists take very seriously." "Tiger mosquitoes carry Dengue fever." "It doesn't in the United States now someone brought the disease into the country there've shortage of mosquitoes waiting to create an epipvamp" "They identify their human victims by the carbon die in their breath" "and they're programme with frightening efficient to lock onto their target." "The solution to the timosquito problem isn't chemical on that's been tried it's biological" "Its another mosquito 'toxorhynchites' 'tox' short." "It's also from South East an ancient enemy of the tiger mosquito." "Released into the tyre they perform an aerial as they scatter their're the water surface." "This graceful dance is prelude to underwater carnage." "The 'tox' eggs hatch in voracious larvae devour other mosquito larvae." "They're insatiable." "But they'll never complete wipe out tiger mosquito a few will always survive." "The need for biological control is becoming more urgent gypsy moths will introduced into North America from Europe." "Will no enemies, no competitor no diseases there was nothing to hold them back" "Their caterpillars eat foliage any foliage and can straight forest bare a drastic solution was needed." "In this laboratory four million gypsy moth caterpillars bred every year and deliberately infected with virus live only to this kind of caterpillar." "They're living incubator the virus multiplies inside then" "When this virus eventual kills them the bodies pulped to make a concentrated virus sprae a biological weapon to use against the caterpillars stripping the trees." "It's a continuous process every day containers of artificial receive yet gypsy moth eggs." "It's a race between the power of insects and the ingenuity of humans." "The insects have the power to destroy entire commercial plantations." "Humans have the power to destroy the insects." "Helicopters soak the form with the viral spray." "But technology works two ways." "As plague rains down from one human invention another one offers gyps moths the chance to escape" "Guided by scent adult moths find females wherever they are." "Females can't fly they cool until they find a vertical surface." "Normally they their eggs on tree trunk but a car is even better." "The car can take this new generation far away from plague zone into a new virus free forest." "Another outbreak begins but it's not always worms when humans meet insect." "Sometimes insects can be used to human advantage." "This is a plague of mopane worms big African caterpillars that devastate mopane bushes." "Humans can't eat mopane bushes but they can eat mopane worms." "At certain times of the year they're harvested by the bucketful by the sackful" "Charcoal grilled they're instant packets of protect people in parts of Bots." "In fact so many are drive and stored that they pick up to a third of the protect the human diet." "Insects make good eating it's only Western culture don't recognize their value" "In Thailand succulent bamboo worms another kind of caterpillar a harvested from inside a bamboo shoot." "They'll be steamed and so then in the market alongside water bugs that are drive like little turkeys them be biting back." "And if the mole cricket still kicking they must fresh." "Hornet grubs, about the same size as prawns, are steamed in the nest." "Insects are eaten in the world over except in the West." "This is strange as lob crabs and prawns are no much different from insect and snails and mussels expensive delicacies." "Yet insects are easier to have and healthier to eat." "Despite the increase in foreign holidays and cotact between different cultural the West has yet to real that insects are delicious." "And Westerners don't of gamble on insects either." "But in Thailand male role beetles are set on special logs and encouraged to fight" "They do fight because there's a female sealed inside the log." "The winning beetle is the one of that throws his opponent the log." "Insects here are part of entertainment business champion beetle can provide a nice profit for his owner." "But these are even more profitable the basis national industry" "Silkworms" "Silkworms eat nothing but mulberry leaves so the factories are surrounded by huge areas of mulberry bushes where humans labour like slaves to the caterpillars." "These insects are as domesticated as cows they're totally depended humans." "And the human economy here depends on the insects an ancient partnership has shaped human culture for over a thousand years." "Once they're fully grow caterpillars spin their precious strands as the build their cocoons this balls of silk threads a sole reason for such devotion to the caterpillar." "The cocoons are unwound by hand each is made single unbroken silk up to half a mile long." "Then the strands are spin again this time to human specifications" "and finally they're into something everyone recognizes as silk." "Human insect partnership do more than just support industries they support entire ways of life." "In the United States team of farm workers are truck to the fields." "Leafcutter bees as much part of the cattle induce cowboys." "These are solitary bees" "Each lives iown tsunnel which it stocks with pollen feed its own family." "As they set out to find provisions they polling vast fields of alfalfa as a diet of cattle." "Alfalfa was the biggest crops in the United States this in could not continue with bees." "And when they've finish this field they'll be travel on to the next one." "The bees are just as have to occupy of these artificial apartment blocks as any natural holes and crevice especially as they're prepare with bright patterns cocoons codes to help each bee its own nest." "Leafcutter bees are receive patterns humans have destroyed so many wild populations of insects with their chemical sprays now having to forge new relationships." "But there's one insect the humans have admired cultivated even worship from before the dawn history." "Honeybees." "Until recently honeybees sweetest thing humans have ever tasted it seemed like a gift from the gods." "Honeybees are big business now a multi million ponds industry." "But honeybees very well out of this partnership." "They're giving homes, are transported round the world they've more abundant now than they would ever be with humans." "This respectful, caring relationship is how it should be how has to be, with most insects." "Humans do realize how much they need insects." "Even so the human attitude to insects is shaped more by the few that are pests hostility and indifferent than by the knowledge the humanity relies on insect" "It can't survive without them" "The problem is that human know so little about insects" "most of what they do know about anything is represented in the world universities and museums those monuments to human knowledge and belief in dominance over the nature world." "Billions of specimens far drawers and on shelves stored in basements and vaults." "Almost every one of the world's birds or mammal, for example is represented somewhere by a specimen in some museum." "It might seem that all nature has been classified and labelled but nothing could be further from the truth." "In all the cabinets, in all museums in all the world there are some one million different kinds of insects maybe thirty million are yet undiscovered." "Quite unknown." "They live out their live oblivious to science supporting the human race ways people can't yet comprehend." "Even in the depths of a museum insects have no respect for science" "museum beetles feed on dead matter and neatly arranged specimens are sacred." "Unchecked, these beetles can destroy knowledge itself." "Some insects it seems can survive anywhere on anything." "But the majority of inssects are fragile creatures" "Even it's destroyed." "As humans eliminate wilderness in their drive dominate the planet the of them and the dread of them are on every beast the Earth." "Hundreds, if not thousand of insect species become extinct each year." "Tragically, most of the have never been glimpse by human eyes and now that privilege is gone ever." "Yet, if all insects were destroyed tomorrow human could not hope to survive without them." "They break down waste matter pollure crops and keep the human race from starvation." "Insects, though, would scarcely notice if human disappeared tomorrow into of the world, their planet." "From a distance a human city can look like a colony of insects." "Millions of individuals living in close contact cooperating to create elaborate structures." "But real insect societies are very different." "Human cities have only been around for a few thousand years since people learned to farm crops." "But insects have been living in communities for tens of millions of years." "Every human in a city is still an individual but in insect societies individuals don't matter" "Every insect is dedicated to the greater good of the colony a slave to the metropolis a devoted subject of the queen." "Here, there's no such thing as a classless society." "But most insects live solitary lives so why do some choose the company of others?" "These sawfly larvae are called ' spitfire bugs' by Australians and it's not a good idea to annoy them." "If they get upset they all spit out a stinging foam" "and the more there are the more effective the deterrent." "They're so wrapped up in each other they even move as one animal." "But there's always one" "So the rest stop, and wait and tap their tails on the branch." "It's not impatience they're calling to the straggler to guide it home." "Any form of social behaviour depends on communication." "Ganging together for mutual defence is a kind of social behaviour but the great insect societies are built on a different bond that between parents and young." "Most insects lay lots of eggs and leave them to fend for themselves." "Some enough will survive and the rest will just die." "But some insects invest in fewer off spring and take good care of them." "They give them the best start in life." "This burying beetle from North America is one of these model parents." "She's looking for a corpse in this case a dead mouse." "She'll meet her future mate here and between them they dig its grave." "It takes them all night working together to bury the mouse" "but once it's safe in an underground crypt it will feed their new family." "The beetle grubs don't have to feed themselves their mother feeds them on predigested mouse puree." "She calls them to meals by scraping her abdomen on her wing case." "Mother and young a simple basic society." "With such tender care they're fully grown in only five days and they'll soon be ready to leave the grave for the land of the living." "But some family ties are much longer lasting." "The cool damp forests of the American Appalachian mountains hide a king of cockroach that stays in a family group for up to three years." "They're found in rotten logs and they only eat rotten wood and there's no shortage of that" "With so much food within reach why would the young be so dependent on their parents?" "Wood is almost impossible to digest." "Cockroaches can only break it down with the help of microbes that live in their gut." "Without these microbes the cockroaches could be surrounded by food and still starve to death." "The young cockroaches must get these microbes from their parents and to do that they must eat their parents' faeces." "As the young reaches grow, they moult and when they moult they also lose the lining of their gut and their vital microbes." "They have no choice but to stay with their parents without them they would die." "But such family units are the foundation of the great insect empires where the parents never let their offspring go keeping them as slaves for the rest of their lives." "Termites." "This towering city was built by just one family of African termites" "but their families are huge up to three million individuals living together." "The human equivalent of this castle would be a structure twenty five times the size of the Empire State building." "Endless tunnels like streets and alleyways and yet not a glimmer of light reaches them." "And deep in the heart of the labyrinth lies the mother of the entire society the queen." "She's huge a massive egg laying machine." "She lays thousands of eggs every day and she can live for thirty years." "She can't even feed herself she has to be tended by her children." "Her consort, the king is dwarfed by her bloated body." "All the rest of the termites are sterile they'll never have offspring of their own." "The queen secretes chemicals that stops them from breeding." "Their only choice is to become workers, soldiers, nurses, builders." "They're all blind labouring by instinct working to a hidden plan to build the castle that is their prison." "Three million termites use up oxygen and give off heat so the fortress has to be fully air conditioned." "Warm air rises from the living quarters into a huge chamber and then passes through tunnels close to the outside where fresh oxygen diffuses in." "Now it flows down into the cooling plant deep underground." "These vanes are damp and as the air moves between them it's cooled before passing back to the living area." "Every kind of termite mound is different but just as intricate." "And termites exist in such huge numbers that their cities dominate the tropical landscape." "Some Australian termites can sense the Earth's magnetic field they orientate their cities to face the rising sun to catch the early morning warmth." "If some termites are the most advanced builders in the insect world others can wreak the most terrible devastation." "These termites don't build their own home they move into somebody else's." "A colony of half a million termites can eat nearly five tons of wood a year." "In the warm climate of the southern United States termites do more than a billion dollars worth of damage each year more than all other natural disasters put together." "And humans take it personally." "Very personally." "Most insurance companies won't cover the cost of the devastation it's too common." "So the householder has to finance the assault on the enemy." "The house is sealed in an airtight tent this is chemical warfare." "A gas, lethal to termites brings' armageddon' for one colony." "But there are always others out there, waiting." "This battle may have been won by humans but the war is never over." "One other group of insects has developed advanced communities but they are very different from those of termites." "Bees, ants and wasps live in all female societies." "This swarm is a sisterhood united in the service of their queen." "Unlike termites males form no part of this society they're just given a brief chance to mate with the queen then discarded." "None of these females will ever breed themselves their sole purpose is to shepherd their new queen as they set off to form another colony." "They surround her protecting her without hesitation they would lay down their lives for her." "Compared to honeybees bumble bee colonies seem more like a village than a city but their structure is still based on slavery." "In all bee colonies the queen rules supreme." "She's raised a workforce of daughters and she secretes chemicals that stop them from breeding if a worker bee dares to lay an egg of her own the queen will eat it." "Each bee is ready to join the labour force as soon as she emerges from her cocoon and her job will depend on her age." "They youngest are put straight to work inside the nest processing food and tending the nursery looking after the grubs their sisters." "They keep them clean and make repairs to the wax cradles." "The more senior workers are allowed to leave the nest bringing back pollen for the rest of their sister." "Bees process and stockpile this food so that the colony will have enough supplies during hard times." "These little colonies are so efficient at gathering pollen that humans can employ them as a workforce." "Despite all the advanced technology supporting commercial tomato greenhouses bumble bees are still the most effective way to pollinate the flowers." "The bee hangs onto the flower and shakes down every last bit of pollen." "This 'buzz pollination' is so efficient there are tomatoes on the supermarket shelves all year courtesy of bumble bees." "Compared to the cottage industry of bumble bees honey bee colonies are run like factories." "But these are no ordinary honey bees." "Twice the size of normal bees and very mean" "each honeycomb is guarded by twenty five thousand bees with an attitude." "They can stockpile enormous quantities of honey enough to support a huge colony through bad weather." "They're so efficient they can even survive in the highest mountain range in the world the Himalayas." "If any honey comb was safe from theft it should be these." "But humans have a strange addiction to anything sweet the villagers of Nepal risk their lives to reach this honey." "They climb down the 80 metre cliff to the combs and drive off the angry bees with smoke" "just long enough to reach for the prize." "Honey is so precious that it can and does cost human lives." "Bee colonies are formidable but nothing like as formidable as some of their relatives." "Of all the insect societies ants are the most organized they have wars they enslave each other they even keep livestock." "Caterpillars, bugs any insects that secrete sweet honeydew are farmed like domestic animals." "Any other intruders are just massacred for food." "This particular kind of ant herds the caterpillars of the Genevieve blue butterfly in Australia." "The ants nest in cracks at the base of trees the caterpillars eat mistletoe growing at the tops of trees." "Every night the ants herd the caterpillars up the trunk to let them feed." "And then the ants milk the caterpillars of their secretions like an insect dairy farm." "At dawn the ants drive the caterpillars back down the tree and into the nest." "These caterpillars are completely dependent on their farmers the only life they know is the company of ants." "Protected, nurtured they even turn into pupae still inside the nest." "Though the butterfly doesn't provide honeydew it's tolerated by the ants." "It's escorted by a farewell party and sent on its way flying the nest for ever." "While some ants manage livestock others farm crops leafcutter ants have developed from a hunter gatherer society to an agricultural one." "Their underground colonies are huge up to eight million individuals organized like an assembly line." "The biggest workers harvest leaves there are so many of them they can strip a tree in one night." "A smaller, mulching caster licks the leaves clean and chews them up but this paste isn't yet food." "It's used to grow a crop a fungus that's only found inside these nests and it's the only food the ants ever need." "The job of tending and planting the fungus in their gardens is carried out by a smaller caste again." "Leafcutter ants are probably the most sophisticated social insects of them all." "A huge metropolis based on division of labour where an individual means nothing." "Each ant is a tiny component in the machinery of the colony working together like clockwork." "A network of living communicating robots that acts like a single organism." "Humans may consider agriculture their greatest achievement the springboard to civilization but ants have been farmers for millions of years." "And for every single human on the planet Earth there are at least a million ants" "The industrial landscape of northern England." "A vision of hell on earth." "An inferno where surely nothing could survive" "except insects." "House crickets live out their entire lives around a two thousand degree blast furnace." "Humans created this monster but even they can't go near it without dressing like astronauts." "Insects have been around for nearly four hundred million years and in that time have colonized the harshest landscapes on Earth natural or man-made." "In fact they dominate just about every bit of land on the planet." "Insects are the original world travelers." "From the fires of hell to paradise the Greek island of Rhodes." "But for Jersey Tiger Moths these hot dry summers are as bad as a blast furnace." "Still, insects with wings don't have to put up with discomfort they can always move." "So from June to September all the tiger moths head for a few small wooded valleys their own paradise where the sun seldom breaks through the trees and a cool stream flows all summer long." "They drape themselves over rock faces cluster in the branches and fill the air." "They've come in their hundreds of thousands every Jersey tiger moth on the island is here." "Bogong moths in Australia have the same idea." "When it gets too hot in the lowlands they fly hundreds of miles to the mountains to cool granite caves." "But how do hundreds of thousands of moths all find their way to these few isolated rocky outcrops." "Moths navigate by the moon and stars because these are so far away they seem to be fixed in space but the moth moves so it can use them as navigation beacons to fly a straight course." "But the system can be fooled." "These stars appear to be moving confusing the moth." "This might look like the sky but its not it's the roof of a cave in New Zealand" "and the stars are the glowing tails of New Zealand glow worms decoy beacons to entice unwary navigators." "These fly larvae have draped the roof with sticky threads that are invisible to the moth." "When it tries to use the false sky to navigate the moth only spirals upwards to become another meal for a waiting glow-worm." "Because insects are so easily confused they often find it hard to adjust to recent changes in their world made by humans." "As they set out to colonize the world they do so with a set of flight instructions that haven't been revised in several million years." "A water boatman's instructions tell it to look for one thing water." "It knows that anything reflecting polarized light is a water surface which was fine until humans came along and invented cars and washed and polished them until they reflected polarized light in the same way." "But it doesn't matter." "Individual insects are expendable." "If one has an accident there will be plenty of others to follow." "The next one will find a pond." "Its not perhaps the best pond there ever was a little short on pondweed and prey" "and with worrying disturbances at the surface." "Still, maybe the next one will find a pond?" "For creatures as small as insects expeditions between habitats are always a gamble and the longer the migration the greater the odds against finishing it." "This is one of the longest journeys of all every autumn monarch butterflies set off from all over the United States and head for a few sunny valleys in the mountains of Mexico for some a journey of nearly 2000 miles." "But even a creature as single minded as this migrating butterfly is at the mercy of the wind." "It can easily be blown off course" "Its instincts don't allow for the coast of California turning into the Pacific Ocean." "But there are specks of land in this vast ocean and the butterfly has a chance a very remote chance of finding a new home as long as it keeps flying." "Accidents like this often bring insects to places they never meant to go but as they can evolve and adapt they've stayed anyway." "There are some two hundred different kinds of darkling beetles in the searing Namib desert." "The only moisture comes from the dawn sea mists and a beetle survives by drinking the water that condenses on its body." "And when the sun climbs higher and the fog disperses the ground becomes burning hot" "most beetles escape by digging to the cooler sand just below the surface." "Humans can only survive these conditions cocooned in their technology." "A beetle doesn't have that option instead this one relies on long legs and speed." "The scorching sands of the Namib have produced the fastest beetle in the world." "Since each leg is in contact with the ground for only a fraction of a second it doesn't get burned." "In relative terms it's like a land rover crossing the sliding dunes at two hundred and fifty miles an hour." "Less athletic beetles rely on being tough." "That was the human equivalent of being run over by a steam roller." "But a place doesn't have to be dry to be a desert." "Nestled among towers of alkaline limestone in southern California" "Its a lake desert" "Mono Lake so salty little can live here except primitive algae and of course, insects." "This is the domain of the Brine flies." "No predators, no competitors nothing to keep the numbers in check." "At the peak of the season there are 2000 tonnes of flies around the shore." "And there's all the food a fly can eat." "Their larvae live underwater and feed on algae in the lake and since there's nothing else to eat here the adults also have to dive below the surface to feed." "They submerge in a self contained bubble of air." "Insects can survive in searing heat or in bitter cold." "This is a weta a kind of primitive cricket." "It lives in the mountains of New Zealand where the high altitude can give every day all the seasons of the year." "It was a fine autumn evening when the weta came home" "but by midnight deepest winter will have set in." "The weta freezes solid." "It's a fundamental rule of life that animals can't survive this." "When an animal freezes ice crystals rupture all the cells and it dies." "But chemicals inside the weta's body stop the ice crystals from growing too quickly and its cells can adapt." "Even though the weta freezes solid its cells and it will make it through the night." "When the sun rises spring starts to make its way down the mountain and into the weta's cavern." "The warmth reaches the cricket and thaws it out unharmed." "Crickets in general are experts at pioneering inhospitable places." "The island of Hawaii the chain's 'Big island' is still getting bigger." "Volcanoes are constantly erupting pouring out lava of the seas this is the newest land on the planet." "But sterile lava flows don't stay sterile for along lava crickets move in and surprisingly there's no shortage of food." "Anywhere, at any time the air is full of insects riding the wind to new opportunities or to death." "Enough of them rain down like manna from heaven to feed the whole population of lava crickets." "Most insect travelers will die before reaching safety but there are so many of them that a few will be lucky and find a new home." "Luck, though, is running out for the monarch butterfly lost in the vastness of the Pacific exhausted and disorientated it faces a lonely death." "The open sea is the only place that insects haven't mastered but even here though some do manage to make a living." "The tiny ocean strider somehow survives on the surface despite storms and hurricanes." "Like lava crickets ocean striders rely on the failures of unlucky travelers and fortunately for this one the monarch's bad luck lasted to the bitter end." "It died not knowing it was in reach of paradise the most remote island chain in the world" "Hawaii." "But there are already plenty of insects here every on descended from something that came here by mistake and stayed and changed." "Over many generations some of them lost their wings which makes sense there simply isn't anywhere else to go." "Even the flies can't fly." "When insects find themselves in a new place they make the most of any opportunity for change." "From one chance colonist there are now 20 different kinds of these moth caterpillars all camouflaged in different ways all with the same trick a whiplash strike." "Predatory caterpillars like this are unique to Hawaii." "Isolated, they had none of the usual problems like predators or competitors to hold them back." "Evolution didn't have much raw material to work with here but it had a free hand it could be really creative." "Hawaii was colonized by chance by the few insects that the wind didn't drop into the sea." "Most insects of the mostly of the wind" "But some insects know exactly where the wind will carry them." "As the early summer heat starts to scorch Central Valley, California ladybirds simply fly away to find a cooler spot." "At this time of year, a mile up there's always a strong wind blowing due east straight towards the Sierra Nevada mountains, fifty miles away." "If they fly high enough they can hitch a ride." "When they get where they're going they descend on a few particular valleys." "Millions upon millions converge here." "In their isolated valleys they sit out the rest of the summer and winter only returning to Central Valley next spring when the wind starts to blow the other way." "For million of years insects have been voyaging around the world by riding the wind, but recently a new force in global travel emerged and insects have been quick to climb aboard." "Exploring new worlds and colonizing new lands is also a human specialty." "Today with technology and communications humans can span the globe in a matter of hours." "But humans originally came out of Africa and spread to every continent on the planet." "Cockroaches also came out of Africa and traveled with human wherever they went." "Today thousands of different kinds of insects have found themselves in places they might never have reached without human help." "But cockroaches are one of humanities oldest and most persistent traveling companions." "Their design has not changed in 320 million years yet its perfectly suited to the most modern of opportunities." "Cockroaches it seems can survive just about anywhere or anything." "Its been said that in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust the only survivors would be a few primitive plants" "and cockroaches." "Though without humans around for free transport and lodging life might be a bit less comfortable for them." "But when humans eventually learned to fly" "It wasn't just cockroaches that traveled with them." "In 1945, at Te Rapa Airforce Base in New Zealand two queen wasps disembarked from a crate of spare parts that had been flown in from Europe." "They had reached the promised land no predators, no competitors plenty of food and no harsh winters." "Here, the nests don't die out each year they just keep on growing the wasps' triumph has become the stuff of human nightmares." "These nests can reach several metres across and contain tens of thousands of angry insects." "Even the wasp control service has to work full time to contain them." "It only took one aeroplane flight too many for insects to claim another colony as their own." "An attack can happen anywhere." "Even the suburbs of an American city are a nightmare world for insects just another battleground in a war that's been fought for hundreds of millions of years." "A moth confused by the flight is being watched a ruthless predator is waiting for just the right moment." "Humans only face monsters in their fantasies but insects face them every day in their world." "A preying mantis is a fearsome predator in its miniature universe but it still needs its own defences." "Every insect is just a convenient mouthful of protein to bigger animals." "When it takes to the air the predator become the prey." "This mantis has been targeted by the sonar of a bat." "But the mantis has a single ear." "It can hear the bat's puses of ultrasound." "When the bat gets closer the mantis deliberately stalls and tumbles out of the air to safety." "And to the bat its target has just disappeared." "Insects live in a world of attack and defence measure and counter measure." "The most deadly battleground is the rainforest." "Human scientists have no real idea of how many different kinds of insects live out their lives here." "Certainly hundreds of thousand possibly millions." "And they're all fighting their own private wars usually out of sight of human eyes." "It's a jungle out there insects are in conflict with spiders with other insects with plants with just about everything." "For many insects the best defence is to look like the plants they live on." "Every vein, every blemish is reproduced down to the last detail." "Dead leaves damaged leaves green leaves." "Perfect camouflage so long as they keep still." "If danger does come too close an enemy can be started by a sudden flash of colour." "Most of these secret wars are being fought high in the tree tops and the only way that humans can even glimpse the scale of these battles the sheer number of antagonists is by fogging the trees" "discharging a fast acing insecticide into the canopy." "It'll bring down the rain of hidden insects into the collecting funnels below" "There are millions of insects with millions of different strategies for staying alive but they all have one basic aim in life to find enough to eat amongst all this competition." "Yet insects are masters at exploiting any kind of food whether in the jungle or in a human eating house." "Their secret lies with their mouthparts versatile, flexible engineered precisely to process any food on offer." "Cockroaches still have the same basic design as the earliest insects." "Their mouths come complete with their own cutlery set the outer instruments act like knives slicing and crushing the food." "Then it's passed back to a pair of forks which shovel it upinto the mouth itself." "A caterpillar also needs jaws like knives for slicing up endless amounts of tough plants." "But a caterpillar eventually becomes a butterfly and when it does it alters its diet from solid leaves to liquid nectar." "So, during its transformation it completely redesigns its mouthparts." "The knives disappear and the forks transform into a flexible drinking straw." "Less than half a millimeter wide it sucks up liquid and when the butterfly's finished it just rolls it up like a hosepipe on a reel." "But the most complex design belongs to the fly." "A pad of fine tubes to slurp up its liquid food." "Finding food is only half the battle." "The other half is staying alive long enough to enjoy it." "In the world of insects there's no such thing as a free lunch." "There's fierce competition for anything edible." "Even something that at times the howler monkey dung" "It's greaing fead to fly" "But it happening quick" "These beetles specialise in howler monkey dung." "They claim it as their own taking it away to bury it out of sight of predators and rivals they have no intention of sharing their food." "All they have to do is to hang onto their prize while they plunge the hundred fee to the forest floor." "The beetles are so quick at carrying off their food that at times the forest rains dung." "Howler monkey dung does have one advantage as a food it doesn't mind being eaten." "This leaf on the other hand does." "Its part of a plant that can defend itself by producing a nasty poison." "Milkweed for example has several poisons in it but its still covered with aphids sucking its juices." "And milkweed beetles that happily chew the leaves immune to all its toxins." "And some insects are not just immune to the toxims they store them in their bodies making them poisonous to their enemies." "But there's no point in being poisonous and having to be eaten before a predator learns its lesson." "Deadly insects advertise their toxins in advance by wearing bright colours." "Ganging together emphasizes these point." "Orange and black is a hazard warning recognized everywhere." "But at night poisonous insects need a different alarm system." "A tiger moth's warning colours protect it during the day but it can't be seen in the dark." "And anyway the main danger at night comes from bats which use sound to find their prey." "The moth though can hear the bat's sonar and turns on its own siren." "It screams an ultrasonic warning that the bat can't fail to hear." "The bat understands and leaves the moth in peace." "Insects are never free from danger and often an insect's worst enemy is another insect." "A clover worm caterpillar seems helpless defenceless to a hungry ladybird larva." "But the caterpillar can escape it drops out of sight on a line of fine silk." "Its victim seems to have vanished so the lad bird larva just gives up." "Once the threat has gone the caterpillar hauls itself up and carries on eating." "This wasp is also hunting the caterpillar not to eat it but to lay her eggs inside it." "An a wasp is not so easily fooled." "The caterpillar tries its vanishing act again but the wasp just abseils down the line." "Injecting her eggs won't kill the caterpillar straight away but it will die as her grubs hatch and eat it from the inside." "But its day isn't over yet another kind of wasp needs a caterpillar incubator." "This one reels in the lifeline and injects her eggs." "When they hatch they will eat the first wasp's grubs even the muggers get mugged." "It seems that every defence is open to counter attack in the battle ground of the rainforest where they're a threat lurking in every shadow insects have adopted some drastic measures." "Termites live inside a caste." "They don't often leave the safety of their fortress." "If they do it's to build extensions or make repairs and they're guarded by an army of soldier termites." "With all this security termites should be safe from attack." "But waiting outside is their worst nightmare an assassin bug in full disguise." "Termites take a big risk when they open their fortress they're blind and the bug has covered itself in their building material." "To them its just another part of the nest." "They simply blunder into it." "The assassin bug sucks the termite's body dry." "The workers try to close the gaps in their defences as quickly as they can they're still not safe until every tiny crack is sealed." "In the meantime the bug has a sinister use for its victim." "Termites live by rules they're fanatically tidy." "A dead termite has to be taken to the communal graveyard and the assassin bug exploits this obsession." "All that the worker detects is a corpse and the assassin bug shakes the body teasing the worker." "Compulsive tidiness will cost this termite its life." "As if fishing through a hole the bug dangles the corpse as bait." "Then it drops it and grabs the worker the next in a chain of up to twenty serial murders." "Insects weren't even safe from other insects when they took to the air." "Robber flies are deadly flying predators and there are thousands of them stationed across the high plains of Colorado." "Anything flying through their airspace is adking for trouble." "They all scramble to intercept" "the first one there make a grab snatches the bee from the air and crash lands with its bounty." "But all flying insects face an even worse threat from an ancient enemy." "As long as insects have been able to fly spiders have built traps to snare them." "Some webs don't just entangle their victims they draw them in with a trick." "These zig-zags reflect ultra violet light looking like dappled sunlight to the vision of a butterfly." "And a patch of sulight on the ground would be just the place to find flowers." "Paralysed and wrapped in silk some victims will be stored in the web a future meal but that's an open invitation to some other insects." "This spindly Australian assassin bug makes a living by stealing from spiders." "This spider has no idea that there's a burglar in its home." "The assassin bug tip toes across the web so delicately that any vibration seems just like the breeze." "It snaps each strand in its path carefully so the spider doesn't notice." "Safely in the center of the web the bug just has to wait for the spider to stop its food" "A different burgalr this time a scorpion flies is already awaiting the spider's supplies" "This may seem like a free meal but it's still a risky place to eat" "It can sometimes get caught on the sticky thread but he has a cunning ban" "It spits out of solvent to dissolve the deadly silk fling himself to infiltrate another web" "But there's one insect that launches a full frontal attack on spiders." "The giant damselfly." "Six inches long the damsel fly doesn't just steal the spider's prey it steals the spider." "It can hover stalking the spider from the air then snatching it from its web." "A deadly air raid performed like an aerial ballet." "In their battle for survival insects are obviously winning there are so many of them and so many different kinds and each and very one has come up with a unique strategy for staying alive." "But for insects the war is never over" "and in their bid to stay one step ahead some insects have evolved surprisingly powerful weapons." "Few creatures will risk annoying a bombadier beetle." "It mixes a cocktail of deadly chemicals in a special chamber." "They react and explode at boiling point from its rear end an awesome chemical weapon." "But even this is no defence against one predator." "The power of the many out weights the power of the one." "A bivouac of army ants perhaps three quarters of a million individuals meshed together to form a living nest." "This encampment is resting now." "But when the order is given the monster will waks and send out its tendrils into the forest." "There's no defence against this invasion no room for negotiation." "This army takes no prisoners." "Even ruthless predators succomb to this wave of devastation there's no mercy" "This relentless tide of destruction creeps through the forest at twenty metres an hour annihilating everything in its path." "Individual insects can't reach the size of monsters from the world of science fiction but working together an army of ants behaves like a single giant creatures a monster from the world of science fact." "North America the Mississippi river." "Its July and the afternoon is still very hot." "People here dread this kind of day at this time of year." "They brace themselves." "Because it is happening again." "All afternoon they've risen out of the water mayflies invade the city in their millions in their billions." "For the last year they existed ad grubs feeding in the mud at the bottom of the river building up energy for this one day." "At dusk they take to the air." "This is a dance of life and death there is only one reason to fly to mate." "And this is their only chance tomorrow the will all be dead." "They can't even eat adult mayflies have no mouthparts." "With only enough energy to fly once and mate they crash onto the water surface pouring out their cargo of eggs as they die." "From this final act comes a stream of new life a continuing story unbroken for nearly four hundred million years." "And in that four hundred million years the biggest problem mayflies have face is a recent one." "Humans have built cities on their river." "Cities with bright lights that draw them away from the dance so that they die without ever laying their eggs." "The night leaves a scene of devastation" "their bodies litter the roads and bridges and clog up machinery." "Less than a day after they emerged from the river every single mayfly is dead." "They had only one reason for living and may of them failed." "It all seems so printless even tragic but each mayfly was just an insect being an insect its only purpose in life to make more insects." "More and more" "And all insects are as dedicated to this cause as mayflies." "This is a moth." "At least mayflies get to fly but a female vapourer moth doesn't even have wings she's just a bag of eggs." "She mated once with a passing winged male who then flew away leaving her to spend her whole adult life in an area not much bigger than a postage stamp." "Most insects lay hundreds of eggs in the hope that a few will survive." "Every egg has its own fleeting moment maternal care and attention but once in place the eggs are left to hatch or not by themselves." "But even though their mother is probably dead by now she has given them the best start she could each egg is a microscopic survival capsule." "Most are smaller than a pinhead yet every different kind of insect egg is a unique an intricate sculpture." "Vast numbers of eggs are an insurance against disaster but if it weren't for these disasters insects would overwhelm the planet." "Flies for example breed every few week if this pair were to breed and all their descendents survived and bred for a year the resulting ball of maggots would be as big as the Earth." "more than enough bait for a whole nation of fishermen." "But nature has a way of keeping things in check predators competitors disease flies die like flies." "Its only when human meddle with nature that they unleash the real power of insects to make more insects." "If a fisherman say put a tray of maggot in a fridge expecting the cold to keep them subdued until he got back from holiday" "and if just after he left for the airport a fuse blew." "the fridge would warm up nicely and there would be nothing to stop all the maggots turning into blue bottle flies." "In a matter of days each one of these will produce a thousand new maggots an unpleasant welcome home with such huge numbers mayflies and bluebottle flies have no problem finding a mate but its now that simple for everyone." "A derelict warehouse in north America is a huge three dimensional space so how can a lone silk moth hope to find a mate here?" "Silk moths have been introduced from the rainforest of Asia a place just as big and complicated." "And there they developed a system that works however complex the surroundings." "She advertises herself with scent a special chemical a pheromone released from a gland on her abdomen." "The scent consists of long molecules with a particular shape." "These are only recognized by this kind of moth." "They fit like a key in a lock into special receptors on the male moth's antennae." "His antennae are so sensitive it only takes a dozen molecules to excite him he could detect her a mile away." "By flying upwind and tacking across the waves of scent he moves in her general direction." "As he gets closer the scent gets stronger and the waves turn into a flood." "She could be anywhere here it seems like she is everywhere." "He's overwhelmed he knows he is very close but he has to find her as best he can." "The do finally get to mate but scent is most effective over long distances." "At short ranges it can be confusing which is why this polka dot moth in the deep south of the USA has developed a separate short range system as well." "A male moth homes in on a female's scent" "She avoids any last minute confusion by switching to a finer signal a beam of sound." "Not that humans would recognize it as sound the moth's music is pitched seven octaves above human hearing moths hear in ultrasound." "She gives him precise directions with a medley of ultrasonic clicks." "As he closes in he clicks back" "The problem with broadcasting sound though is that some predators can also tune in." "These brightly coloured moths are very poisonous they don't care who else hears their broadcast." "But more appetizing insects need a secure channel." "Leaf hopper are not poisonous so when they use sound it has to be as private as a phone call." "They transmit vibrations through their legs to the plant stems and the sound is received by touch." "In other words leafhoppers hear with their feet." "The males move from plant to plant calling and listening for females of their own kind." "They've not distracted by sounds in the human world and humans are completely unaware that their garden plants are alive with secret music." "Some insects are not as shy they've songs are so amplified that humans cannot fail to hear them." "The world's loudest singers live in Australia." "Distant relatives of leafhoppers cicadas." "A cicada sings by clicking membranes in his absomen back and forth." "His song can be heard half a mile away." "But to a predator wanting to hunt him down his song seems to come from a different bush." "Hes not only loud he's a ventriloquist." "Once they get going some cicadas can sing at 120 decibels enough to drown out a pneumatic drill." "Double drummer cicadas are the loudest insects in the world but not far behind are "greengrocers"" ""yellow Mondays" "black princes" "cherry noses"." "And they all live in Sydney." "No wonder that in the din of summer many people move away for the season." "Some insects use vision to find a mate they've attracted by simple good looks." "A female jewel beetles flaunts her golden dimpled wing casing which is irresistible to a male." "It's also big with him is beautiful" "But in recent years males have discovered other distractions." "For a male jewel beetle it's the simple things that are exciting if its orange and dimpled then its just what he is looking for." "And enormous this must be a super female a jewel beetle goddess." "Certain beer bottles have just the right colour and texture all the males in the area are besotted." "The real females are ignored." "With so many males on the bottle the beetles were in danger of extinction until the breweries began redesigning their bottles hoping the males would spend some time with their females." "A male walnut fly also has a simple goal in life." "He has to hay claim to a blemish on the surface of a walnut." "Its not easy other males will challenge him." "Every male knows that a female fly needs to lay her eggs inside the hard shell but she can only pierce the casing through a soft blemish." "The male that controls the blemish will be guaranteed a visit from a female sooner or later there is no room for a rival." "These two males could just fight it out but the bigger one would win." "So why not just take each other's measure decide who's bigger who would lose and avoid the intervening violence?" "This dispute is settled and no-one gets hurt." "Real males in the insect world do resort to combat and evolve nasty weapons just for fighting duels." "Outside a temple in Thailand deer horn stag beetles clash head on for the honour of claiming a female but the fight isn't just a brawl it's a ritual every bit as formal as anything inside a temple." "There are rules to follow" "The first to destroy the component is the winner" "This fight is a female and she gets to mate with the champion." "Females never have time for losers." "For most insects choosing the strongest male and laying vast numbers of eggs is enough to win the game of survival" "but some are much more inventive than that." "To an insect even a computer is just somewhere warm and safe a carpet beetles grub or woolly bear lives a peaceful life feeding on dust particles but there is something else here as well." "This wasp has plans for the woolly bear." "It can run but it cant hide." "The wasp stings the woolly bear not to kill it but to stun it." "Once its paralysed she drags her still living trophy to a safe hideaway." "This wasp is a more caring mother than most insects she lays one egg on the helpless body and leaves it to hatch." "Wasps have turned exploitation into a fine art they nourish their young at someone else's expense." "This hawk moth caterpillar doesn't know it yet but its about to become a walking incubator." "The females wasp hijacks the caterpillar resistance is useless as soon as she finds somewhere soft enough she will inject her precious eggs." "The inside of the caterpillar is mostly liquid so her eggs will be cushioned and safe from the outside world." "She can leave them the caterpillar will take care of them from now on." "It gorges itself trying to stockpile food reserves for the time when it becomes a moth but the wasp eggs have hatched into grubs and they absorb all the nourishment the caterpillar can provide." "As fast as the caterpillar lays down fat around its gut the wasp grubs devour it." "From then they take control they release a chemical that imitates one of the caterpillars own hormones one that stops it from beginning its transformation into a moth." "Instead, it keeps on eating and growing until it turns into a supergiant a huge eating machine that just manages to keep up with the ravenous appetites of the parasite inside." "Eventually when they've taken all they need from the caterpillar they release chemicals to paralyse it and they wriggle through the body wall." "Their first task in the outside world is to spin their silken cocoons to begin their transformations into wasps." "The caterpillar will never complete its own transformation but from one caterpillar's body hundreds of wasps have been given life." "Insects may be small and each individual seems vulnerable on its own but they have one thing going for them." "Numbers Sheer quantity." "There are simply so many insects." "As each insect's purpose in life is to produce even more whatever happens to the rest of the world insects are here to stay." "There will always be lots of insects making more insects making more insects..." "Somewhere on the outer reaches of the galaxy" "There's a small planet dominated by an alien life form creatures too numerous to count they can survive conditions no other creature can tolerate" "Other life forms try to destroy them" "but their resilience has been their strength for hundreds of millions of years." "They lurk in the darkest of corners or control entire landscapes." "They seem to come from the world of science fiction but they belong to the world of science fact welcome to the world of insects." "Planet Earth." "Temperature range - 80 to +50 degrees centigrade." "Atmosphere nitrogen oxygen." "Life abundant and diverse." "Humans think they own this planet but they've only been around for a couple of million years." "This world belongs to insects and it's done so for nearly four hundred million years." "Possibly 30 million differect kinds more than the rest of the animal kingdom put together a billion, billion individual insects alive at any one moment." "They range from the grotesque to the bizarre" "to the beautiful." "Insects are vital to life on earth without these tiny creatures even the human race couldn't exist." "Each and every insect is a perfect miniature machine." "Insects owe their dramatic success to sophisticated software and elegant hardware." "Humans have hardly begun to understand these designs they've barely glimpsed this strange empire but insects have invaded every corner of the human world." "And in the few hundred years since humans started trying to classify insects they've only managed to name to pin down less than than a million." "And the most that's known about those is the Latin name they've been given." "Only a few thousand are understood well." "Most insects live in the tropics but they've colonised every continent and island on the planet." "Transported by wind and wings insects have conquered the globe yet this beetle is as big as they ever get a little bigger than a mouse." "Because they've so tiny the world is a very different place to insects and they've had to solve life's problems in very different ways from bigger animals." "Unearthly shapes and weird structures designs that go far beyond anything dreamed up by human imagination." "Living in a miniature world makes them as different from humans as it's possible to be." "It's these differences that make them seem so alien." "Large animals are supported by a skeleton on the inside and their soft tissue muscles and skin are on the outside." "This rigid framework of bones works so well that this design has supported the biggest creatures that ever lived." "Insects are built the other way round they've hard on the outside." "They wear a tough waterproof armour that protects their soft insides and supports their body the best design for their miniature world." "An external skeleton has another advantage it can be moulded into any shape imaginable precision tools or powerful weapons." "Even the fearsome horns of a rhino beetle are just extensions of its skeleton." "And the skeleton is strong enough to stand up to the strain of being grabbed and squeezed these beetles would find it hard to actually hurt each other." "Their dispute is settled by a grappling match." "But insect design goes far beyond heavy duty engineering they've also perfected micro architecture." "The glittering colours of a jewel beetle are nothing to do with pigments instead it's all done with light reflecting off their delicately textured surface." "At a microscopic level its casing is sculpted into tiny transparent plates slanted and shaped like cut glass to reflect all the colours of the rainbow." "And these ridges are precisely the same distance apart less than a thousandth of a millimeter." "They decorate each and every tiny scale on the wing of a morpho butterfly and reflect iridescent blue that shimmers and changes with the direction of the light." "The butterfly sheds a few scales as it flies and still they reflect the light leaving a sparkling firework display in its wake." "This hard outer casing may be a design miracle with flexible joints that allow it to bend but the problem is it can't stretch and grow." "And a caterpillar's life is dedicated to growing these have to increase their size by 20, 000 times between hatching and turning into moths." "So, when they get too big for their casing they moult." "A new, soft skeleton is ready underneath all the caterpillar has to do is loosen the old one and step outside." "The new casing is soft at first so it can be inflated then hardened giving the caterpillar a bit more room to grow." "Not only is this casing waterproof it's airtight." "Like most other creatures insects need oxygen but they don't have lungs." "Instead, down each side they have a series of holes which are normally kept tightly sealed." "But every now and then they open and the air rushes in." "The holes lead to a network of tubes made from the same material as the hard casing." "Inside the armour in its liquid interior the caterpillar's organs its tubular heart and massive gut are all connected to a complex branching network of air tubes." "Within the tissues the tubes branch ever finer until they've so minute they can penetrate individual cells in fact each and every cell is plumbed directly into its own oxygen supply." "Their elegant breathing system and waterproof armour were the breakthrough that allowed insects to invade dry land." "Before that, most life on earth lived in the sea." "But it was another design innovation that allowed them to complete their conquest of Earth." "That happened 350 million years ago in the great carboniferous swamps." "Insects evolved wings." "No one has any real idea how this happened the earliest fossils had fully formed wings like those of dragonflies." "Except that some of the first dragonflies were huge they had a wingspan of half a metre." "Yet again wings are made of the same material that forms body armour but here, it's so thin it's transparent and supported by a network of veins." "The wings of insects are unique when birds, bats and pterodactyls took to the air they had to compromise and turn a pair of legs into wings." "But insect wings evolved from scratch completely new structures." "No compromise here just infinite design flexibility." "The hind wings of a Madagascar moon moth developed long tails rudders to keep it straight when it glides." "Insects were the first creatures to take to the air" "for hundreds of millions of years they had the sky to themselves." "Although they seem frail insect wings can carry them over vast distances." "In the case of monarch butterflies a journey of thousands of miles to their wintering grounds." "But the most sophisticated flying insect is the humble house fly." "Its wings are powered by special muscles that can contract at very high frequencies up to 500 times a second." "They produce enormous amounts of power weight for weight similar to a small aircraft piston engine." "And its flight path is controlled by an on board computer that makes the latest electronic designs seem primitive." "It flies on one pair of wings the hind pair are reduced to knobs that act like gyroscopic stabilizers." "The compound eyes are adapted for fast flight in confined spaces they process data at phenomenal rates." "To human vision anything flickering faster than 15 times a second appears a continuous blur but a fly sees separate images up to a hundred times a second." "Neon tubes flicker fast enough to give constant light to humans but look like a strobe to a fly." "A television picture is made up line by line so quickly that humans see a single moving picture but a fly isn't fooled." "But there's one more design problem to crack wings are delicate structures easily damaged on the ground." "Beetles have solved this problem they've turned their front wings into hard wing cases that protect their fragile hind wings." "This allows beetles to go where other insects fear to tread to live in narrow tunnels to burrow through wood or soil even dung." "And their legs are still free to evolve into whatever's needed in the case of dung beetles shovels for digging and packing the dung into balls." "Inventing wing cased was almost as successful as developing wings in the first place there are more beetles than any other kind of insects." "They're masters of the ground and on six legs beetles have the power of speed this is one of the fastest the giant tiger beetle from South Africa." "Within it's own world it's more fearsome than a tiger" "and faster than a cheetah." "It's jaws are just as specialized as its legs gripping and crushing its victim so it can drink every last drop of nourishment." "When it's finished there's nothing left of the moth except its outer casing discarded like an empty bottle." "To co-ordinate this extraordinary hardware insects also need equally complex software the don't just have a single brain they also have separate nerve centers controlling each pair of legs." "Humans are trying to build robots based on the same design hoping they'll be able to cross any terrain however rough or unforgiving." "But there's no contest." "Micro-processors are huge and clumsy compared to insect nerve centers." "All the robot can manage is an undignified lurch while a cockroach can scramble over any obstacles at high speed." "In fact, the cockroach is the fastest thing on six legs." "At top speed it can cover a metre a second." "Most insects behave entirely by instinct." "They've made with their instructions 'wired in' but that doesn't stop them having very sophisticated behaviour." "Toctoc beetles, for example live in the vast scrublands of South Africa and they can communicate with each other in a sort of Morse code." "They tap on the sand and each kind of beetle has its own distinct code so their software must be able to recognize a particular rhythm." "But some insects are not just pre-programmed machines they can learn." "The most advanced software so far discovered belongs to the honey bee." "Different flowers open at different times of the day and need different techniques to get at the nectar." "But a bee can remember it links the position of the sun to the type of blossom and how to reach the nectar." "Bees can store data for up to six different blooms but they can only cope with one kind of flower at any one time of day." "If the sun's at five o'clock it must be yellow daises." "And if the sun starts to go away it must be time to go home." "These honey bees live their lives on permanent display an observation hive in a museum is a window onto a mysterious world." "Normally unseen in the depth of the hive bees discuss their day among the flowers by dancing." "This dance language tells other bees the direction and distance of the flowers and the quality of the nectar." "And this whole complex communication system is driven by a few tens of thousands of neurons packed into space the size of a grain of sugar the brain of a bee a masterpiece of micro-circuitry." "In both hardware and software design insects are the ultimate miniature machines." "Their design has endured the test of time insects have dominated this planet for hundreds of millions of years." "They witnessed the rise and fall of the dinosaurs." "And only a few million years ago they witnessed a large brained ape climb down from the trees stand upright and invent technology." "Since then, insects have invaded every corner of the human world including the depths of their imagination." "People, on the other hand have hardly begun to explore the insects' empire." "And for all their technology humans will never be able to control this alien world."