As a young boy, hearing stories of my dad’s childhood about fighting spiders as well as being hooked onto an arcade game called Mushi King, which features animated beetles “battles” (kind of similar to Pokemon), aroused my interest in insects and other creepy crawlies.
Yet I never thought about exploring our wild spaces in search of these creatures because who would’ve thought that the highly urbanised Singapore would have cool insects like Rhino beetle or Tarantulas that I was so fascinated about since young.
Well spoiler alert: they do actually exist in Singapore.
Visiting Windsor Park for the first time was a truly eye-opening experience, not to mention that it was an entomology walk which most would have avoided. Our guide started off with some mind-blowing statistics on how many insect species can be found in the tiny red dot of Singapore (I believe it was mentioned that there are more than a thousand species here in Singapore). We’ve grown very accustomed to the common few species like your house cockroach, ants, house flies that we forget that there could be tons of other variations out there that we’ve yet to see.
Our guide caveat that we shouldn’t apply any insect repellent, which seems like common sense, but doing so is a common habit when we’re out in nature. This reminded me that simple actions like applying insect repellent can strongly affect these sensitive invertebrates that we often do not pay attention to.
Insects are often viewed as pest, especially species such as the american cockroach, fruit flies and the very annoying mosquitoes (literal bloodsuckers tsk). But insects are one of the most crucial organisms for the balance of our ecosystem. Quoting biologist Edward O. Wilson: “If all humans were to suddenly disappear, the Earth would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. But if insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”
The fact that most insects are pollinators is a good enough example of why these misjudged creepy crawlies are so vital to not just the environment but to man. “Small but mighty” goes a long way in describing insects.
BFF Biodiversity Challenge 2021 