The Weavers

The Weavers

The curious world of insects.

Geetha Iyer

HarperCollins Publishers India.

2016.

At Phuye (Zunheboto, Nagaland), with a friend, I had had honey, fresh with the honeycomb. An old uncle, smiling as he came all of a sudden, had brought it on a plate and we were left gaping. I happily recall how, once we began, we finished it no time. I was reminded of this, when in chapter 5, ‘Silk in Ants, Bees and Wasps’ the author asks, ‘Have you ever eaten a freshly harvested honeycomb?’ and states ‘If you have, then surely you must have also eaten silk; if you haven’t, please try. The comb with the honey is tasty, fresh and delicious! She then adds ‘So the next time you feast on juicy honeycombs, remember that you are probably also gorging on a mixture of bee shit and bee piss’. C A Viraktamath, in his foreword, has succinctly described the book as, ‘a wonderful treatise on all silk producing insects’.

In her introductory note the author says ‘It’s not that I consciously chose to observe or study them – they were just always around, and more practically, were easily accessible to my Nature Club Students.’ So true; one often hears ‘we will go to the Wildlife Sanctuary to see wildlife’; of people going far to see few large species and many a time in controlled environment. So little one hears about the wildlife around us; species that occur amidst human-beings despite all that we have done to them! This is underscored when she adds, on the next page, ‘No single group of living organisms displays the kind of versatility or diversity one comes across in the insect world.’ Glad to have read another brilliant book, during recent months, on the species around us, Arefa Tehsin’s ‘Wildlife in the backyard’.

The initial pages talk of myths and legends of silk, its origin and how it was guarded for more than almost 2,500 years by the Chinese. The story-lover in me loved this portion. One of the stories, that appeared familiar, I recall coming across in Eduardo Galeano’s classic ‘Mirrors’.

The one-liners, spread across the book, are stark and fun-

·        The silk that humans discovered only 5,000 years back came into being 150 million years ago!

·        Butterflies also produce silk though not in such copious or significant quantities as moths.

·        Embiids are the only known animals on earth capable of temporarily stiffening the otherwise flexible wings.

·        As evolution is closely linked to functions, the ability to produce silk may have been lost when not needed and evolved again with modifications to meet new needs.

There are ample references to work done on the topic, within India and beyond, including her work at Rishi Valley. These help bring out the details of the species. There are questions – including those yet to be answered. The author, espousing the tone of a learner, conveys that while we have worked on them we are yet to understand a lot about these species. However, she does not shy from stating of her being perplexed at researchers not studying these species further and wonders if the reasons are driven by economics! During the week, that I read the book, I also attended a very interesting talk on ‘the history of natural history in our country’. There, the presenter had mentioned that most (or was it all!) of our books on moths have been written by the Britishers.

She brings out, besides her in-depth knowledge of the species, their connections with our lives. With time these relationships modify and some even come to an end. While we hate insects, we spend huge sums, to drape ourselves in their saliva, silk, she writes. Surprise for me was cricket fights being popular in China to the extent that they not only had books written on them an also had a cricket minister!

The cover page is nicely designed and it was good to have web-links for those keen to look up more on select topics. While the book does state that the colour plates appear at the end of select chapters, in the version I had they all came, at the end, together. It would have helped to have them at the end of relevant chapters.

My familiarity with insects ranges between poor and very poor. While I learnt a lot as I read the book I did come across terms that I was not familiar with. Some of these were explained, but the majority were not. It would have been helpful to have them after each chapter.

There were portions, which I felt were too dense and could have been lightened. It is possible that students of biology may have a different view. The book though, no where states, that it is meant for a specific reader.

The challenge would be to put this wonderful book to use to raise our awareness and sensitivity of the species around us.

Thanks are due to Geetha Iyer, Dhruv Gupta and Harper Collins for sending the book. This is the first book I read on Google Play; thanks also for removing my ignorance on it.