Do you have a favorite bug?

In Madagascar, there is a weird and wonderful one called the giraffe-necked weevil. This small bug lives on a specific plant and, although not rare, it’s a peculiar sighting. When she was there last year, my wife Barbara had seen the male weevil, whose neck is twice as long as his body — my fancy was caught and I really wanted to see one.

I was in Madagascar to do the planning for the USAID Farmer to Farmer livestock program and had some off time, so went for a hike in the mountains to see lemurs. Going into the rainforest we saw a female weevil — a real cutie — on the specific habitat bush where these bugs live, but no male. The guide said we might see one coming back, but when we passed by their bush no male appeared.

Barbara had managed to one-up me again.

However, the guide mentioned another place on down the road where some of the habitat bushes are found, so we went there and trekked over to the bushes. There was a female. OK — good — but not good enough. We searched that bush from top to bottom and finally — there was the Big Guy in all his glory. Triumph!

Fast forward two weeks. We’re back in the same area and an aquaculturist has come on the team. I mentioned this wonderful insect, she was interested to see it, and I thought I could remember the location of the specific bush where we had seen him.

Away we went and indeed, found the bush with a female. Nice! But where is the Big Bwana? We finally spotted him high in the bush. I was able to get a hand on the branch and slowly bend it down to pull him lower toward us, slowly, slowly, slowly … but he spooked and flew. He’s a slow flier, though, and we could follow his flight. There were no other habitat bushes in the area, so he circled around was coming back flying high, then down to the bush — coming right by me — so I cupped my hands and quite unexpectedly snatched him out of the air! I loosened my fingers, he crawled out, we had an extended look at him as he reoriented, then back into his special bush.

This peculiar little event was the highlight, for me, of the entire three weeks in Madagascar — catching that wonderful bug in flight and getting such a nice look at him!

Little things can count for a great deal of enjoyment in our lives if we let them, like even just seeing a particular bug! All sorts of interesting living things in nature — creatures and plants — surround us wherever we may be. Birds and bugs and animals of the day and of the night all inhabit the spaces we share, and if we are alert to them they are ready to be seen and studied and appreciated.

Do you have a favorite animal? Or bird? Bug? Each one inhabits a particular environmental niche within our shared ecosystems, and knowing them is wonderful fun and worthy of growing appreciation for how they — and we — inhabit our little piece of the world.

It is great fun to observe and consider some of the seemingly crazy reproductive strategies used by animals (including us humans) and birds and insects and plants. As you appreciate a lovely flower, have you considered that as you sniff that flower it may be using you for reproduction? Maybe you’re carrying pollen — and the flower says “Gotcha!” Within all communities of life the energy that goes into reproduction is wonderfully fun to study and attempt to understand why some special maneuver is particularly meaningful.

But for many living things now, their niches in the ecological systems are becoming hotter or drier or altered in other ways by climate change, making those niches uninhabitable. Extinction of many species is happening all over the world. We’d better enjoy these creatures while we can, and we would be wise to make changes in our own behavior to protect all those habitats and niches — both for them and for us too.