Insectopedia Part 8

The Sound of Global W Warming

Listen. It's the sound of global warming. It's getting even louder ...

Close your eyes. We're in another world. A wet world, watery, echoey, a jungle of pipes perhaps. Or a subterranean cave. We could be in that cathedral of a cave where the Princess's crippled ship crash-lands in Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (his ecofantasy anime of "The Lady Who Loved Worms"), an oversize underground tropical lagoon, an oasis of mysterious life in a prophetic poisoned land. (his ecofantasy anime of "The Lady Who Loved Worms"), an oversize underground tropical lagoon, an oasis of mysterious life in a prophetic poisoned land.

We could be anywhere.

What are these unearthly noises? High-pitched squeaks and deep groans, the long, low creak of huge doors (that can't be doors), the electric crackling of rapid-fire static. High-pitched chirps, more chirps, that grating sound, which suddenly fades, that rush of liquid like a wave rolling up the beach. Something drumming, something fizzing, something gnawing, something splashing, something squeaking ... something orchestrated. Over there: a detonation. Close by: something heavy raises itself to its feet with a querulous bellow. There are animals in here. What kinds of animals? What are they doing? Polyrhythmic, polyphonic animals chirping in counterpoint, call-and-response. So much activity in here. So much motion. So much rhythm. More clicks, more chirps, more squeaks, more splashes, more echo.

Where are we?

We're inside a tree. A pinon pine (Pinus edulis). We're in its vascular tissue, just beneath the outer bark, inside the phloem and cambium. We're enclosed in a rich sound-world, a world audible only on David Dunn's CD The Sound of Light in Trees The Sound of Light in Trees, the one that's on my headphones.1 The tree we're inside could be thirty feet tall. That's big if you're tiny, no larger than a grain of rice, like the pinon engraver beetles (Ips confusus) that arrive by the thousands to lay their eggs and hatch their larvae in these tough, slow-growing trees, with their much-loved seeds and aromatic wood, that dominate the harshly beautiful pine-juniper landscapes of northern New Mexico.

The pinon engravers are bark beetles, members of the Scolytidae, one of only a very small number of insect families whose adults are able to pierce the outer bark of woody plants. Until a few years ago, they seemed to have reached a kind of compact with the pinons. Attracted by signals from pioneer males, the female beetles gathered on weak and dying trees to bore their tunnels and lay their eggs. Their incursions through the bark interrupted the upflow of fluids and nutrients. The blue-stain fungus they carry further clogged the system. The weak trees capitulated. Their demise thinned the forest yet also strengthened it, the pine population benefiting from the easing of intraspecific compet.i.tion for light, water, and nutrients. But only 10 to 15 percent of the male beetles' dispersal flights ended in successful reproduction, and healthy trees had little trouble resisting their advances. The trees pumped resinous sap to seal the wounds in their bark, forcibly ejecting the intruders or trapping them in stickiness. Scented monoterpenes, volatile essential oils dissolved in the resin, neutralized the fungi.2 But the droughts that swept the southwestern United States in the first years of this century introduced a new dynamic. Stressed by lack of water, the pinons produced less resin and found that the increasing sugar concentrations in their cells served only to bring more beetles. Higher levels of monoterpenes in the sap extruded from the engravers' entry holes attracted even more insects. Cavitation-the collapse of xylem tissue induced by the formation of vacuum bubbles under drought conditions-increased to such an extent that for some trees the acoustic emissions produced by the bubbles' implosions became "an almost continuous ultrasound signature," a soundtrack to which, as we will see, the beetles may have been paying close attention.3 While the trees struggled, the unusually warm temperatures helped the beetles (and the fungi) raise their reproduction and general activity rates. The convergence of weakened trees and hyperactive beetles led to a catastrophic die-off of pinon pines in the region. In 2003, the peak year of the crisis, over 770,000 acres of New Mexico forest were affected. Millions of trees died, and no effective ideas emerged in response. Using aerial surveys taken by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and studies of a pinon-juniper forest plot at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, researchers from the University of Arizona calculated a 40 to 90 percent mortality of pinons across New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona in 2002 and 2003.4 a.s.suming no similar events occur, it could take centuries for the landscapes to recover. a.s.suming no similar events occur, it could take centuries for the landscapes to recover.

But everyone knows that similar events, and others unimagined, will occur. And as immediately devastating as was the loss of the pinons to local people and to animals such as the pine-nut-eating pinon jay, the death of the trees is felt most painfully in its etching on the landscape of a new sense of foreboding. The collapse earned its place among the spectacular "natural" events of recent years, whose rawest member is still Hurricane Katrina. The now-famous images from New Orleans revealed a cl.u.s.ter formed from race, cla.s.s, bureaucratic incompetence, government indifference, and climate. The pinons' fateful convergence acted on insects, fungi, trees, the insufficiency of expert knowledge, and again, climate. Both events made it starkly apparent that new formations in the age of climate change are unlikely to produce linear outcomes. The future is deeply marked by the inevitable eruption of nonpredictable phenomena on startling scales.5 Forget "homeland security." Time itself has changed. We know catastrophes are coming, and we know they'll take us by surprise. Forget "homeland security." Time itself has changed. We know catastrophes are coming, and we know they'll take us by surprise.

We're inside a pinon pine in northern New Mexico. All around are engravers, other bark beetles, beetle larvae, and carpenter ants. That drumming is the ants, David Dunn tells me when I call him in Santa Fe. The detonations are cavitation events. That creaking is the tree swaying in the wind.

The Sound of Light in Trees is a soundscape, a "sonic environment." is a soundscape, a "sonic environment."6 It aims to tune us in to the aural dimension of our everyday world, to create what the anthropologist and soundscape pioneer Steven Feld calls "a sonic way of knowing and being in the world." It aims to tune us in to the aural dimension of our everyday world, to create what the anthropologist and soundscape pioneer Steven Feld calls "a sonic way of knowing and being in the world."7 The pinon environment is not one we can ordinarily perceive through sound. We need transducers-human and mechanical-to convert these inaudible-to-the-human-ear low frequency and ultrasonic emissions into vibrations within our acoustic range. The pinon environment is not one we can ordinarily perceive through sound. We need transducers-human and mechanical-to convert these inaudible-to-the-human-ear low frequency and ultrasonic emissions into vibrations within our acoustic range.8 Knowing we need trans.m.u.tation and translation heightens the strangeness of the recording, as does knowing that even with such mediation this world remains deeply inaccessible. There is an unusual, somehow troubling quality to this soundscape, immersive and alien all at once, able to convey both the proximity and the indifference of the natural world, to capture that uneasy paradox at the core of the new realities of global warming. Knowing we need trans.m.u.tation and translation heightens the strangeness of the recording, as does knowing that even with such mediation this world remains deeply inaccessible. There is an unusual, somehow troubling quality to this soundscape, immersive and alien all at once, able to convey both the proximity and the indifference of the natural world, to capture that uneasy paradox at the core of the new realities of global warming.

Entering the pinon arouses dormant senses. I close my eyes to isolate the sounds and discover that listening to these insects might not be so different from collecting them. For me, the listening experience resonates with the j.a.panese neuroscientist Yoro Takeshi's persuasive argument about the visual experience of finding, capturing, and studying insects. Yoro says that the j.a.panese conservationists who are trying to ban insect collecting are destructively shortsighted, that it is through collecting that people, particularly young people, learn what it means to sympathize with others and to live among other beings. Like many of the insect people we've met in this book, Yoro and his fellow collectors argue that the close attention demanded by this engagement with another life, another tiny tiny life, develops unfamiliar ways not only of seeing but also of feeling, that the close focus on detail disrupts scale and hierarchical certainty, and that these experiences trans.m.u.te into ethics. The focused attention on another life creates patience and sensitivity in the collector, Yoro claims, an awareness of subtle variations and other temporalities (change can be very slow, movement very fast, lives very short), and leads to an appreciation of differences, perhaps to a new way of being in the world. life, develops unfamiliar ways not only of seeing but also of feeling, that the close focus on detail disrupts scale and hierarchical certainty, and that these experiences trans.m.u.te into ethics. The focused attention on another life creates patience and sensitivity in the collector, Yoro claims, an awareness of subtle variations and other temporalities (change can be very slow, movement very fast, lives very short), and leads to an appreciation of differences, perhaps to a new way of being in the world.

This is seeing rather than merely looking, just as the pinon soundscape cultivates listening rather than merely hearing. Within these trees, among these animals, people "shift their thinking about the centrality of humans in the physical world," David Dunn tells me, and I realize that unlike Yoro, he's not looking for insect love but for something closer to appreciation or understanding. He doesn't exclude the possibility that getting up close to insect sounds might also generate anxiety and reinforce antipathies.9 After all, the insects are not the heroes of this New Mexican story. After all, the insects are not the heroes of this New Mexican story.

Two years of recordings compressed into one hour. Sounds from many different trees edited together. Not just a recording but a composition that takes, remakes, and rearranges nonhuman sound. Even though it's a self-conscious artifact, this kind of soundscape breaks from its precursor tradition of musique concrete musique concrete, in which found sounds are explicitly manipulated to emphasize and express human intervention.10 David tells me that the accent in his work is on "the inherent nature of these things," that the task is "to reveal aspects in time and s.p.a.ce that are inherent in the materials" and to explore through sound the larger phenomena that these beings-the trees, the insects, the people-create and are a part of. David tells me that the accent in his work is on "the inherent nature of these things," that the task is "to reveal aspects in time and s.p.a.ce that are inherent in the materials" and to explore through sound the larger phenomena that these beings-the trees, the insects, the people-create and are a part of.

Thirty-five years as an avant-garde musician and sound artist, theorizing, composing, publishing, performing, collaborating, and of course, recording. There are still few ready-made tools. He uses open-source transducer systems of his own design to make low-frequency vibrations and ultrasonic emissions audible. He sends the contraptions to beetle specialists as far away as China. He runs workshops to show children how to make them.

Like many people in the Southwest in those years, David sat and stared at the pinons near his home. He watched their green needles turn to reddish brown, then drop. He thought about "the materiality of their world," the wood, the impedance, the possibilities. He took the piezoelectric transducer disc from a Hallmark greeting card, glued it to a gutted meat thermometer, pushed the apparatus into the bark of the dying pinon, and angled it to pick up the vibrations. One per tree. Less than $10 each.

Technology can bring us closer to the world, David Dunn tells me. Perhaps, he continues, the rich and complex soundscape accessible through a pair of headphones approximates the sensory experience of other forms of life, with their distinctive ambient sensitivities.

Among the best known of his numerous recordings is "Chaos and the Emergent Mind of the Pond," a twenty-four-minute composition that discovers in the sounds of aquatic insects in North American and African ponds "a sonic multiverse of exquisite complexity."11 Listening to the pond with two omnidirectional ceramic hydrophones and a portable DAT recorder, he hears a rhythmic complexity altogether greater than that in most human music, patterns comparable only to the most sophisticated computer compositions and the most complex African polyrhythmic drumming.

The sounds can't be arbitrary, he decides. These animals are not simply following their instincts. "The musician in me cannot help but hear more." In fact, the musician in him understands human music as a parallel expression to these sounds, as the expressive modality that brings people closest to the ways in which other forms of life communicate. Music suggests organization, not simply sound, and he hears the pond "saturated with an intelligence emergent from the very fullness of interconnection." He begins to hear the pond as a kind of superorganism, a transcendent social "mind" created from the autonomous interaction of all the life within it, terms not dissimilar to those used by complexity theorists to describe the nest colonies of the eusocial insects (ants and termites, some bees and wasps, some aphids and thrips).

As I read these ideas in the liner notes for "Chaos and the Emergent Mind of the Pond," I start to understand that the soundscape is more than a recording, more even than a composition. It is also a research method, one that flows easily from a principle of wholeness. The soundscape encounters its piece of the world as a totality. In this, it's quite unlike scientific investigations that begin their search by isolating individual elements. The method is different, and not surprisingly, the outcome is different too. Something else surfaces. Let's not stay deaf to its music.

"For a long time," David Dunn told me, "that was enough." He composed soundscapes to sensitize his audience to the acoustics of the natural world, to stimulate the recovery of older, lost sensitivities, and to offer more intimate relationships with other life-forms. But climate change changed that too. The dying forests posed the question of responsibility with new urgency. Like many in the midst and wake of disaster, he found himself wrestling with the desire to do something effective, something, as he put it, "to diminish my own sense of tragedy and depression."

The pinon die-off was no anomaly. As temperature zones have shifted in the past decades, insects have shifted with them. Swift, numerous, and astonishingly adaptive, beetles, mosquitoes, ticks, and others have taken advantage of new conditions and newly expanded habitat ranges with spectacular results. One widely publicized effect is the unwelcome appearance of insect-borne diseases in unexpected lat.i.tudes and alt.i.tudes (Lyme disease in Sweden and the Czech Republic; West Nile virus in the United States and Canada; dengue fever as far north as Texas; malaria in the East African highlands).12 Another is the unprecedented deforestation that's struck the boreal forests of Siberia, Alaska, and Canada, the coniferous forests of the southwestern United States, and the temperate forests of the Midwest and Northeast. Another is the unprecedented deforestation that's struck the boreal forests of Siberia, Alaska, and Canada, the coniferous forests of the southwestern United States, and the temperate forests of the Midwest and Northeast.

The details vary, but the dynamic is well established. Confronted by regional increases in winter and summer temperatures, decreases in precipitation, and the reduction in the duration of freezes, plants and insects have fallen out of step-despite often having co-evolved for millennia. The animals adapt at a rate far more rapid than that of the trees. The beetles accelerate: they eat more; they develop faster (some species move to adulthood in one year rather than two); they reproduce quicker and survive longer. Their numbers explode.

The same conditions of higher temperature and lower rainfall stress the trees. As drought intensifies, their metabolism breaks down, and their defenses weaken. Their established strategy-the migration of populations out of the higher temperature zones over generations-is simply too slow. Temporalities are out of joint. The forest comes apart. The trees are overwhelmed long before they can escape to a place less hospitable to the insects.

The result has been a catalog of destruction. Since the early 1990s, spruce bark beetles have caused the death of 4.4 million acres of Alaskan boreal forest. In the same period, the mountain pine beetle has moved into 33 million acres of forest in British Columbia and caused major damage in Montana, northern Colorado, and southern Wyoming. Long-term predictions are suitably apocalyptic. One North American scenario envisions a continent-wide invasion of bark beetles radiating from British Columbia to Labrador and down into the forests of eastern Texas.13 David and his collaborator, the University of California physicist James Crutchfield, an expert in nonlinear complex systems, describe the mechanism at work here as a "desynchronization of biotic developmental patterns."14 They investigate it in a new project imagined through the logic of the soundscape, a scientific inquiry symbiotic with They investigate it in a new project imagined through the logic of the soundscape, a scientific inquiry symbiotic with The Sound of Light in Trees The Sound of Light in Trees that doesn't so much look at climate change as listen to it. that doesn't so much look at climate change as listen to it.

For several decades, research on insect behavior has been dominated by chemical ecology, the study of the effect of chemical cues on ecological interaction. In his fascinating account of a life among insects, Thomas Eisner, pioneer and undisputed giant in the field, doc.u.ments the discoveries: the bombardier beetles that spray scalding benzoquinones when threatened; the female Photuris Photuris fireflies, which procure defensive chemicals by consuming male fireflies of a different genus; the beautiful female moth fireflies, which procure defensive chemicals by consuming male fireflies of a different genus; the beautiful female moth Utetheisa ornatrix Utetheisa ornatrix, which discriminates among s.e.xual partners according to the finest calibrations of pheromonal scent; the defensive toxic-vomit response of sawfly larvae and gra.s.shoppers. The stories seem infinite, and so, too, Eisner makes clear, do the opportunities for further research.15 Chemical ecology has proved to be an overwhelmingly fertile field for insect studies. In particular, tremendous energy has been funneled into work on three cla.s.ses of compounds: pheromones, which influence the behavior or physiological development of members of the same species (for example, in mating or aggregating); allomones, which act on members of a different species to the advantage of the producer (for example, defensive toxins, such as the bombardier's spray); and kairomones, which affect members of a different species to the advantage of the receiver (for example, those monoterpenic pine resins that inadvertently attract parasites or predators to a wound).

The explanatory power of chemical ecology is unquestioned. Its descriptions of the intricacies of insect life are quite amazing. Nonetheless, David Dunn tells me, it has done little to slow the advance of bark beetles through the northern forests. Its primary pest-control tools-pheromone traps (which decoy the beetles or disrupt their behavior) and pesticides-have proven ineffectual or impractical. Despite hundreds of research papers and untold millions of dollars in research funds, the beetles march on.

Listen. They're coming through loud and clear. Those squeaky chirps are the pinon engraver beetles. The female has a small, hard comb (the pars stridens pars stridens) on the back of her head, which she grates against a sc.r.a.per (the plectrum) located under the front edge of her prothorax. The male makes sounds too, but no one is sure how.

The range of sound-making organs in bark beetles is substantial. And so are the uses to which all the noise is put. Think of the Scolytidae as social insects. Not in the same way as eusocial insects, like the honeybees, with their elaborate nests and sharp divisions of labor. Social in a looser sense: they live in groups; they coordinate ma.s.s arrivals on target trees; they arrange s.p.a.cing to ensure that they don't settle too densely; some occupy their nests collectively. Such complex cooperative behavior presumes communication.

Research on bark beetle interaction has focused largely on chemical signaling; sound has been regarded as ancillary.16 Symptomatically, there is still nothing published on how bark beetles hear or what kinds of auditory organs they possess. Symptomatically, there is still nothing published on how bark beetles hear or what kinds of auditory organs they possess.17 But what if-as Dunn and Crutchfield propose-bark beetles are attracted to vulnerable trees not only by the aggregation pheromones of the male pioneers and the kairomones released in the wounded trees' resin but also by bioacoustic cues, such as the internal explosions of gas bubbles during cavitation events? Could we provisionally a.s.sume that, like many b.u.t.terflies, moths, mantises, crickets, gra.s.shoppers, flies, and Neuroptera, bark beetles, too, may have hearing in the ultrasonic range? The rich ultrasonic sound-world of the pinon pine suggests as much, as do recent studies indicating that hearing among insects is far more widespread than previously a.s.sumed.18 Indeed, after spending time inside the pinon alongside the animals and scaled to their world, it becomes more and more inconceivable that so little research is being done on beetle bioacoustics and that the intensely interactive sounds inside the tree are arbitrary. Reviewing the pinon soundscape, Dunn and Crutchfield discover that "a very diverse range of sound signaling persists well after the putatively a.s.sociated behaviors-host selection, coordination of attack, courtship, territorial compet.i.tion, and nuptial chamber excavations-have all taken place. In fully colonized trees," they write, "the stridulations, chirps, and clicks can go on continuously for days and weeks, long after most of these other behaviors will have apparently run their course." What does this mean? Their inference is careful but important: "These observations suggest that these insects have a more sophisticated social organization than previously suspected-one that requires ongoing communication through sound and substrate vibration."19 Recent research by Reginald Cocroft and his a.s.sociates at the University of Missouri at Columbia raises yet another question. Cocroft has shown that the low-frequency and ultrasonic airborne sounds recorded by David Dunn are actually only one element of an insect's sound-world. In huge numbers, it seems, insects that live on plants also communicate by the nonacoustic vibration of their living substrate. "Vibration-sensitive species," write Cocroft and Rafael Rodriguez, "can not only monitor vibrations to detect predators or prey but also introduce vibrations into structures to communicate with other individuals." By vibrating the leaves, stems, and roots of plants, insects send meaningful signals across significant distances (up to twenty-six feet in the case of stoneflies). Unconstrained by the physical limitations of airborne communication, they can deter predators by producing low-frequency signals that mimic far larger animals. Some, such as leaf-cutter ants, vibrate to call their comrades to a high-quality food source. Others, such as larval tortoisesh.e.l.l beetles, exchange vibrational signals that coordinate the formation of defensive groups. Still others, including thornbug leafhoppers, generate collective distress signals to summon their mothers when they are under threat. And needless to say, predators eavesdrop on vibrations to locate their prey (a practice that accounts for "vibrocrypticity," by which some insects "move so slowly and generate so little vibration in the substrate that they can walk past a spider without eliciting an attack"). The diversity of vibrational signalers and signals is "fantastic."20 Let's reimagine the landscape of the soundscape. Let's begin with all that busy, noisy, musical energy and open our senses wider still. And let's a.s.sume not only multimodality but cross-modality-that, like our own, these senses make sense in combination rather than isolation.

Yes, the world of insects is a noisy world, a constant whir of acoustics: drumming, clicking, squeaking, chirping.

Yes, it's also a vibrating world, so sensitive that even gentle winds can disrupt it and a rainstorm can cause it all to dry up or be drowned out.

Yes, it's a chemical world, too: a nonstop, impossibly complex, wildly inventive molecular maze of attractants, repellents, potions, poisons, and disguises.

And yes, as we know from von Frisch's honeybees, it's a world of direct physical intimacies-touching, palpating, and substance sharing-and a world of visual cues, too.

It's an intensely interactive world, a landscape across which animals of the same and different species connect and communicate.

Listen. Can you hear it? With the soundscape we take tentative steps into a wider, richer world.

But more than just the sound of life in trees, the soundscape is the soundtrack to an epidemic. These noisy beetles are not merely symptoms of global warming, say Dunn and Crutchfield; they are also its cause. Dunn and Crutchfield see forest dynamics as a cybernetic feedback loop accelerating under conditions of climate change. With their relentlessly successful adaptive population dynamics, the insects drive the system past equilibrium. Decisive in felling the forests and so releasing carbon stored in tree bioma.s.s and captured during tree growth, bark beetles become the accelerating motor of what Dunn and Crutchfield call "entomogenic climate change."21 It is an intriguing insight. But in practice it is likely to make little difference to the Scolytidae and their bark-piercing allies. Already there is little hesitation from any quarter in holding beetles responsible for the deforestation overwhelming so many North American forests, in understanding their behavior as "infestation" and "invasion" (folding these anxieties into persistent fears of human immigration), and in working to eradicate them.

Listen. These sounds provoke complicated responses. The beauty of that rich interior life, the music of the phloem-it is self-contained, indifferent, the soundtrack to catastrophe. These beetles live fully communicative lives, their Umwelt Umwelt is thoroughly social. These are not the enemies we ought to choose. The biosecurity state, with its traps, its pesticides, its arborists, its public-education programs, and its quarantined counties, is largely powerless. It was Mao Zedong, apparently, who said that where there is repression, there is resistance. He wasn't thinking of insects. But we should be. As far back as twenty-five years ago, 7 billion beetles were caught in pheromone traps during a campaign to repulse an invasion of European spruce bark beetles in Norwegian and Swedish forests. is thoroughly social. These are not the enemies we ought to choose. The biosecurity state, with its traps, its pesticides, its arborists, its public-education programs, and its quarantined counties, is largely powerless. It was Mao Zedong, apparently, who said that where there is repression, there is resistance. He wasn't thinking of insects. But we should be. As far back as twenty-five years ago, 7 billion beetles were caught in pheromone traps during a campaign to repulse an invasion of European spruce bark beetles in Norwegian and Swedish forests.22 Seven Seven billion billion, and still they kept coming. Repression is futile. Somehow, we will have to cohabit. Somehow, we will have to make friends.

Ex Libris, Exempla Libris, Exempla

Excess December 26, 1934. A famous episode in the history of Surrealism. In a Paris cafe, Andre Breton and the up-and-coming writer Roger Caillois quarrel over two Mexican jumping beans.

Three years later, Caillois founded the College de sociologie with two other dissident Surrealists, Georges Bataille and the anthropologist Michel Leiris. (He also partic.i.p.ated, halfheartedly, in the charismatic Bataille's Acephale [Headless] group, a secret society whose few members, the story goes, having reached agreement on the radical gesture of a human sacrifice, found plenty of volunteers among themselves to play the victim but none to perform the execution.)1 Two more years pa.s.sed, and Caillois left France to sit out the n.a.z.i occupation in Argentina. Nine years after that, he began a career as a cultural bureaucrat at UNESCO. Twenty-three years later, he was elected to the Academie francaise. Along the way, he wrote a series of erudite, idiosyncratic, and barely remembered books on unusual topics, among which insects-and in particular praying mantises, lantern flies, and other masters of mimicry-held a special place. Two more years pa.s.sed, and Caillois left France to sit out the n.a.z.i occupation in Argentina. Nine years after that, he began a career as a cultural bureaucrat at UNESCO. Twenty-three years later, he was elected to the Academie francaise. Along the way, he wrote a series of erudite, idiosyncratic, and barely remembered books on unusual topics, among which insects-and in particular praying mantises, lantern flies, and other masters of mimicry-held a special place.

Sometime on December 27, 1934, perhaps nursing a hangover (he was twenty-one), Caillois sent a letter to Breton in which he declared his break with Surrealism. "I had hoped," he wrote, "that our two positions were not as deeply divided as they turned out to be during our conversation yesterday evening."2 * * *

The enigmatic beans sat in front of them on the table. Why did they jump like that? Were those irregular twitches a symptom of some strangely suspenseful life force? Caillois took his knife to break them open. Breton, nearly twice his age, recently expelled from the Communist Party, the author of the Surrealists' founding manifestos, a prominent figure in French intellectual life, made him stop.

They knew that each bean contained a larva of the Laspeyresia salt.i.tans Laspeyresia salt.i.tans moth and that its spasms were the creature's movements inside its hollowed sh.e.l.l. But Breton didn't want this type of confirmation. "That would have destroyed the mystery, you said," wrote Caillois. moth and that its spasms were the creature's movements inside its hollowed sh.e.l.l. But Breton didn't want this type of confirmation. "That would have destroyed the mystery, you said," wrote Caillois.3 * * *

Caillois described the dispute as between poetry and science. But his science was distinctively poetic even then. He threw himself into the "utter confusion" that he identified as the hallmark of inquiry in a contemporary world characterized by "the debacle of the evident. debacle of the evident."4 Like any good scientist, he saw confusion as a provocation to systematic inquiry. But he was developing his idea of "diagonal science," "the science of what exceeds knowledge," a science that would encompa.s.s "what science doesn't want to know." He was in search of "an order that will allow disorder itself to enter into the order of things." Like any good scientist, he saw confusion as a provocation to systematic inquiry. But he was developing his idea of "diagonal science," "the science of what exceeds knowledge," a science that would encompa.s.s "what science doesn't want to know." He was in search of "an order that will allow disorder itself to enter into the order of things."5 Revealing the larva inside the bean would hardly end the mystery, he wrote to Breton: "Here we have a form of the Marvellous that does not fear knowledge but, on the contrary, thrives on it." Revealing the larva inside the bean would hardly end the mystery, he wrote to Breton: "Here we have a form of the Marvellous that does not fear knowledge but, on the contrary, thrives on it."6 * * *

The natural world is full of marvels. Maria Sibylla Merian came across one in Suriname. The lantern fly, Laternaria phosph.o.r.ea Laternaria phosph.o.r.ea, she discovered, creates enough light by which "to read a book printed with the same type as that used for the Gazette de Hollande. Gazette de Hollande."7 Actually, she was mistaken; the lantern fly creates no phosph.o.r.escence-an odd, uncanny mistake that affixed itself to the insect for more than 100 years and lives on in its Linnaean name. Caillois suggests that the appearance of this creature so surprised Merian that she unconsciously made sense of it by the subst.i.tution of a different, unrelated strangeness, the strangeness of animal luminosity. Actually, she was mistaken; the lantern fly creates no phosph.o.r.escence-an odd, uncanny mistake that affixed itself to the insect for more than 100 years and lives on in its Linnaean name. Caillois suggests that the appearance of this creature so surprised Merian that she unconsciously made sense of it by the subst.i.tution of a different, unrelated strangeness, the strangeness of animal luminosity.

And L. phosph.o.r.ea L. phosph.o.r.ea is a startling animal. Like the praying mantis, it fills the world around itself with myth, storytelling, and legend. Henry Walter Bates, the British naturalist who lived eleven years in the Amazon basin and discovered, among many other things, a form of b.u.t.terfly mimicry crucial to Darwin's theorization of natural selection, retold stories that circulate in the region about lantern flies that attack and kill men on the rivers. In Amazonia, Bates says, the insect is known as the crocodile head because of its long, snoutlike proboscis. is a startling animal. Like the praying mantis, it fills the world around itself with myth, storytelling, and legend. Henry Walter Bates, the British naturalist who lived eleven years in the Amazon basin and discovered, among many other things, a form of b.u.t.terfly mimicry crucial to Darwin's theorization of natural selection, retold stories that circulate in the region about lantern flies that attack and kill men on the rivers. In Amazonia, Bates says, the insect is known as the crocodile head because of its long, snoutlike proboscis.8 This empty box extends from its face and "imitates an alligator's head exactly," writes Caillois (who was not really one for biogeographic precision); "color and relief combine to simulate the savage teeth of a powerful jaw." The effect is "absurd, even ridiculous," but undeniable. This empty box extends from its face and "imitates an alligator's head exactly," writes Caillois (who was not really one for biogeographic precision); "color and relief combine to simulate the savage teeth of a powerful jaw." The effect is "absurd, even ridiculous," but undeniable.9 How strange that a small fly that lives among the trees should have this resemblance and, accordingly, such power to intimidate. How strange that a small fly that lives among the trees should have this resemblance and, accordingly, such power to intimidate.

There is, Caillois proposes, "a repertoire of frightening appearances," a set of prototypes in nature upon which both the crocodile and the lantern fly draw. Mimicry is not about disappearance, about hiding in plain sight. It's more often the capacity to reappear, to induce panic by the sudden subst.i.tution of one appearance by another, like a Haida shutter mask. Out of nothing, out of empty s.p.a.ce, the praying mantis abruptly rears up over its prey, revealing its intimidating eyespots, emitting sinister sounds; its victim is rooted, paralyzed, hypnotized, incapable of fleeing its presence, and the mantis "seems supernatural, unrelated to the real world, coming from the beyond."10 And so does the lantern fly. Behind its reptilian "false head, dwarf and giant at the same time," Caillois makes out another head, "the tiny head of the insect," with its "two bright, black, almost microscopic points-the eyes."11 The crocodile face is a mask, a mask that corresponds in its effect and method of use to the mask of the human shaman. The lantern fly "behaves like a spell-binder, a sorcerer, the wearer of a mask who knows how to use it." The crocodile face is a mask, a mask that corresponds in its effect and method of use to the mask of the human shaman. The lantern fly "behaves like a spell-binder, a sorcerer, the wearer of a mask who knows how to use it."12 * * *

Caillois was a dedicated collector of rocks and stones. Toward the end of his life, he published The Writing of Stones The Writing of Stones, a lavishly ill.u.s.trated guide to the highlights of his collection, in which he describes each stone with his singular combination of biological reason and a.n.a.logical poetics. He finds the same kinds of correspondences in stones as those that draw him so relentlessly to insects. Just as insect mimicry shares the decisive characteristics of sorcery, just as the animal's mimetic ornaments are equal in practice and effect to the shaman's mask, just as the alarming eyespots on the wings of the Caligo Caligo b.u.t.terfly call to mind the evil eye ("The eye is the vehicle of fascination in the whole animal kingdom"), so the gorgeous stones of Caillois' collection-"and not only they but also roots, sh.e.l.ls, wings, and every cipher and construction in nature"-share, along with the human arts, a "universal syntax," a connection to the "aesthetics of the universe." b.u.t.terfly call to mind the evil eye ("The eye is the vehicle of fascination in the whole animal kingdom"), so the gorgeous stones of Caillois' collection-"and not only they but also roots, sh.e.l.ls, wings, and every cipher and construction in nature"-share, along with the human arts, a "universal syntax," a connection to the "aesthetics of the universe."13 If categorical segmentation is always the first step in scientific reasoning, this is a world that at all times exceeds its compartments. It is the dissolution of boundaries-self, other, body, animal, vegetable, mineral. The dissolution into s.p.a.ce. At the end of one of his most famous essays, Caillois quotes the final ecstasy from Flaubert's The Temptation of Saint Anthony The Temptation of Saint Anthony, "a general spectacle of mimicry to which the hermit succ.u.mbs": "Plants are no longer distinguished from animals.... Insects identical with rose petals adorn a bush.... And then plants are confused with stones. Rocks look like brains, stalact.i.tes like b.r.e.a.s.t.s, veins of iron like tapestries adorned with figures...."

Anthony, writes Caillois, "wants to split himself thoroughly, to be in everything, 'to penetrate each atom, to descend to the bottom of matter, to be be matter.'" matter.'"14 The inky-smoky-vibrant polished surfaces of jasper and agate can take Caillois there. A riled hawk moth can take him there. A rearing mantis can take him there. A lantern fly can take him there. "No one," he writes, "should say it is nonsense to attribute magic to insects."15

Exaction Writing from what is now Mexico City, the Franciscan chronicler Juan de Torquemada described how, after Hernan Cortes had taken Moctezuma II prisoner in the Aztec ruler's own palace in 1520, the conquistador gave his men free rein to explore the royal compound. Among the Spaniards' discoveries, wrote Torquemada, were a number of small bags, which they at once a.s.sumed were filled with gold dust.

When they cut the bags open, the Spanish were dismayed to find that instead of gold, they were filled with lice. In Torquemada's story-a story he attributes to two of Cortes's lieutenants-the lice were an expression of the profound sense of duty that even the poorest of the emperor's subjects, those with nothing else to offer him, felt toward their sovereign.16 Torquemada credited the discovery of the bags to Alonso de Ojeda, the notoriously brutal governor of Uraba who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to the Indies. But Ojeda had died five years earlier, in Santo Domingo, following a rout by Indians at Cartagena and a subsequent shipwreck. If Torquemada, writing nearly a century after the event, was wrong about Ojeda, perhaps he was mistaken about other details too?

In another version of this story, the lice made their way to the palace through the efforts of elderly people conscripted for the task by Moctezuma. Incapable of more onerous duties, these men and women were charged with visiting their neighbors' houses, delousing the occupants, and delivering their bounty to Tenocht.i.tlan as tribute. Given that the earliest medical text from the Americas-the Aztec codex of 1552 (unearthed in the Vatican in 1931)-lists indigenous herbal treatments for head lice, phthiriasis (eyelid lice infestation), and "lousy distemper," it could be that this tribute was an initiative of imperial public hygiene.17 * * *

Far to the southwest, the Inca ruler Huayna Capac was touring the limits of his empire. Arriving at Pasto, a frontier outpost close to today's border between Colombia and Ecuador, he supervised the building of defenses and pointed out to the leaders of the district that as a consequence of the empire's investment in their welfare, they were now in his debt. According to Pedro de Cieza de Leon, one of the most important Spanish chroniclers of the Incas, the local notables replied that they were entirely without the means to meet new taxes.

Resolved to teach these lords of Pasto the reality of their situation, Huayna Capac issued instructions that "each inhabitant should be obliged, every four months, to give a rather large cane full of live lice." Cieza de Leon says that the lords laughed out loud when they heard this command. Soon enough, though, they learned that no matter how diligent they were in collecting, they were unable to fill the designated baskets. Huayna Capac provided them with sheep, writes Cieza de Leon, and it wasn't long before Pasto was providing Cuzco, the Inca capital, with its full complement of wool and vegetables.18 * * *

Further south, the Urus retreated to floating reed islands in Lake t.i.ticaca in an effort to stave off Inca conquest. (These artificial islands and the few people who live on them are today one of the area's princ.i.p.al tourist attractions.) The chroniclers report that the Incas regarded the Urus as so lowly that the word with which they named them meant "maggot." The same accounts explain that the Incas levied the Urus' tribute in lice simply because they considered them unfit to pay in any other currency.19 * * *

Nothing like this is doc.u.mented for the Wari, the Maya, the Mixtec, the Zapotec, or the other great pre-Columbian empires. Often the records are just too scant. However, it is known that in battle the Maya were able to create a formidable panic among their enemies by bombarding them not with lice, but with missiles constructed from live wasps' nests.20

Exile From a remote district of mountainous Guangxi Province, the renowned Tang-dynasty poet and philosopher Liu Zongyuan described the character of owl-fly larvae.

Owl-flies are ancient creatures. They have been identified in amber from the Dominican Republic that is more than 45 million years old.21 The adults resemble dragonflies, but the larvae look like the larvae of ant lions: they have dark-brown oval armored bodies about an inch long, with powerful pincer-shaped mandibles. Unlike ant lion larvae, which set a shallow trap in sandy soil and lie in wait for ants and other prey to drop in, owl-fly larvae camouflage themselves by pulling debris over their bodies. Only the outsize mandibles remain uncovered. When an insect wanders too close, the large jaws snap shut, and the larva sucks the pinioned body dry. The adults resemble dragonflies, but the larvae look like the larvae of ant lions: they have dark-brown oval armored bodies about an inch long, with powerful pincer-shaped mandibles. Unlike ant lion larvae, which set a shallow trap in sandy soil and lie in wait for ants and other prey to drop in, owl-fly larvae camouflage themselves by pulling debris over their bodies. Only the outsize mandibles remain uncovered. When an insect wanders too close, the large jaws snap shut, and the larva sucks the pinioned body dry.

In A.D. A.D. 805, Liu Zongyuan was banished from the cosmopolitan imperial capital of Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) for his involvement in a failed reformist coup. Chang'an, says Liu's biographer Jo-shui Chen, was "the 'hometown' to which he dreamed of returning" but never would. 805, Liu Zongyuan was banished from the cosmopolitan imperial capital of Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) for his involvement in a failed reformist coup. Chang'an, says Liu's biographer Jo-shui Chen, was "the 'hometown' to which he dreamed of returning" but never would.22 In "My First Excursion to West Mountain," one of the eight short essays he completed between 809 and 812 that are "considered to have inaugurated the genre of the lyric travel account," Liu wrote: I have been in a state of constant fear since being exiled to this prefecture. Whenever I had a free moment, I would roam about, wandering aimlessly. Every day I hiked in the mountains accompanied by friends with similar fates. We would penetrate into the deep forests, following the winding streams back to their source, discovering hidden springs and fantastic rocks-no spot seemed too remote. Upon reaching a place, we would sit down on the gra.s.s, downing bottles of wine until we were thoroughly drunk. Drunk, we would lean against each other as pillows and fall asleep. Asleep, we would dream.23 Liu died in 819 at the age of forty-six. More than 500 years later he would be recognized as one the eight masters of Tang and Song dynasty prose.

The year he died, in A Record of Fu Ban A Record of Fu Ban, he described how, when an owl-fly larva catches its prey, it carries it "forward with its chin up."

Its load is getting heavier and heavier. Though very tired, [the larva] does not fall down as it cannot rise to its feet once it has stumbled. Some people take pity on it and lift off the load so the insect can continue walking forward. However, it soon takes on its burden once again.24 * * *

Elsewhere during these years of exile, in a meditation on the nature of heaven and human responsibility, Liu Zongyuan asks: "Were someone to succeed in exterminating the insects that eat holes in things, could these things pay him back? Were someone to aid harmful creatures in breeding and proliferating, could these things resent him?"

No, of course not, he says. The fact of the matter is that "merit is self-attained and disaster is self-inflicted." He is near the end of his time in this melancholy place. "Those who expect rewards or punishments are making a big mistake.... You should just believe in your [principles of] humanity and righteousness, wander in the world according to these principles, and live [in this way] until your death."25

Extermination After the defeat of the n.a.z.is, Karl von Frisch returned to Munich to resume his work as director of the Inst.i.tute of Zoology. In 1947, he published Ten Little Housemates Ten Little Housemates, a small book for nonscientific readers in which he tried to show that "there is something wonderful about even the most detested and despised of creatures."26 * * *

He begins with the housefly ("a trim little creature") and moves on to mosquitoes (which, he admits, "can never be pleasant"), fleas ("An adult man wanting to compete with a flea would have to clear the high-jump bar at about 100 metres and his long-jump would have to measure about 300 metres.... At one jump he could leap from Westminster Bridge to the top of Big Ben"), bed bugs ("We must remember that all living creatures are equal in the eyes of the great law of life: men are not superior to mice nor bugs to men"), lice ("With its forefeet alone a louse can carry up to two thousand times the weight of its body for a whole minute. This is more than the strongest athlete could ever hope to do; it would mean holding up a weight of 150 tons in his hands!"), the c.o.c.kroach ("a community that has come down in the world"), silverfish ("Lepisma saccharina-the sugar guest.... They are entirely harmless housemates"), spiders ("It is astonishing how little the inborn [web-making] skill of these animals is bound to a rigid system, how greatly their actions differ in detail according to local conditions and according to the weaver's character"), and ticks ("As there is good reason for the female's bloodthirstiness, we cannot blame her. Anyone who has to hatch out a few thousand eggs can do with a good meal").

Von Frisch devotes one of his longer chapters to his tenth housemate, the clothes moth. He begins with the caterpillar. Like the dung beetle, it turns out to be an essential scavenger, feeding off the planet's suffocating mountains of surplus hair, feathers, and fur. Like the caddis fly larva, it fashions itself a protective case, spinning a tiny silken tube, a minute padded sock, which it covers with tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs from the keratin-based world around it. To eat, it peeks its head out of the tube and nibbles the landscape beside the opening. When everything within reach is gone, it explores by extending its case further into the underbrush.

Soon the caterpillar is fully grown and leaves its tube. Awkwardly, it makes its way to a new location, from which the moth will easily be able to take to the air. Maybe it's the surface of your grandmother's fur coat or perhaps your favorite winter sweater. Once it arrives, the caterpillar spins itself a new home, gussies it up as before, and prepares for pupation.

Like many lepidoptera, the adult clothes moth cannot eat or drink. In its few weeks of life, it exhausts the energy stores it acc.u.mulated as a caterpillar, losing 50 to 75 percent of its body weight in the process. The female, heavy with up to 100 eggs, is reluctant to fly and spends her days hiding in the dark. Von Frisch is irritated by uninformed violence. "When a lively moth flies around the room," he says, "there is no point in the whole family chasing it. It is only a male. There are plenty of male moths, actually about double the number of females. So the birthrate will not be affected if a few more or less are killed."27 * * *

Von Frisch's little housemates are extraordinary and, in their own ways, exceptional. He explores the extremes of their existence, explains their extravagances, examines their exuberances, and excluding exaggeration, exalts in their extravagations. With his characteristic exact.i.tude, he examines his own experiments and expands on his experiences. In extensive and exhaustive excurses-often external to the exegesis-he extends excuses and extenuations for their excesses. Still, each of his chapters ends with recommendations for his little housemates' extirpation, that is, for their extermination.

Houseflies should be trapped on flypaper or poisoned. Clothes moths are susceptible to naphthalene and camphor. Silverfish can be controlled with DDT (which "does not harm human beings or domestic animals if it is used in reasonable quant.i.ties and according to the instructions"). Lice should be ma.s.s-killed by fumigation with prussic acid and its derivatives ("one useful product of the war"). Mosquitoes require more drastic measures: you should drain their wetland habitats, flood the area with petroleum, or introduce predatory fish into their breeding pools. DDT should also be used against c.o.c.kroaches.

"It is doubtful whether insects feel pain at all as we do," says von Frisch. And he tells a story to demonstrate his claim. He goes back to his beloved bees, the little comrades to whom he devoted his adult life. "If you take a pair of sharp scissors," he begins, "and cut a bee in two, taking care not to disturb it while it is taking a drop of sugary water, it will go on eating."28 Von Frisch's even, good-natured tone doesn't change. Roger Caillois encountered something like this too, something that brought death, pleasure, and pain into one claustrophobic s.p.a.ce. But Caillois, conscripted by a different type of science, found himself bound and subject to his animal: "I am deliberately expressing myself in a roundabout way," he wrote as he tried to explain the peculiar power of the praying mantis, "as it is so difficult, I think, both for language to express and for the mind to grasp that the mantis, when dead, should be capable of simulating death."29 But the bee just keeps on drinking. It doesn't seem to raise questions beyond the experiment. It appears to have lost its magic. Its "pleasure-if it feels any-is even considerably prolonged," von Frisch observes. "It cannot drink its fill, for what it sucks trickles out again at the rear, and hence it can feast on the sweetness for a long time before it finally sinks dead of exhaustion."30 Ex-animal, ex animo. He extends, exhibits, and exanimates. It excretes, exhales, and expires. Ex-animal, ex animo. He extends, exhibits, and exanimates. It excretes, exhales, and expires.

But let's not forget: just as there are forms of the marvelous that thrive on knowledge, there is knowledge that despite itself adds to the marvelous; just as there are those who underestimate the lowly mult.i.tude, there are people who understand only too well its many-sided power; just as there are those who subject the animal to the steel of experiment, there are those who take pity and lift off its load, even though it soon takes on its burden once again.

Yearnings

Kawasaki Mitsuya sells live beetles on the Internet. My friend Shiho Satsuka found his site and, knowing it would get my attention, sent me the link. A few weeks later, I was in the suburbs of Wakayama City, outside Osaka, with my friend CJ Suzuki, sitting in Kawasaki's insect-filled living room and talking about ookuwagata ookuwagata, the j.a.panese stag beetles in which he trades.

Kawasaki Mitsuya recently gave up his job as a hospital radiographer, but there's no money in stag beetles, he tells us. He opens some jars and explains that he does this for love. He fills his website with his poems. Some are silly, some are cute, some are abruptly bitter, even angry. Most are melancholy laments that contrast middle-aged male disillusion with the innocent openness of youth. ("He looks at the sky and the blue stays in his eyes. / The eyes of a child are like gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s that truthfully reflect the world. / The eyes of the grown man have lost their light, / His eyes are cloudy like stagnant pools.")1 Kawasaki tells us that his mission is to heal the family. He wants to open the hearts of men and bring them closer to their sons. Fathers have become cold; their hearts are hard and dry. Their lives are deadening. They have no interest in their children. They don't feel the connection. On his website, he offers to lend stag beetles at no charge. Perhaps insect friends will bring families together. He remembers the love he felt when he was a boy hunting beetles in the mountains around Wakayama. "I want to nourish their hearts," he says.