Eating insects can carry a much lower environmental footprint than conventional meat. Should western cultures be incorporating more of them into their diets?
They’re just one of many insects facing dramatic population decline.
Looks …. tasty? Roasted crickets are shown at the Entomo Farms cricket processing facility in Norwood, Ont., in April 2016. Loblaw has added cricket powder to its lineup of President’s Choice products.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Thornhill
Saliou Niassy, University of Pretoria and Sunday Ekesi, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology
Insects have often been described with words like “disgusting” and the idea of eating them horrifies some people. But this needs to change as they can be an important food source.
Crickets are nothing if not noisy, but populations on two Hawaiian islands have embraced silence by rapidly losing sound-producing wing structures to avoid infestation by deadly fly larvae. In Current…
A male Mexican true bushcricket, left, grasps female with bear-trap genital claspers.
L Barrientos-Lozano
Handcuffs, spikes and traps – you would think they were part of some bondage aficionado’s bedroom collection. But what are they doing in the insect world? A new study I worked on sheds light on why some…
The hairworm is a long, thread-like parasite that sits bundled up inside the body of its host. It grows so large that it takes up most of the room inside the host’s body, waiting for the right moment to…
If you had to guess what creature in the world had the largest testes, I doubt you would guess that the prize belonged to a cricket. The testes of the tuberous bush cricket (Platycleis affinis) are an…