Oliver Milman

“It is an indictment of our era of separation from nature that we are so marooned from an understanding of what insects do for us, as well as the ties that bind us to them. Animals such as hedgehogs, lizards, and frogs certainly appreciate cockroaches—as a nutritious snack. Once you start hacking away those foundational, unloved links in the food chain, problems cascade upward, ultimately engulfing us. We are inextricably looped into this web even if the scaffolding of modern life—with its food delivery apps, cheap supermarket chicken, and nature repackaged as ecotourism—provides the illusion that we somehow float above it. We may casually wish mosquitoes, for example, would simply vanish, but without them, many animals that we ourselves depend on would be denied a primary food source. Mosquito larvae are feasted upon by fish ranging from guppies to goldfish, and once the mosquitoes reach adulthood, they then become part of the terrestrial ecosystem, preyed upon by bats, birds, turtles, and dragonflies.”
― Oliver Milman, The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World, Library Edition