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    Extraordinary Insects: The Fabulous, Indispensable Creatures Who Run Our World
    Extraordinary Insects: The Fabulous, Indispensable Creatures Who Run Our World
    Extraordinary Insects: The Fabulous, Indispensable Creatures Who Run Our World
    Ebook324 pages4 hours

    Extraordinary Insects: The Fabulous, Indispensable Creatures Who Run Our World

    By Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson

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    About this ebook

    This enthusiastic, witty, and informative introduction to the world of insects and why we could not survive without them is “a joy” (The Times, London) and “charming...Highlighting them in all their buzzing, stinging, biting glory” (The New York Times Book Review).

    Insects comprise roughly half of the animal kingdom. They live everywhere—deep inside caves, 18,000 feet high in the Himalayas, inside computers, in Yellowstone’s hot springs, and in the ears and nostrils of much larger creatures. There are insects that have ears on their knees, eyes on their penises, and tongues under their feet. Most of us think life would be better without bugs. In fact, life would be impossible without them.

    Most of us know that we would not have honey without honeybees, but without the pinhead-sized chocolate midge, cocoa flowers would not pollinate. No cocoa, no chocolate. The ink that was used to write the Declaration of Independence was derived from galls on oak trees, which are induced by a small wasp. The fruit fly was essential to medical and biological research experiments that resulted in six Nobel prizes. Blowfly larva can clean difficult wounds; flour beetle larva can digest plastic; several species of insects have been essential to the development of antibiotics. Insects turn dead plants and animals into soil. They pollinate flowers, including crops that we depend on. They provide food for other animals, such as birds and bats. They control organisms that are harmful to humans. Life as we know it depends on these small creatures.

    “Delivering a hail of facts with brio and precision” (Nature) Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson shows us that there is more variety among insects than we thought possible and the more you learn about insects, the more fascinating they become. Extraordinary Insects is “a very enthusiastic look at the flying, crawling, stinging bug universe world, and why we should cherish it” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

    **Note: This book was previously published under the title Buzz, Sting, Bite.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateJul 2, 2019
    ISBN9781982112899
    Extraordinary Insects: The Fabulous, Indispensable Creatures Who Run Our World
    Author

    Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson

    Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson is a professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences near Oslo and a scientific advisor to the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. She holds a doctorate in conservation biology and teaches nature management and forest ecology. The author of Extraordinary Insects, Anne is also an ultra-marathon runner.

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    Reviews for Extraordinary Insects

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      The subtitle pretty much says it all. Chapters include insect anatomy, sex, the food chain, symbiosis between insects and plants, insects and human food, insects as “janitors”, industries, and more.I found this really Interesting, but I’m afraid I won’t remember much. There were so many little tidbits of information, it will be hard to remember. I have heard it before, but even if they are pests, insects really are beneficial, and humans would be hard-pressed to live on a planet without them.
    • 4/5
      Either something was lost in translation, or this book is a much better fit for middle grade readers. Given the excellent english of absolutely everybody I’ve ever met from Norway (and I worked for a Norwegian company for years), I’m going with this is a great Middle grade read.Extraordinary Insects is a brief introduction to most of the broad families of Insects, written by an enthusiastic scientist who obviously loves her work. It’s a fun book, engagingly written, but at a level that would appeal to strong readers in the, say, 10-13 year old range. That’s not an insult to this book in the slightest, but those who are looking for a deeper overview of the insect world and their importance on Earth (life as we know it can’t exist without insects, but nothing but the rats and cockroaches would even notice our absence), might find this book a little frustrating for its lack of depth, and its very enthusiastic tone. It’s a good book, but I kept thinking it would be a better fit for my niece (who just turned 11).A great book for a budding young insect enthusiast or for anyone who has avoided ‘bugs’ but would like to dip a toe into learning more about them.
    • 3/5
      Sprightly, sometimes funny, certainly jammed with interesting, weird, important facts about insects. Sverdrup-Thygeson loves her phylum, and her enthusiasm is infectious - older kids on up to adults would find this a fun read. It is mostly a conglomeration of "cool things about bugs" (yes, I know - she does explain that not all insects are bugs...), and may primarily serve to raise some consciousness and generate curiosity and interest in them and why they are so important to the planet. Definitely a purchase for public and school libraries, and an enjoyable couple evenings' learning.
    • 4/5
      So easy to read, the chattiness often feels like it's written for older children/younger teens. Plenty for an adult to learn from it too, however, as it gives a broad overview of the millions of insect species over the globe, how they interact with their environment, with each other, and with humans, in all sorts of "fabulous and indispensable" (from the subtitle on my copy) ways: from aphid and fungus farming and decomposing waste, to their uses in agriculture, medicine, clothes, paint and more. Concludes with the inevitable climate change call to action.
    • 5/5
      Engrossing

    Book preview

    Extraordinary Insects - Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson

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