Part 3: Insects as Food

Giant water bug served in a Bangkok restaurant

Abe V Rotor

One practical means of insect control is by harvesting them for food. This practice is not only confined among primitive societies but is still one of the most practical means of controlling insects. Anyone who has tasted kamaro’ (sautéed mole cricket – Gryllotalpa africana) would tell you it is as tasty as shrimps, lobsters or other crustaceans. After all, insects and shrimps belong to the same phylum – Arthropoda.

Locusts may destroy crops but, in a way, bring food to its victims. During a swarm, locust is harvested by the sacks and sold for food and animal feeds. The same goes for gamu-gamu (winged termites – Macrotermes) at the onset of the rainy season, or the salagubang (Leucopolis irrorata), another insect delicacy. Other food insects are the grubs of kapok beetle locally called u-ok, eggs and larvae of hantik (green tree ant), larvae of honeybee and cheese maggots.

When is a pest a pest?

When we see an insect, instinct tells us to kill it. We should not. A caterpillar is a plant eater, but the beautiful butterfly that emerges from it is harmless, efficient pollinator. Hantik ants make harvesting of fruits inconvenient because of their painful bite, but they guard the trees from destructive insects. Houseflies carry germs, but without them the earth would be littered with dead, undecomposed organisms. They are nature’s chief decomposers working hand in hand with bacteria and fungi. Termites may cause a house to crumble, but without them the forest would be a heap of fallen trees.

It is natural to see leafhoppers on rice plants, aphids on corn, bugs in the soil, grasshopper on the meadow, borers on twigs, fruit flies on ripening fruits. These organisms live with us under one biosphere. If we can think we can dominate them, we have to think again. They have been dominating the earth for billions of years, even before man appeared. Just one proof: the total weight of ants inhabiting the earth outweighs six billion human inhabitants.

There is no way to escape pesky creatures. Conflict arises only when their populations increase rapidly to overrun our crops, spoil our stored products, and threaten our health and welfare.

We have set certain thresholds of our co-existence with insects. As long as they do not cross that line, we can cohabit this planet peacefully with them. By so doing, we can ponder at the beauty of their wings, the mystery of the fire they carry, the music they make, the magnitude of their numbers, or marvel at the mystery of their presence.

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