Cultural Entomology (Insects)

Since the dawn of humanity, the organisms that share our world have captured our imagination and influenced our thoughts, dreams, and fears. This influence is particularly true of insects, which impact nearly every facet of human activity. In addition to serving as objects of scientific inquiry, competitors for resources, carriers of disease, and food, insects have made a marked impact on the cultural aspects of human societies. Cultural entomology is the study of the role of insects in those human affairs that are practiced for the nourishment of the mind and soul, such as language and literature, music, folklore, religion, art, and recreation. These activities that pervade primitive and modern human societies are concerned primarily with life’s meaning rather than its function.
Despite their extra appendages and different strategies for making a living, insects look and behave enough like humans to serve as models for friends, enemies, teachers, and entertainers. This status permits insects to act as objects on which to impart human qualities and as the source of qualities that can be incorporated into the framework of human ideology and social structure. It is not surprising then to find insects playing a host of roles in the oral and written traditions throughout human history, ranging from folk tales to the holy writings of the world’s most prominent religions.

FOLKLORE, MYTHOLOGY, AND RELIGION

The derivation of stories and myths is a universal tendency of all human societies. Both myths and folk tales differ enormously in their morphology and their social function. They are used to mediate perceived contradictions in phenomena observed in the natural world, they serve as vehicles of wish fulfillment, they may embody a lesson, or they may serve to preserve a piece of a culture’s history. Myth and folklore also differ from one another in their origin and purpose, but application of these distinctions is difficult to discuss here. Originally, mythology meant no more than telling stories, such as traditional tales passed from generation to generation. Later, some of these tales acquired new meaning and status and evolved more symbolic or religious functions. All tales, whether classified as folklore or myth, are not generated in isolation, but derive their inspiration, elements, and messages from the environment, including the host of other species that surround us. These tales are often used to derive commonsense explanations of natural phenomena observed in the environment. Conversely, such observations may also serve as the basis for the superstitious beliefs and tales surrounding aspects of human existence such as healing practices and other utilitarian activities such as agriculture.
Entomological mythology commonly employs transformations of beings between the insect and the human form (and combinations thereof), the acquisition of souls by insects, and ultimately the deification of insect forms. Insects are also used symbolically throughout the world’s religions in a variety of roles.
Insects figure prominently in the creation myths of many cultures. The widespread recognition of insects in this role probably stems from an innate recognition of insects as ancient members of the living world that must have been present at its creation or soon thereafter. Beetles, for example, play central roles in the creation myths of two native American tribes. According to the Cherokee of the southeast, the world was originally covered by water. The first land was brought forth by the water beetle that dived under the water and brought mud to the surface.
The behavior of beetles in the genus Eleodes (Tenebrionidae), which raise their abdomens in the air by standing on their heads when disturbed, is explained by the role this beetle played in the creation of the universe according to the Cochiti of the American Southwest. The beetle was given the responsibility of transporting a bag of stars that would later be carefully named and placed into the sky. But the beetle’s carelessness resulted in most of the stars being spilled into what is now the Milky Way. He was punished with blindness and today expresses his embarrassment at his mistake by hiding his head when approached. Any hope of this beetle regaining its sight was apparently completely lost at a later date, as this seems to be the same beetle that lost his eyes in a bet with a spider; this is how the spider got its extra sets of eyes.
Insects appear throughout Mayan codices and Aztec reliefs. The use of insects in this manner indicates an appreciation of their existence and their inclusion in cultural events. In addition to scorpions and some unknown bugs and worms, references to seven different insects are found in the Mayan topic of the dawn of life, the Popul Vuh. These include lice, leafcutter ants, mosquitoes, fireflies, bees, yellowjackets, and another type of wasp. Yellowjackets were used as weapons by the Quiche against the enemy tribes during an attack on the Quiche citadel at Hacauitz. Fireflies were used by the brothers Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who later became the sun and the full moon, respectively. They placed these insects in the tips of cigars as false lights to deceive the Xibalban sentries of the underworld that watched over them during their night in the Dark House.
Observations of metamorphosis led people throughout history and from various parts of the world to equate pupation with death of the earthbound larva and the emergence of the often beautiful, winged adult with resurrection. The adult insect is additionally equated with the soul in many circumstances. The equation of souls or spirits of the afterlife with imaginal insects may be why angels are traditionally depicted bearing wings. Insect analogies in descriptions of death, resurrection, and the journey to the afterlife continue to be used today. For example, a Doris Stickney topic, “Water Bugs and Dragonflies” (1997), uses a story of growth and emergence of drag-on flies to explain a Christian concept of death to young children.
Insects have also been incorporated into the astrological and cos-mological traditions of various societies. Aquatic insects were used as water symbols associated with the coming of rain by Chumash astrologers of southern California, who believed that rain was a gift from the sun. The guardians of the four cardinal points in Warao (Orinoco delta of Venezuela) cosmology are insects: arboreal termites, two kinds of stingless bees, and a paper wasp. There is even a constellation of the southern fly, Musca australis.
In Aztec culture, Xochiquetzal, represented by the swallowtail butterfly, Papilio multicaudatus) was the goddess of beauty, love, and flowers; patron of domestic labor and the courtesans; and the symbol of the soul and the dead. The mother deity and goddess of human sacrifice, war, and travelers, Itzpapalotl (the saturniid moth Rothschildia), was also the personification of the earth and moon. Images of these and other deified insects are found in many Aztec and Mayan reliefs.
The most famous deified insect is the scarab of ancient Egypt. The scarab is a symbol of the sun god Khepera (Fig. 1) and also equated with the creator god Atum. One representation of the scarab was as the agent responsible for moving the sun through the sky, in the manner that these beetles move balls of dung across the ground. Another prominent representation of the scarab was that of the soul emerging from the body, and it was commonly associated with mummies. Just as the actions of the beetles and balls of earth
Depiction of the Egyptian scarab god, Khepera.
FIGURE 1 Depiction of the Egyptian scarab god, Khepera.
and dung give rise to new beetles, the buried human dead will rise again. Scarab figures are nearly always found on Egyptian mummy sarcophagi, and amulets and pendants bearing the scarab likeness were worn as jewelry by royalty and included in funeral caches as symbols of new life. Another testament of the association of these beetles with life comes from Saint Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan, who wrote of Jesus as “the good Scarabaeus, who rolled up before him the hitherto unshapen mud of our bodies.”
Recent English translations of the Bible, based solely on the original texts, have shed new light on biblical references to insects, particularly with respect to the identity of the insects themselves. Of the 98 references to insects in the Revised English Version, most focus on negative aspects of their activities and as vehicles for God’s wrath. At least three of the ten plagues (maggot or gnat infestation, swarming flies, locusts) visited upon Egypt prior to the Exodus were mediated by insects. Three others may also have indirectly involved insects. Other references deal with more utilitarian or beneficial aspects of insect life. Insects are included as part of the instructions of what kinds of animals are permitted as food (Leviticus 11:22); some writings are merely observations of insects and their habits (Exodus 16:20), and other references use them as examples of virtuous characteristics (Proverbs 6:6-8 and 30:25-27). Sometimes insects are used metaphorically, as in Psalms 118:12: “They surround me like bees at the honey, they attack me, as fire attacks brushwood, but in the Lord’s name I will drive them away.” One or more kinds of scarab beetle may have even served as the inspiration for the prophetic visions of Ezekiel.


SYMBOLISM AND REVERENCE

Throughout human existence, many insects have been admired for their ingenuity, beauty, fantastic shapes, and behaviors. In some instances, the use of insects as totemic figures that may symbolize ancestry or kinship of humans with these organisms leads to a deep sense of adoration and reverence. In other cases, the resultant admiration has developed into a reverence for their inspirational and historical nature and a medium for symbolizing a variety of aspects of human life. In these situations, characterizations of organisms, in both illustration and sculpture, act as vehicles to convey human feelings rather than as objective expressions of entomological facts. Insect symbolism is best developed in the most advanced ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and especially Central America, where the people were surrounded by a multitude of insects.
Of all the insect groups, the flies (Diptera) most frequently play negative roles in human symbolism. Flies typically represent evil, pestilence, torment, disease, and all things dirty. This association is likely a result of the fact that those flies most familiar to people have a close association with filth. Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies, is a fallen angel who presides as a leader of demons and an agent of destruction and putrefaction. In the ancient lore of Persia, the devil Ahriman created an evil counterpart for every element of good put on Earth by the Creator. Many insects, particularly flies, were thus formed and they continue to be associated with evil and filth. Some flies were considered so bad that they became symbols of qualities revered by humans. The Order of the Golden Fly was a military decoration of the New Kingdom of Egypt (1550-1069 B.C.) awarded for valor. Derived from encounters with the stable fly, Stomoxys calci-trans, soldiers observed these flies to fiercely bite and return to bite again, even in the face of persecution.
Because of the perceived similarities between human and insect societies, social insects figure prominently in the symbolic representation of insects. Social insects such as ants, termites, and some bees represent desirable qualities such as unity, cooperation, and industriousness. For example, ants represent the benefits of teamwork and cooperation for the good of all. Many symbolic depictions feature the ancient activities of honey hunting and beekeeping. In Europe, bees and hives also are widely used in various signage and as heraldic emblems, perhaps extolling various qualities of bees upon their bearer. A fine example of the latter is found on the coat of arms of Pope Urban VIII, Maffeo Barberini, who consecrated the present church in St. Peter’s Basilica in 1626. The three Barberini bees adorn various ornamentations at the church and many papal objects located in the Vatican museum, including the building itself. In the United States, honey bees are used to symbolize virtuous qualities. The designation of Utah as the “Beehive State” originates from the adoption of the beehive as a motif by the Mormon leaders in 1849 and may be based on impressions of the bees as hard-working, industrious creatures.
Some insect groups have such wide representation in the symbolism of past and present human societies that it is impossible to make general statements about their meaning. Butterflies and moths, for example, are very common elements in symbolism of societies worldwide. Within the limited scope of Western art, Ronald Gagliardi describes the use of butterflies and moths in 74 different symbolic contexts. These insects adorn the artwork of many societies, not only because of their beauty but also because they are widely used to symbolize spirits. Butterflies are often equated with the souls of the dead or sometimes of souls passing through purgatory (Irish folklore) and are thus often used to represent life after death. The Greek goddess Psyche, who represented the soul, is typically depicted bearing butterfly wings. Moths are depicted as a symbol of the soul’s quest for truth, and just as the moth is attracted to a light, so the soul is drawn to divine truth.
Butterfly images are common adornments of pottery, feath-erwork, and the deeply religious characters hewn in stone in ancient Mexico. The Hopi of the American Southwest have a ritual called the “Butterfly Dance” and have kachina figures that anthropomorphize the butterfly spirit. The Blackfoot Indians of North America believe that dreams are brought to sleeping people by the butterfly.
Symbolic depictions of insects also serve to bestow honor on the insects themselves. Insects have been featured on a few coins and on several thousand postage stamps worldwide (Fig. 2 ). A 5th-century Roman coin bears a honey bee, the emblem of the city of Ephesus. Their “Great Mother” was also known as the “Queen Bee” and her priestesses were called “melissae,” from the Greek for honey bee, in analogous reference to worker bees and their servitude to the queen. There are currently 42 U.S. states that have designated an official state insect, chosen typically to represent something beautiful or inspirational from the state, or merely an insect familiar to many. The honey bee is the insect of choice for 17 states and has been nominated, along with the monarch butterfly, as a candidate for the national insect of the United States.
Some insects, particularly those that symbolize aggression, have found their way onto the playing field in the form of sports team mascots. Teams often choose insects, such as wasps, that symbolize aggression (e.g., the Yellow Jackets of the Georgia Institute of Technology and the New Orleans Hornets of the National Basketball Association whose cheerleaders are called the Honeybees).
Other forms of insect celebration involve periodical events of recognition or appreciation for the actions or beauty of local insects. Cities and towns celebrate the beneficial industry and products of
Postage stamps featuring a selection of moths.
FIGURE 2 Postage stamps featuring a selection of moths.
some insects, such as honey bees, or the pestiferous activities of those insects that affect the local economy. Annual festivals are held to celebrate honey bees in Illinois and Georgia, woollybear caterpillars in Kentucky and North Carolina, and monarch butterflies in California. In other places, celebrations recognizing the local impact of pestiferous insects are held, including a fire ant festival in Texas, a phylloxera festival in Spain, and a permanent tribute to a weevil in Alabama. The monument to the boll weevil in Enterprise, Alabama, is a large statue of a woman holding a larger than life weevil high over her head. It was dedicated in 1919 to honor the pest for the role it played in the history of the town. The farmers were forced to switch from planting cotton to a diversity of other crops, particularly peanuts, and the town prospered as a result.
A very successful type of organized celebration of insects that has become common in recent years is the insect fair. These events serve to congregate people with a common interest in insects where they can participate in and enjoy a variety of insect-based fun, contests, food, and dialogue. Insect fairs also provide opportunities to see and purchase nearly anything of entomological interest.

ART, LANGUAGE, AND LITERATURE

Art draws its inspiration from the environment of the artist. It is therefore not surprising that insects have pervaded all forms and aspects of art. Images of insects are found as adornment on all types of objects from textiles and pottery to weapons and jewelry and even the tattoos on human bodies. Insects are also found, either as the primary subjects or merely as curious elements of lesser status, throughout all types of paintings.
Like the illustration of other animals, insect illustration began as a form of decoration. The earliest clearly identifiable drawing of an insect apparently dates to around 20,000 years ago. It is of a cave-dwelling rhaphidophorid cave cricket, inscribed on a piece of bison bone by Cro-Magnon people in southern France. From this humble beginning, depictions of insects have adorned everything, from the walls of caves and temples of ancient societies to the paintings and textiles of modern artisans.
Insects, particularly butterflies, were used for decorative purposes in the painted illuminations of medieval manuscripts. By the 15th century, insects had become as important as birds in this respect. The rich iconographic use of insects at this time, often associated with folklore composed of a mixture of misinformation and factual representations, formed the basis on which the first scientific naturalists started their work in the 16th century. One insect painter, who was primarily an artist rather than a biologist, was Maria Sibylla Meriam. She reconciled the old aesthetic realism of medieval origin with the new tradition of practical engravings of the elaborately illustrated natural history treatises of the day and helped form the foundations of modern scientific investigations and writings on insect subjects.
In addition to paintings and textiles bearing artistic depictions of insects, their bodies, parts, and products often serve as the media for art. The metallic, brightly colored elytra of some buprestid beetles have been used as decorative cover on sculptures and textiles and as accessories in jewelry. Similarly, pieces of the colorful wings of butterflies are used in various parts of the world in collages to create artistic images. Beeswax was used to fashion figures and was the wax used to make the positive images in the “lost wax” technique for casting metal figures that originated in the third millennium B.C. in the Middle East.
One art form in which insects have been widely used as models is jewelry. Jewelry resembling insects has been used as aesthetic adornment around the world, throughout history and currently. The insects most commonly used as models for jewelry are beetles, flies, bees, butterflies, and dragonflies. Some of these, such as flies and bees, had symbolic significance in ancient societies. Others, such as dragonflies and butterflies, are more likely used because of their beauty. A particularly interesting form of insect-based adornment is living jewelry. In Mexico, small jewels, glass beads, and metallic ornaments are set or glued to the elytra and pronotum of living ironclad beetles (Zopheridae) that are then attached to a fine chain pinned to the blouse and allowed to act as a living brooch. Some brilliantly metallic buprestids are used in a similar manner in parts of tropical Asia, and living fireflies and luminescent elaterids are used as decorations in hair or attached to clothing.
Many 15th and 16th century paintings include the motif of common-looking flies perched on various subjects, including people. The depiction of flies in this manner was done in mischievous jest or to invoke shock, perhaps to symbolize the worthiness of even the smallest objects of creation in association with the images of humans, as an expression of artistic privilege, or to indicate that the person in a portrait had died. Sometimes flies were included simply as imitation of such musca depicta done by previous painters.
In addition to their roles in mythology and folklore, insects and their symbolic representations have been adapted into the language and philosophy of various cultures. Symbols are used to suggest some idea or quality other than itself. One example is insect symbols in ideographic or phonetic symbols in written language. Examples are found in Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform and the ideographic writing of the Chinese and Japanese. The Greek word for mosquito, “konops,” is the source of the word for canopy, such as that made of mosquito netting. The medieval word ” mead ” refers to an alcoholic drink made from fermented honey and water that was used as an elixir. This word is the basis for the word “medicine” in recognition of its purported healing properties, and the word ” madness ” is in reference to the state of some people under the influence of mead. Insects even form the basis for geographical place names. Chapultepec, the hill of the grasshoppers, is where the castle of Aztec Emperor Montezuma stood in what is now part of Mexico City. Urubamba, which means the plain of the insect, is the sacred valley of the Incas near Cuzco in Peru. Japan was once known as “Akitsushima,” meaning dragonfly island.
Insects have also lent their names and attributes to a variety of descriptors of people and their personalities. People may be described as “busy as a bee,” “nit picky,” or “antsy.” They may act “merry as a cricket” or feel as though they have “butterflies in their stomach.” Connotations associated with particular insects may be used to convey similar traits in people. In many parts of the world, the reference of someone as a cockroach signifies an utter contempt for the individual and implies that their life is without value. The Spanish word for butterfly, “mariposa,” is street slang for male homosexuals in Mexico. Lastly, insects enter language as metaphor. For example the self-ascribed desirable qualities of boxer Muhammed Ali are that he can “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.”
Aside from purely scientific works, insects have been represented in word and verse in a variety of contexts. In literature, insects are found as subjects of humor, as examples of aesthetically interesting natural subjects of wonder and appreciation, and as characters in fairy tales and in science fiction, mystery, and fantasy novels. Insects sometimes even serve as the storytellers themselves.
The essence of insects in literary humor typically involves the superimposition of insects into aspects of human behavior. The depiction of insects engaged in human activities is a common avenue of insect humor. This is particularly true of the role of insects in comic strips and cartoons, such as in The Far Side cartoons by Gary Larson. In other works, factual entomological information is cleverly presented in a humorous format. Such essays serve to popularize insects and their study, to educate, and, of most relevance here, to entertain.
Insects with endearing qualities, such as beautiful appearance or song, are used in fanciful stories and celebrated in poetry and verse. In Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach, a group of larger than life insects join a young boy as companions in a surreal adventure inside a monstrous fruit. A cricket and its song play a central role in Charles Dickens’ fairy tale of home, The Cricket on the Hearth. The people of the house are gladdened and cherish the pleasant voice of the cricket as they listen to its fireside music. The melodious tune made for a happy home and served as an inspiration for those that heard it. Selections of insect poetry are typically written to convey particular feelings or to celebrate insects themselves. A contemporary example comes from the late D. K. McE. Kevan, the author of many humorous entomocentric verses, who wrote An Embiopteran Epitaph (reprinted from the Bulletin of the Entomological Society of
Canada 6(1), 29, 1974).
We embiid web-spinners,
When seeking out our dinners,
Run back and forth in tunnels made of silk;
But, when we get the urge,
We occasion’ly emerge
From beneath a log, or places of that ilk.
We like our climates warm;
We’re of dimorphic form;
We’re soft and have a tendency to shrink.
“One does not often see ‘em!”
Says the man in the museum,
But we’re really not so rare as people think!
On the other hand, insects with undesirable qualities or strange traits are typically the subject of horror and mystery stories.
Hundreds of science fiction and fantasy stories that use insects in a variety of prominent roles have been published. Franz Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis is about a young man who awakes one morning to find out he has turned into a giant insect. In Edgar Alan Poe’s tale of the hunt for a pirate’s treasure, The Gold Bug, an insect is used to find the buried loot. As per the directions on a coded map, the gold beetle, tied to the end of a string and passed through the left eye of a skull nailed high in a tall tree, indicates the spot of a landmark from which the location of the treasure can be deciphered.
The role of insects in science fiction is particularly well established in films, where various insects appear as horrific creatures. Some of these insect fear films, for example, The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971), merely embellish factual information in order to prey on the entomophobic tendencies of the general populace and the potential fleetingness of the future of humans on Earth in the face of the insect hordes. Others use fantastic representations of insects with supranormal characteristics, typically the result of science and technology gone awry, to instill fear and malevolence toward the insect characters, and as a lesson of what can happen when humans arrogantly fool with nature. Ants are common subjects in these roles and appear as giant mutants invading southern California in Them (1954) and a housing development in Florida in Empire of the Ants (1977). In The Naked Jungle (1954) and Phase IV (1974), the ant attackers are of normal size, but possess supernatural intelligence and aggression. Because they are widely despised by humans, cockroaches and flies are predisposed to be good villains in these films. In Bug (1975), hordes of carnivorous, self-combustible cockroaches wreak havoc on the population; and in the classic insect horror film The Fly (1958), the bodies of a scientist and an insect become inextricably combined with horrific consequences.
Not all fiction films starring insects depict them in a negative light. Insects sometimes fill the role of funny or entertaining characters. For example, in Joe’s Apartment (1996), the singing and dancing cockroaches are crudely humorous roommates. The literary or cinematic use of insects in humor or as subjects of entertainment invariably leads to the creation of bugfolk. Bugfolk are humanized insects and other related arthropods that dress or talk like humans or are little people with wings, antennae, or other insect features. Bugfolk appear in nearly every literary and art form and are favorite characters for young audiences because of their teaching and entertainment abilities.
Certainly the most familiar bugfolk to Americans and many others worldwide is Jiminy Cricket, of Walt Disney’s 1940 animated film Pinocchio. Like many of his kind, but unlike his true insect model, Jiminy Cricket bears only four limbs and acts and appears very human. Although morphological correctness is commonly practiced in more recently derived motion picture bugfolk, four-leggedness continues to be seen particularly when a friendly character relationship is desired. Six-leggedness, for example, the evil “Hopper” and his gang of grasshoppers in Disney’s animated feature A Bug’s Life (1998), is used perhaps to provide a farther-from-human image and invoke disdain. Many other bugfolk are featured in comics, as children’s toys, and as subjects in literature and art.
The use of bugfolk in literature and film enables people to see and learn something about themselves through these characters, in perhaps a different light than would be achieved through a strictly human relationship. For example, insect humor often involves a comparison of human behavior and what an insect might be supposed to do in comparable situations. In this manner, insects are found dressed as humans engaged in human activities, such as attending a festive party or dance, or as subjects in amusing or thought-provoking situations
(Fig. 3). Particularly creative illustrations of anthropomorphized insects enjoying themselves are found in Grandeville’s Scenes de la vie privee et publique des animaux and in Aldridge’s Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast.
Trio of bugfolk extolling the virtues of sociality.
FIGURE 3 Trio of bugfolk extolling the virtues of sociality.

MUSIC, ENTERTAINMENT, AND CEREMONY

The songs, sounds, and other qualities of insects have inspired many musicians and songwriters. The sounds produced by various insects serve as songs for direct enjoyment or as the inspiration for man-made music. Singing insects have a rich social history in Asia where celebrations and festivals are routinely held. People in both Japan and China have long kept singing insects, chiefly crickets and katydids, in small cages, like birds, for the enjoyment of their songs. The inspiring influence of insect sound for human musicians is exemplified in Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakov’s famous musical composition the Flight of the Bumblebee and in that of another piece by Korsakov’s pupil Anatol Liadov, the Dance of the Mosquito. As subject matter in song, insects such as cockroaches are common in blues and folk songs such as the famous Mexican folk song “La Cucaracha,” about the troubles of a cockroach down on his luck.
Although insect collection and observation is generally done as an educational activity, many people find great enjoyment in capturing insects for specimens, to keep as pets, and to use in a variety of entertaining tasks. This is particularly true of children living in rural areas of Japan where insects have achieved a lofty cultural status. These activities support an entire industry devoted to providing the equipment used to capture, observe, and keep insects in captivity. Some insects, particularly large dynastine scarabs and lucanids, are even mass reared and sold in vending machines.
Insects serve as the models for games or may be active, albeit unwilling, participants in a variety of six-legged sporting events. In the children’s game “Cootie,” the object is to be the first player to assemble a complete insect from a set of body parts such as antennae, proboscis, and six legs. In many parts of the world children fly insects instead of kites. Large insects, such as big beetles and dragonflies, are tethered to strings and allowed to fly for the amusement of people. In places where they occur naturally, large male dynastine scarabs or lucanids are collected and made to fight each other for sport.
Bouts and games involving insects are a source of enjoyment as well as an opportunity for gambling, such as with cricket fighting in China and Thailand and water bug roulette. In the latter contest, water beetles or water bugs are released into the center of a circular container filled with water. The inside perimeter is bounded by a continuous series of marked slots into which the insect can enter. Entrance of a particular insect into a slot is analogous to the landing of the ball on a particular number on a roulette wheel and the appropriate prize is awarded. In addition to being pitted against each other in battle, insects are commonly matched in foot races. For example, caterpillar races are held in Banner Elk, North Carolina, during the Woolly-Bear Festival, and cockroach racing is popular in many parts of the world, particularly in China and India.
Other forms of insect-based entertainment for humans include flea circuses and entertaining displays of both living and dead insects. Flea circuses use tiny performing fleas that are “trained” to perform a variety of circus acts for the amusement of the audience. Living insects are displayed in venues such as butterfly houses, where they can be viewed and enjoyed flying about their enclosures by an appreciative public. Dead insects have been similarly displayed as objects of aesthetic pleasure, sometimes with added adornments such as miniature clothing. Dead fleas are dressed in tiny costumes and displayed in folk art exhibits in Mexico. In Plano, Texas, the Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum features dead roaches dressed as famous people engaged in various activities.
As is true for other organisms that are held in high regard and for those that serve some utilitarian function such as food, some insects fill symbolic roles in human ceremonies. For example, although insects are regularly eaten in many parts of the world for sustenance, the consumption of insects was sometimes reserved for ceremonies or other special occasions (Fig. 4) . The Kaua of Brazil perform a dance known as the “Dance of the Dung Beetles” that is used to drive away demons. The dancers attempt to transfer powers to themselves from the spirit world by taking on the image of the beetles. They do this by imitating the actions of beetles rolling a ball of dung. Other insects play a more active role and are used for a particular ceremonial or ritualistic purpose. Because of their powerful stings, giant hunting ants are used by indigenous peoples in Amazonia in male initiation and virility rites ceremonies. Large numbers of ants are tied to a woven mat and the mat with the now enraged ants is applied to the initiate’s bare skin. Those who endure the excruciating pain without complaint, and live, are deemed worthy.
The Indians of central and southern California also made ceremonial use of ants. Male youths of the Kitanemuk, Tubatulabal, and Kawaiisu were taken by their elders for 3 days of fasting, after which they were given numerous live ” red ” or “yellow” ants to eat. The ants were consumed in order to gain power and induce a trance-like state during which spiritual insight would be gained.

CONCLUSION

The sources of published information dealing with the roles of insects in human culture have until recently been found in a diffuse
Grasshoppers being carried to a feast to celebrate the Assyrian defeat of the Elamites, from a relief of Ashurbanipal at Ninevah.
FIGURE 4 Grasshoppers being carried to a feast to celebrate the Assyrian defeat of the Elamites, from a relief of Ashurbanipal at Ninevah.
body of literature. Such information is often hidden in historical documents, anthropological works, and ethnoentomological notations in travel logs and journals. In the past 20 years, a wider aesthetic and cultural appreciation for insects has been realized. The celebration of insects and their attributes as they relate to the development of human societies is generally accepted as a worthwhile endeavor. This interest has spawned a number of review articles and topics that summarize, synthesize, and sometimes popularize much of the previously diffuse literature and serve as a starting point for those interested in this fascinating subject. Some periodicals, namely, American Entomologist, regularly publish cultural entomological articles, and the recently introduced periodical, Cultural Entomology Digest (http://www.bug-bios.com/ced/), is devoted entirely to this topic.
Along with the modernization of the world, the perceived relevance of insects to human life is slowly eroded. As this happens, the various roles of insects in human cultural affairs may change or be lost. However, many people continue to carry mythological modes of thought, expression, and communication into this supposedly scientific age and others still find pleasure in observing and contemplating their six-legged companions on Earth. Therefore, the importance of insects as subjects of entertainment and aesthetic pleasure should continue to enter into the thoughts of future people and mold aspects of human culture. As some relationships between human and insect are lost, others are formed. Because of the dominant place in the function of the world’s ecosystems and their influence on human existence, insects have played and will continue to play a prominent role in our perception of life and pursuit of aesthetically pleasing activities and for the enlightenment of human societies.

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