Creepy, Crawly and… Crunchy?
A caterpillar (the witchery grub) of the Carpenter Moth, family Cossidae (left), and the Giant Water Bug (Belostoma sp.) (right) from the insect collections of the Manchester Museum.
The following story was prepared by Jamie Burnett, the third year undergraduate student of the University of Manchester, who spent few months in the Manchester Museum’s Entomology Department in 2019 helping us out as a volunteer.
In their book, “Man Eating Bugs”, Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio ask a Ugandan policeman named David to try some palm worms they have collected; he refuses vehemently, finding the idea off-putting. Faith then asks if he eats termites or grasshoppers, which he enthusiastically admits he does – “Yes, they are very good” (Menzel et al., 1998). Why is he perfectly happy to eat one type of insect, but another is repulsive to him? This is a useful example of how a person’s…
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Nature Manchester 