The Insects

Donald W. Hall, Ph.D.

A Thousand Million Million Ants

In everybody's garden, under stones or in the lawn, there are cities of ants. They seem to panic when they're disturbed- but look more closely. The furious scampering and bustling is not panic, but an orderly retreat. First, they remove their cocoons from the sudden sunlight to a place of safety.

Aquarium keepers call the cocoons ants' eggs, but they're not really eggs; they contain pupae, the most advanced stage of the young ants. They represent a considerable investment of time and energy, so they're the first thing the workers save, in the first two minutes after the nest is exposed. The real eggs come last. The queen will soon lay new ones if she loses these.

The complex organization of ant communities, and they cooperation between individuals, is what makes them so successful. The removal of their brood in the right order is only part of it.

The queen's only distinguishing marks are the dark scars where her wings used to be. She's no bigger than the largest workers, and as slender and mobile as they are, not a bloated egg-producing machine. The workers produce eggs for her to eat.

The workers' eggs are infertile, and they're used only for food, mostly for the queen herself. The queen's own eggs will hatch into more sterile female workers, and a few into new queens and males. She lays them one at a time, not in batches like the more advanced ants.

One of the smallest workers, still over the centimeter long, crouches below her, waiting for the egg. What follows may seem a little confused, but it shows a considerable degree of cooperation: each ant evidently has its own job to do…even if it's not quite sure what it is. That worker's carrying an egg already.

One of the nurses finally carries it to the rearing chamber. Although bulldog ants recognize their own nest odor, and will fight against ants from another bulldog nest, scent-communication between them is evidently slow and inefficient. Their small colonies and they solitary hunting suggest that they are indeed primitive, but they're already so subtle and complex in their behavior that they do little to answer our question about how ant societies arose. The world of the ants, all thousand million million of them, seems likely to keep its secrets for a long time yet.

To Be A Butterfly

Who hasn't envied the life of a butterfly-a seemingly carefree existence of drinking and dalliance among sun-decked flowers?

The truth is starkly different. From the moment it is laid as an egg, a butterfly is in deadly peril. Every stage of its life cycle-egg, caterpillar, pupa, adult-is under threat from predators, parasites, fungi, and disease. The vast majority never survive to breed.

Those that do are living proof that these delicate and vulnerable creatures are not completely defenseless. Set in the lush tropics of Australia, this film investigates the astonishing range of protective strategies that butterflies have evolved, strategies that involve camouflage, mimicry, the use of poisons, even the turning of traditional foes into friends, and, in the case of one species with carnivorous caterpillars, into victims.

It leaves us in no doubt that there is much more to a butterfly than a pair of pretty wings!

Home Sweet Hole

Animals build themselves home for a variety of reasons. Providing shelter for a growing family is the usual main function; but animal homes, lairs, or dens, call them what you will, can be used as lurking places from which to pounce on prey, as sleeping shelters, or even as permanent homes.

OSF will look in their own unique way at the methods and materials used by animal builders, all over the world.

Webs And Other Wonders

These are the eyes of a hunter, Just like Leopards, hunting spiders need good eyesight, stealthy movements, and speed in the attack.

They need strength too, to handle prey that might be several times the spider's own weight.

Spiders have other adaptations which mammals lack; venom, for one, but above all, silk, in a wide variety of forms and uses.

The delicate and beautiful orb web of the Garden Spider is a familiar sight, but it's by no means the only way in which spiders use silk. Silk is a protein, produced as a liquid from nozzles at the spider's back end. It sets into fine, but very strong, thread on contact with the air, rather like the string that forms at the end of a tube of glue. Spiders have evolved all sorts of ways of using such a versatile material, usually to catch their prey. At one extreme, silk, makes a sticky lasso.

At the other end of the scale, silk is used as cement to make to lid of a half-trigger trap. Some of the variations in between other clues to the way in which these snares might have evolved.

All spiders can produce silk, but there are some that make little use of it. In areas where heather grows, there's a little crab spider which hunts without the aid of silk; although it usually has a safety line attaching it to the top of the heather stem. It relies for a living on its color, its ability to remain motionless, and its sensitive, and numerous, eyes.

The Good, The Bad, And The Beautiful

This story is about some creatures that pollinate plants, and that rid the world of its clutter and mess. Their drone is music on the summer air, and their flashing colors brighten the flowers of the garden while their progeny attack the pests in the vegetable patch or are used by anglers in the pursuit of their pleasure. What are these creatures? Flies! They are not always insects that get a good press-other than being swatted with a newspaper.

Two houseflies mate and a thousand eggs are laid. Within six weeks, two hundred and fifty million flies could result, so it is good that many creatures have a taste for flies that rivals our own distaste. The virtues of the hundred thousand or more different kinds of fly are not always readily perceived.

A 'fly on the wall' film camera team enters this world of bot and gadflies, flat-footed, thick-headed, stilt-legged, robber, warble, cluster, and marsh flies, dung flies, drone flies, mosquitoes, house flies, and many other of this two-winged insect horde. The grozzers, pinkies, and squats used by fisherman as bait are big business for those who breed the bluebottles, greenbottles, and house flied that produce them, and likewise 'fly power' is harnessed on an industrial scale in the thousands of blow flies bred to pollinate plants commercially for the production of seed. These are good news stories on a grand scale and contrast with the ravages of cabbage root fly, or the Brassica pod midge's attacks on the pods of rape, and the bot flies passage through the body of a horse. But is it is the curiosities that most intrigue-the louse flies, wingless and thriving on the blood of swifts, waiting in the nests each year fro their wandering hosts to return. There is the vigorous courtship of the long-headed fly-its antics revealed by the slow motion camera; the underwater larvae of black flies clinging tight to weed in fast flowing streams; the rat-tailed maggots of drone flies using their tails as snorkels to breathe air above surface; and the dung flies to whom a cow pat is both an arena for mating and fighting as well as food for its young.

This film reveals the peculiar beauty and wealth of intrigue in these double lives. Flies are both heroes and villains

Death Trap

Oxford Scientific Films investigates the evolution of carnivorous plants.

The Venus Fly Trap is a highly efficient and sophisticated animal catcher. It lures its prey by color, scent, and food. The successful nature of the trap allows the Venus Fly Trap to grow and flourish in ground too deficient in minerals for other non-carnivorous plants to survive. The Venus Fly Trap must have its drop of blood, to supplement its meager diet, if it is to survive.

But how did such an ingenious trap evolve from leaves that are seemingly so passive and defenseless? Most plants fall victims to animals, browsers assault their leaves and their veins probed by sap-sucking mouthparts.

However on closer investigations we find that despite their placid appearance, plants are far from defenseless. From sticky plants like Roridula that trap insects solely for defense evolved plants that not only trapped but also were able to digest and absorb the nutrients from their victims. So were born the sundews, deadly, but jewel-like and carnivorous.

Carnivory spread out not only through land bound but also aquatic varieties of plants. Aldrovanda, the waterwheel plant, and the Bladderwort are examples of how carnivory works just as well underwater.

For a land plant the simple folding of a leaf forms a chamber. Sometimes such chambers have successfully been utilized as efficient animal traps. These are called pit-fall traps or pitchers. Pitchers have evolved independently at least four times.

The film ends by looking at the seed that is carnivorous. A seed that has a need for nutrients, for victims! A strange ending-or is it the beginning?

Flight Of Fancy

An adult insect is like the flower on a plant, the sexual stage of a life the greater part of which is sexless. Since the sexual stage is so short in most insects, the adults must make great efforts to find a mate in the most efficient way, by advertising and courtship which must succeed before times runs out.

Advertising is a dangerous profession. Conspicuous insects attract not only potential mates but also predators: subtle strategies have evolved which aim to minimize the risk of being eaten before being paired.

Courtship, too, is accompanied by the possibility of failure. Males run the risk of being rejected by females despite their best efforts, wasting time and energy. To improve their chances, some males have developed methods, which are based more on trickery or on brute force than attraction, coercing females into accepting them; the same is true for insects. Competition between males for success in breeding has led to some bizarre developments, even including mimicking females to steal a march on other males.

OSF, with cameramen, Tony Allen and James Gray, have explored this curious corner of biology to produce a riveting story which is a mixture of deception and violence, as well as subtlety and great beauty.

An Inordinate Fondess For Beetles

To the ancient Egyptians, the symbol of the afterlife, of universal death and rebirth, was a beetle. The scarabs, which they carved with such loving care, have outlived the Pharaohs by thousands of years. Beetles affect human lives now as they did then: the grain weevils which eat out stored food are the same species as once robbed Ancient Egyptian granaries; death watch beetles eat the very buildings we live in; Colorado beetles can prevent us from growing potatoes. There are three hundred thousand different species of beetle in the world, more by far than any other group of animals.

An eminent theologian once asked the great biologist J.B.S Haldane what he learned, after a lifetime's study of the Creation, about the mind of the Creator. Haldane, always a man of few words, replied "An inordinate fondness of beetles."

The success of beetles arises partly from the way they're made. They're insects and they are built from the same kit of parts as all other insects. They must have three body sections, and six legs; they can have two pairs of wings and they must have compound eyes. The rules are unbreakable, but they are not inflexible. The basic design permits a wide range of variations. Let's have a look at the kit, to see how one specialized hunting beetle is put together. They placed great trust in the scarab. The inscribed prayer reads: 'Weigh not heavy against me before the keeper of the balance; tell no lie against me in the presence of the great god. Behold thy reputation is at stake.'

Four thousand years later, the reputation of beetles is undiminished. Whether you see them as a threat of damage and destruction, or a promise of renewal, beetles, in all their endless variety, is without doubt a power in the world.

Gypsy Moth: The Way West

A comprehensive video exploring the moth's historical background, the problem it creates, and its present migration westward. A host of possible solutions are discussed in a video made to elevate public awareness and prompt early detection of the pest.

Tiger mosquito Video

Aedes albopictus, an Asian mosquito, probably was introduced into Hawaii late in the last century. Until its discovery in Houston, Texas, in August 1985, this species was unknown in the New World. It is believed to be established in 866 counties in 26 states in the continental U.S.

Cicada - The Insect Methuselah

The seventeen year locust or cicada lives longer than any other insect. Its life cycle is shown to be vital to its survival. Models and close-up photography are used. Color.

Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind: an Investigation into the Extraordinary Sex Life of Plants

A pod explodes, scattering seeds everywhere and life begins again. Plants hold up their flowers to the light, to heaven and the sun to be noticed. They are designed for one thing only, sex. You see the flowers themselves are sex organs and there is no point in concealing them. They burst upon the world with the insistence that life has. Most flowers are bisexual having both male and female organs. The female receptive stigma leading to the ovary and the male anthers that produce pollen. They are ready and waiting for the great moment. Far beyond normal limits of the eye a masterpiece of design. The pollen of each species is as individual as a fingerprint. It must fit the physical and chemical features of the stigma as precisely as a key fits its lock. Of course having both male and female organs in one flower it couldn't be easier. It would seem to be perfect for self fertilisation and some flowers can do just that. But evolution requires that most flowers be pollinated by another plant of the same species and how on earth do you manage that when you are literally rooted to the spot. Well each has developed an intriguing speciality to bridge, to overcome the physical separation from another of its kind.

Birth of the Bees

There are about 20,000 species of wasp and bee thriving in the world today. Each has evolved in a slightly different way...and there is a place for them all …from the simple solitary wasp...to one of the most physically advanced species on the planet... the honeybee. The honey bee is testament to the incredible strength of evolution. And it is an awe inspiring thought that the birth of the bees would not have happened without the evolution of flowering plants. You could say that flowers invented bees for their own benefit but bees in their turn made the most of the opportunity that flowers gave them. Through evolution over millions of years, they have developed into the most advanced of all insect societies.