Category Ask the Psychologist

Anyone who has wasted time trying to bat this buzzing bug would swear it had powers of teleportation, as it magically disappears at the moment of impact before reappearing an instant later over the potato salad. The good news is flies don’t have superpowers. They’re just aces at flying and have reflexes faster than any fighter pilot’s. How fast? In less than a 100th of a second – or a 50th of the time it takes to blink – a fly can detect an incoming threat from any direction (thanks to large eyes designed to detect movement), perform a roll to change direction, and zip away at full throttle. Scientists credit the flies’ amazing reaction time to a special neuron – or brain cell – running from the bugs’ itty-bitty brains to their muscles. It’s like they have an instant connection between their eyes and their wings.

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They’ve crept through Earth’s crannies for 300 million years and survived the worldwide calamity that wiped out the dinosaurs. Cockroaches keep on crawling and crawling and crawling for all sorts of reasons. They’re more active at night, when it’s easier to hide from predators – and the bottom of your shoe. The roughly 4,500 species of roaches around the world have evolved to fill nearly every ecological niche (including humid sewers, where they reproduce by the millions). Hardier than most insects, roaches are resistant to radiation and can go a month between meals. They’ll eat almost anything – including human eyelashes! But it’s just as well that these brown bugs are such extreme survivors. Their anything-goes diet rids the world of organic garbage. And while roaches might make your skin crawl, they’re a gourmet snack for rodents, birds, lizards, and other small animals.

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Beginning in 2006, beekeepers across the United States reported alarming losses of their hives. Honeybees were fleeing their queens and colonies, never to return. The phenomenon – called colony collapse disorder – continued to spread, and by 2013 beekeepers were reporting average losses of 45 percent of their hives. Honeybees are vital pollinators for everything from apples to almonds, avocados to onions (not to mention the source of all honey), and bee researchers are scrambling to figure out what’s causing the disappearing act. Current suspects include parasites, viruses, and pesticides, and many believe it’s combination of all three.

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They’re the product of a lab experiment gone wrong! This highly aggressive breed of honeybee escaped from a Brazilian lab in 1957, and they have been heading north ever since. They’ll pursue any threat until it drops – and then continue stinging and stinging and stinging! A swarm chasing a Texas man nailed him more than a thousand times! Known to scientists as Africanized bees, they were dubbed “killer bees” by the media.

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Almost anywhere. Eighty percent of people on Earth include insects as a regular part of their diet. That means you’ll find bugs on the menus in every continent – even North America. The Insectarium, a museum infested with insects (kept safely in displays) in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A., serves an assortment of buggy treats, including “Chocolate Chirp Cookies” baked with dry-roasted crickets. Or you can search online for Larvets, an extra-crunchy snack festively packaged in three tasty-sounding varieties: barbecue, cheddar cheese, and Mexican spice. The secret ingredient: farm-raised insect larvae from Hotlix, makers of “original candy that bugs.” Other crunchy Hotlix treats include Scorpion Suckers and Cricket Lick-Its.

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Because you’re probably already eating them. Farms, food-delivery trucks, and food-packaging plants are hardly bug-free environments. Insects cling to the food and crawl through the machinery. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration puts a limit on how many insect parts (and rat hairs and other nasty stuff) can end up in your apple sauce, frozen broccoli, canned mushrooms, ketchup, and other packaged foods, but those itty-bitty bug bites add up. You eat about two pounds (.9 kg) of shredded insect every year. It’s ground into everything during the food-production and packaging processes.

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