We do tend to think of our own lives as being pretty rough. Overdue bills, unfaithful lovers, court-ordered therapy, family squabbles, missing quesadillas at the drive-thru; but truth be told, our lives are pretty hunky-dory when compared to some of our chitinous cousins. I always like to say that perspective and understanding of just how absolutely metal nature can be, gives us all a good view that’s often missing from our own existence. So, let us all take a moment to reflect on the lives of our oft-overlooked insect and arachnid neighbors, and perhaps appreciate just how mundane and small our own troubles are when compared with the true horror of being (or being a host for)...
While not an insect per se, mites fall into the class of Arachnida, and thus, we often think of them as "bugs" (like spiders, scorpions, etc.). Demodex mites have a special relationship with us, however, as they tend to live in and around the hair follicles of many mammals. These particular mites cause a range of skin problems in many critters, including many canines (mange), and more notably—humans. All adults and many children carry these mites (that means you too, buddy), and when you sleep, they like to emerge from your hair follicles, eat your oils and dead skin cells, and party like it’s 1999.
Unfortunately for them, they also lack an excretory orifice (butthole) and swell up with poo until they pretty much, well, just explode. This can cause rosacea for those with a greater concentration of and/or sensitivity to them, but sadly, we’re all covered in exploding poop mites. It sounds terrible for you and me, certainly, but arguably worse for them.
While castigated and reviled by humans, the cockroach is an absolute necessity for the jewel wasp. This iridescent and beautiful stingy bitch has a very special relationship with one of mankind’s most despised bugs—the cockroach. When a mama wasp has need to lay her eggs, she’ll seek out a roach, and given the opportunity, jab it right in the brainpan. You’d think this would kill the sorry bastard, but most unfortunately for them, it’s doesn’t. What it does do is paralyze them. When a tenant of the easily forgotten ’90s’ sitcom "Joe’s Apartment" is so indisposed, the wasp lady will remove the roach’s antennae and herd its now-zombified prey (if you’ve ever met a girl in shiny pants, you may know how this goes) back to her underground den.
This is the point where things get weird, a la 50 shades of body horror. She lays her eggs on the stupefied roach and leaves, but not before blocking the exit. Her eggs eventually hatch, and the larvae slowly consume the still-living roach (I feel like child support payment references here might get me canceled) and eventually go off to dupe a new generation of cockroaches into being what’s basically xenomorph nurseries.
A personal aside: the first and only time I ever saw a Botfly larva was enough to last my whole life. I was working as a vet assistant in a small town in northern Washington. A cat keeper brought their feline companion in, as they were concerned about a nasty abscess that had popped up on their cat’s hindquarters. An abscess occurs when a scratch is infected and fills with pus. Usually, it’s from a tussle with another mammal and generally requires just a drain and some antibiotics. This looked no different at first glance until we unbandaged the opening to the wound, and a nightmare was thus revealed. I looked at it, and I will swear to this day, it looked back at me. Now, I know that it’s the rear end of a botfly that protrudes from its fleshy confines (which, of course, cannot "look" at anything), but the impression I got at that moment was, "Dear God, it knows you’re here, run." The Botfly (also known as warble fly, heel fly, and gadfly) lays its eggs opportunistically in or on mammals (sometimes using a vector-like a mosquito). The larvae grow into something known almost charmingly as "warbles"—an ill-fitting name for such a volcano of parasitic terror. When extracted, well... let me just offer some advice... don’t look it up on YouTube. You already did? Well... don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Being a honeybee these days seems like it’s awash in problems. Colony collapse disorder, ecological destruction, pesticides, the unyielding human desire for your sweet, sweet vomit... Yet somehow, the losing streak keeps on for our purveyors of pollination. Queue the so-called murder hornets. Vespa mandarinia, exceeding an inch and a half in length (that’s what she said). Their colonies tend to be less populous than honeybee communes (hundreds of individuals vs. thousands or tens of thousands), but these malignant cunts aren’t feeding benignly on flowers, no sir. The Asian giant hornet loves nothing so much as the taste of honeybee flesh. Technically, the adults don’t partake but instead massacre and grind up the bodies of our smaller honeybee friends into a pasty slurry. This bee-sludge, in turn, becomes food for the hornet’s horrifying offspring. These monstrous, nightmare-fueled, cannibalistic hornets do have one weakness: The Japanese honeybee has learned a tactic whereby a mess of them surround one murder hornet and vibrate their booties so fast, they cook the enclosed hornet. Sadly, US honeybees are too busy watching TMZ to bother with this and are likely doomed.
Mosquitoes may seem like mere pests to us now, but these motherfuckers could well be the most overlooked killer in human history. Malaria, Zika, Yellow fever, Dengue fever, Chikungunya, many varieties of encephalitis, tularemia of several incarnations... these and countless more afflictions are sourced back to this ignoble thug. Whole human civilizations have risen and fallen to this absolute bastard of a vector, and it’s been said that somewhere between 5-50% of all humans that have ever lived have died as a result of the humble mosquito. We are the proverbial lambs for the slaughter, and no one has made it worse for mammals than these justly vilified vampiric vanguards. It might seem like it’s a party for them, but... Well, yea, it actually kinda is. Being a mosquito would probably be pretty great, in fact, unless someone flexes while you’re eating, and you explode like a blood-filled water balloon. At least you gave them an itchy lump and a deadly pathogen to remember you by.
Though only a short trek through some of the grotesque (but true) facts of life as an insect or arachnid, perhaps you can now regard your overlooked quesadilla as perhaps not so bad, when compared with being made into a paste for murder hornet babies, a zombie slave to be consumed while still alive, or an exploding feces bomb.
Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle loves the magic of the natural world. She can be tracked down on Facebook as Esmeralda Marina and Instagram as @EsmeraldaSilentCitadel.
