What we learn from insects’ kinky sex lives

So people are more afraid of insects
than they are of dying.

(Laughter)

At least, according to a 1973 book
of lists survey which preceded all those

online best, worst, funniest lists
that you see today.

Only heights and public speaking exceeded
the six-legged as sources of fear.

And I suspect if you had put spiders
in there, the combinations of insects

and spiders would have just
topped the chart.

Now, I am not one of those people.

I really love insects.
I think they're interesting and beautiful,

and sometimes even cute.

(Laughter)

And I'm not alone.

For centuries, some of the greatest minds
in science from Charles Darwin to E.O. Wilson

have drawn inspiration from studying some
of the smallest minds on earth.

Well, why is that?

What is that keeps us coming
back to insects?

Some of it of course, is just the sheer
magnitude of almost everything about them.

They're more numerous than
any other kind of animal.

We don't even know how many species
of insects there are because new ones

are being discovered all the time.

There are at least a million,
maybe as many as 10 million.

This means that you could have an insect
of the month calendar

and not have to reuse a species
for over 80,000 years.

(Laughter)

Take that pandas and kittens!

(Laughter)

More seriously, insects are essential.
We need them.

It's been estimated that 1 out of every 3
bites of food is made possible

by a pollinator.

Scientist use insects to make fundamental
discoveries about everything

from the structure of our nervous systems,
to how our genes and DNA work.

But what I love most about insects
is what they can tell us about

our own behavior.

Insects seem like they do
everything that people do.

They meet, they mate, they break up.

And they do so with what looks
like love or animosity.

But what drives their behaviors is really
different than what drives our own,

and that difference can be
really illuminating.

There's nowhere where that's more true
than when it comes to one of our most

consuming interests --
sex.

Now, I will maintain and I think I can
defend what may seem like

a surprising statement.

I think sex in insects is more
interesting than sex in people.

(Laughter)

And the wild variety that we see makes us
challenge some of our own assumptios

about what it means to be male and female.

Of course, to start with, a lot of insects
don't need to have sex at all to reproduce.

Female aphids can make little, tiny clones
of themselves without ever mating.

Virgin birth, right there.
On your rose bushes.

(Laughter)

When they do have sex, even their sperm
is more interesting than human sperm.

There some kinds of fruit flies whose
sperm is longer than the male's own body.

And that's important because the males
use their sperm to compete.

Now, male insects do compete with weapons,
like the horns on these beetles.

But they also compete after
mating with their sperm.

Dragonflies and damselflies have penises
that look kind of like Swiss Army knives