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Originally appears in the Winter 2017 issue
by Nathan Shipley and Rob Bixler
NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES with insects so strongly shape our students’ perceptions that even the best efforts of environmental educators during class time sometimes fail. Insects are their own worst spokespersons. The only bugs that tend to hang around us are those that bite us, suck our blood, defensively sting, or infest our food. The media, in movies and pesticide commercials for instance, present insects in the worst possible light. For every one positive experience with insects, people have hundreds of negative ones with bothersome bugs.
When questioned, many adults cannot even generate the simple “six legs and three-part body” defnition of insects. They also tend to incorrectly include spiders and other small arthropods as examples of insects. To most people “bugs” seem to be any small dull-colored creature that crawls and a sizeable minority of people believe butterfies are not insects. Ticks, spiders, millipedes, and centipedes, are all
“bugs” to most people. Our seemingly unimportant relationship with insects dramatically influences our pesticide use, understanding of biodiversity, home landscaping preferences, and participation in outdoor recreation.
Did we mention that people hate bugs? In numerous small-scale studies of attitudes and knowledge about insects, both they and spiders are anything but popular in rankings of animal preferences, falling far below birds and mammals. Clearly, many people are not using the word “insect” in the scientific sense they were taught in school. In this article, we argue that a wide variety of personal, community, and societal benefits can emerge if we can find more ways to focus our students’ attention on the lowly, creepy critters that most people just call “bugs.”
Benefits of increased interest
When we continuously engage children with a variety of living bugs native to where they live, we are influencing not just our students, but their families, communities, and society. Our loathing of “bugs” comes with environmental costs. While there are real reasons to target destructive pests, the irrational application of pesticides is as common as the irrational fear of bugs. One study found that the majority of homeowners reported that just seeing one bug was motivation to apply pesticides. In these all too common cases, pesticide applications are being used to “treat” irrational fears of bugs rather than address real problems. The needless application and prolonged exposure from modern organophosphate based insecticides have been linked to increased human cancers, Parkinson’s disease, and respiratory diseases. When children are repeatedly exposed to instructional activities using live bugs, they are less likely to develop irrational fears of bugs.
Bugs have become an excuse not to go outside. A recent Outdoor Foundation study notes that in 2015, 51 per cent of the US population did not spend a single day taking part in outdoor recreation. Along with health costs, fewer nature experiences means fewer people interested in conserving special places. While loathing of pests is one reason not to explore natural places, their harmless relatives could become a beguiling reason to get outside searching and exploring if children just knew how to look for non-pest bugs.
Developing an interest in bugs should help make the not-so-biologically-diverse “Great American Lawn” go away. As boring as lawns tend to be, it is little wonder that children stay inside their homes using electronics. Gardening for wildlife, including bugs, can change the suburban and urban landscapes for the better. People need to not only be comfortable, but fascinated with bugs for such a movement to be successful. Lawns tend to be bug-free, while more diverse landscaping attracts insects. Helping children develop a fascination with bugs is an essential step in growing the conservation everywhere movement. We are quickly realizing that any bit of green space, whether an unmowed area behind a factory or a lawn in an urban context can provide for biodiversity. Most of that diversity is in the form of small invertebrates.
Being enthusiastic about insects, rather than repulsed, may even help in addressing problems caused by invasive bugs. Globally, we are currently combating many invasive insect pests with more destructive species expected to arrive due to climate change and globalization. Potentially destructive insects from tropical areas are moving north as the average temperature rises. Similarly, potentially destructive species from other countries arrive in plant products and other goods. Increasing the number of people who notice bugs, enjoy them, and are actively seeking out experiences with bugs could create an informal early detection system for newly arrived invasive species. This is the strategic rationale for creating the much-copied South Carolina Jr. Invasive Inspectors program. The success of this and other programs
requires children to learn to identify different orders and families of bugs. Using different species of insects in classroom and field instruction helps students learn how to identify the diversity of insects.
Opportunities abound for cool activities
Teaching science and environmental education concepts with live native insects provides opportunities for novel learning activities. Bugs are fascinating in shape, form, and function. Their genetically-scripted behaviors, such as negative geotaxis, make for engaging demonstrations and experiments. Negative geotaxis is the movement of an insect upwards. For instance, many insects when placed on a stick by a student will climb upwards, and will turn around and climb upwards again when the stick is turned around when the insect first reaches the top. Many bugs are specialized and can be easily attracted with carefully selected plants or captured in appropriately-baited traps. A variety of activities can expose children to harmless insects that would otherwise evoke fear and/or disgust. There are many curriculum resources for activities with living bugs available in back issues of Green Teacher (see list at end of article).
Children are not already big fans of bugs due mostly to the extremely negative and ongoing unpleasant interactions that we adults have with pest bugs. Acuff and Reiher’s book What Kids Buy and Why describes the characteristics of products that have been commercially successful with children of different ages. Successful products for middle childhood (8 to 12 years of age) often have characteristics that involve catching, trapping, controlling, use of tools and technology, edginess, and disgust. Even the candies for instance, which are targeted to this age group play on reactions of disgust. What could be more fun than carrion beetles and dung beetles to a child who prefers gummy worms over peanut butter cups? The behavior of bugs is so strongly dictated by genetic scripts that there are many possible activities that involve control and manipulation of insects’ rather robotic behaviors. Likewise, there are several simple, inexpensive traps that children can set up to catch bugs. The different types of traps are described in the front of field guides to insects and in several Green Teacher articles. Bugs and bug activities were made for children!
Instructional and recreational activities with bugs cost nothing but time. With a million species of insects, diverse in shape, behavior, and ecology, they can offer a lifetime of experiences like no other creature. While rich folks can go on African safaris to see lions or rhinoceroses, anyone can afford to seek out antlions or rhinoceros beetles in their own community. Because insects are so accessible, they have the potential to lessen environmental justice issues in terms of children’s access to nature.
Bugs such as ants, grasshoppers, crickets, milkweed bugs, mealworms, bess beetles, millipedes, and caterpillars may seem like odd pets when compared to a hamster or gerbil. However, the cost in time, money, and skill of raising live bugs is quite low. Bugs do not live very long — many for just weeks or months, most less than two years. This simple fact should make parents and teachers who are wary of decade long commitments to a traditional pet, giddy with enthusiasm. Likewise, there are no veterinary bills for bugs. For example, a praying mantis makes an active, animated, and intriguing pet that lives for only a year to year and a half. The need to feed a praying mantis other bugs will keep a child busy breeding wingless fruit flies when their mantis is small and later catching crickets for the adult mantis — another excuse to get children exploring outdoors. Lastly, since bugs are invertebrates there are fewer ethical concerns for their use in environmental education, unlike vertebrate animals like birds and mammals.
Why not chase bugs instead of balls? Activities involving bugs can become a part of recess. Robert Pyle, a prominent lepidopterist, argues that the butterfly net is perhaps “the cheapest, simplest, and most effective environmental education tool ever invented.” There are few reasons not to offer insect nets to children to use in the schoolyard during their free time. Children will reliably run, chase, and explore for bugs for an hour or more if just given a bug net and jar. Children are getting moderate exercise without even realizing it, while also having repeated contact with live native insects.
Unlimited bugs, limited knowledge
Despite insects’ diversity, outlandish appearances, behaviors, and ecologies, most people know little about them. Studies on awareness of insects suggest that people recognize about a dozen species of bugs. These dozen common bugs are evenly divided between the pretty (e.g. butterflies and fireflies) versus the pests (e.g. mosquitoes and ticks). Yet, there are hundreds of species of bugs that are large and interesting. But people need to know they exist and how to find them. Children are ideally suited to this adventure.
There are three large groups of bugs based on our informal understanding, two of which are alluded to in the example above. The first group consists of pretty bugs, which are commonly seen outdoors and used frequently in children’s books. This group consists of butterflies, ladybugs, fireflies, snails, and roly poly or sow bugs. The second group are pest bugs. This group includes flies, ticks, mosquitoes, and stinging insects. The third and largely unknown group contains the vast majority of the different species, offering many wonderful and endless opportunities for bug safaris. When found by a child or the teacher, these silent unseen majority (SUM) insects are often novel in terms of appearance, behavior, and/or ecology. Examples of this group include some beetles, flies, moths, primitive wasps, mayflies, stoneflies, dobsonflies, dragonflies, and millipedes.
Increasing our Bug-IQ for Teaching
There are nearly a million species of known insects. Fortunately, a lifetime of experiences can be generated through interacting with less than a hundred species of bugs. Anyone wishing to work with children and bugs in a way that produces larger environmental benefits must get children engaged with live native insects, not simulation games. University entomology courses that require an insect collection or special courses for teachers with titles like “Entomology for Teachers and Park Professionals” are ideal. Some community nature centers offer these courses through Master Naturalist programs. Also, look for a BioBlitz in your area. BioBlitzes involve field biologists and volunteers trying to document every species that lives in a park or wildlife reserve. There is usually a strong focus on documenting insects due to the relative abundance of species. A BioBlitz is a great opportunity to meet competent and enthusiastic local field naturalists that can assist you and your students.
Quickly becoming familiar with many of the large cool insects your students will be interested in, involves devoting just a little of your free time to trapping and attracting bugs. Using traps and attractants is the quickest way to see large numbers of bugs that otherwise stay hidden. Pitfall traps baited with carrion will attract a range of intriguing, large, and often colorful insects. Solutions of fermented fruit and molasses spread on tree trunks will attract a distinct group of moths, beetles, and ants. Hanging a white sheet on a clothes line tied between two trees and projecting a black (UV) light onto the sheet attracts hordes of insects. Dozens of varieties of bugs can reliably be observed or collected in just an hour by this “blacklighting.” Likewise, water insects such as the giant water bugs will come to a waterproof flashlight placed underwater on a weedy shoreline. Instructions for assembling these traps and attractants are readily available on the internet, in the front of insect field guides and in back issues of Green Teacher.
Other bugs can be found by knowing about their specialized habits. Any dry grainy soil under a shelter will host cone-shaped antlion traps. Rotting logs will yield many beetles such as the bess beetle which makes a squeaking sound when handled and sports a little horn on its head. Millipedes and centipedes are also easily found around rotten logs.
You can spend a lifetime learning about insects and know only a fraction of the million species. While identifcation skills are useful, children will be particularly impressed with insects that look strange, exhibit intriguing behaviors, and produce interesting smells. Many insects produce odors ranging from the smell of maraschino cherries to peppery odors. In our programs, we smell every insect we handle and have been quite surprised by the often novel odors bugs produce.
Repeated contact with insects through class activities not only engages children, but blocks the development of debilitating fear and disgust with insects well into adulthood. Maybe someday, most people will catch and release insects from inside their home into the outdoors, instead of spraying pesticides. Instead of comparing the greenness of grass in their lawns, perhaps in the future neighbors will be discussing how many caterpillars they have in their pollinator gardens. Instead of collecting species on smartphone apps such as Pokemon GO, children may just choose to spend time outdoors searching for an elusive species of insect to complete their “Bug-ket” list of insects. Our one caveat is that bug experiences should be, as much as possible, direct experiences with locally available native bugs. Simulation games do not help people become more comfortable finding, handling and learning about the diversity of bugs. We are fortunate to have many insect-focused resources and curricula to draw on, many of which have been reviewed in Green Teacher. We just have to use them as frequently as possible. Let’s all increase the number of bug activities we do with our students: We have our crawling orders!
Nathan Shipley is a master’s student in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University in South Carolina where he focuses on developing new methods in environmental interpretation and human-environment interactions. Rob Bixler is an associate professor in the same department. His teaching and research focus on how environmental education and outdoor recreation can be integrated to produce emotionally powerful learning experiences. (rbixler@clemson.edu)
Previous Articles & Webinars on Bugs
- “Falling Arthropods & Citizen Science,” by Daniel Shaw, Green Teacher #110, Summer 2016
- “Speaking for Native Bees,” by Gail Trenholm, Green Teacher #108, Winter 2016
- “Bee Curious,” by Robyn Stone, Green Teacher #106, Spring 2015 “Connecting with Bugs,” by John Guyton & Lois Connington, Green Teacher #100, Summer 2013.
- (Webinar) “Using Insects to Motivate Students,” by John Guyton, Green Teacher, February 7, 2013.
Notes
1. Baldwin, R., Koehler, P., Pereira, R., & Oi, F. (2008). Public perceptions of pest problems. American Entomologist, 54(2), 73 -79.
2. Outdoor Foundation (2016). Participation Report 2015. Washington DC: Out- door Foundation.
3. Marris, E. (2011). Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. NY: Bloomsbury.
4. South Carolina Junior Invasive Inspectors Program. http://www.clemson.edu/public/regulatory/plant_industry/pest_nursery_programs/invasive_ exotic_ programs/junior_invasives/retrieved 12/3/2016
5. Acuff, D. & Reiher, R. H. (1999). What Kids Buy and Why: The Psychology of Marketing to Kids. NY Simon & Schuster.
6. See especially Falling Arthropods & Citizen Science”, by Daniel Shaw, Green Teacher #110, Summer 2016
7. Pyle, R. M. (2009). Beauty of butterfly nets Wings: Essays on Invertebrate Conservation, Spring, 15-18