Mason’s Reviews > Insect Lives: Stories of Mystery and Romance from a Hidden World > Status Update

Why might bees use signals to communicate while ants use pheromones?

What benefit would it bring ants to groom their “hairs” and keep clean.

How has our society influenced why we think that insects don’t have personalities or feelings?

Would their be a difference on the effects to a population that have toxins that sicken or toxins that kill?

Ask:
Why might the specific species of fly in which the book refers too in this chapter choose to parasitize the head of the ant when their is more nutrition in the abdomen and thorax.

Visualize:
This is what I think of when the author describes the mites that live in the ears of moths. https://images.app.goo.gl/XzDeEkomRSB...

Vocab:
Exhortation: a way of speaking to someone that encourages them to do something.

In this section of the book Aristotle (350 BC) describes his observations of butterflies and bees. I am surprised at how accurate his theories about the insects behaviors when entomology wasn’t even a science.

There is a short anecdote about how a unique species of fireflies coordinates its flashes perfectly in unison so that every firefly blinks at the same time. This amazes me that a small non social animal can coordinate so well.

Vocab:
Subterranean: it means occurring under the surface.