I've been reading this informative insect book that talks about DNA, gender roles, and various other snid-bits about insect life. It is called Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language From the Insect World and it is written by Marlene Zuk (a biology professor from the University of California, Riverside) in 2011.
I have found this book exceedingly informative and it broadened my perspective on many levels. I didn't realize that humans had such boring biological processes until after I read about the biological processes of insects.
Specifically, I found it fascinating that female insects can do so much in the control of pregnancy. When female insects are mistreated in mating or do not feel the male would help create robust offspring, some female insects are capable of ejecting the male insects sperm (Zuk p.120). Wouldn't that be a cool trick if human women could do that? It would save women from getting pregnant by losers or undesirable partners. It would also eliminate the controversial issue of abortion altogether. Take that, Abortion!
Also, some female insects can attack unwanted sperm with spermicide once it enters their system (Zuk p. 125). That would be a wonderful skill to have in human females as well. It might also be a way to secretly deal with anger issues against men with the men being none the wiser. Die, Sperm, die! It's okay if he pisses me off. I'll just kill his sperm.
I also found it fascinating that male insect sperm is more complex and diverse than male human sperm. There are male insects that have multiple types of sperm (Zuk p. 121-126). There are some insects that have fake sperm that serve as shields once in the female's system (Zuk p. 124-126). These decoys take the blast of female insect spermicide preserving the insect's real sperm from sudden death (Zuk p. 124-125). Furthermore, insect sperm can take on a more hardcore menacing appearance in its battle against other male insect sperm (Zuk p.122). Some insect sperm have spikes and hooks in order to fight other insect sperm in aims of destroying the competition (Zuk p. 122). This makes me picture medieval battles with spiky clubs, shields, and swords.
There are also common misperceptions about insect gender roles. Apparently, many people are under the impression that worker ants and soldier ants are male ants. When, in fact, that role goes to the female ants (Zuk p. 95). That's right. That means that those scary looking soldier ants with pincers on the end of their jaws that are so effective at fighting are the female ants, not the male ants (Zuk p. 95). Furthermore, the worker ants are female ants and not the male ants either (Zuk p. 95). That's right. That means that all this nonsense about how human men are supposed to work and the human women have to stay home has some biological evidence against it. Since other animals function better by the juxtaposition of the aforementioned gender roles (specifically ants, which are practically the most efficient insects alive), it stands to reason that gender roles might be more effective if they were reversed. Ants are more enlightened than humans in this respect.
Another thing I learned from this book was that female insects can have more independence regarding reproduction. When female ants lay eggs, they do not need a male ant to fertilize their eggs (Zuk p. 194). In fact, if the female ant just lays eggs, those ants will hatch as male ants without fertilization (Zuk p. 194). If a female ant is able to mate, she can choose which of her eggs to fertilize and which eggs not to fertilize. This means the female ant has control over whether her offspring are male ants or female ants. Plus, female ants can store the male's sperm for long periods of time and still fertilize the eggs with it later (Zuk p. 122). This means, that she can control when she fertilizes her eggs. This would be a cool skill to have for human women. This would leave the guesswork out of what gender baby the couple was having. The human woman would know exactly what she was having because she decided and controlled the gender herself.
There are downsides to being a female ant, though. If the female worker ant wants to lay eggs, she sometimes cannot get away with it because her sister ants will attack her (Zuk p. 194-196). It depends on how strict the ant colony is about having other eggs in the ant hill. If the ant species is strict, sister ants will smell when a specific female ant is about to lay eggs who isn't the queen, attack, and that's the end of that ant dream. If the ant species is less strict, some female worker ants are able to lay eggs producing sons (Zuk p. 194-195).
There was so much interesting material shown in this book about the various insects. I found it fascinating that there were such bugs that I had never heard of like the squash bee and the bullet ant. Furthermore, there were insects with androgynous appearances for mating like dragonflies (Zuk p. 132). I couldn't cover all of the interesting stuff in this book if I tried.
In any case, I highly recommend this book if you like reading about DNA and insects. I found it a very fascinating read. There was some technical jargon at parts of it, so if you would rather not have to focus on the terminology, perhaps you should steer clear and look for a fiction book instead. I didn't mind reading the species names of the various insects and reading about the chemicals in DNA, but I'm a self-proclaimed nerd and love this stuff.
In the end, I feel a sense of empowerment after reading about the employment opportunities and reproductive independence of female insects. It is nice to know that there are insect species that do not keep the women down, undervaluing their skills and talents in aims of promoting outdated stereotypes. Granted, insects have been around longer than humans. As such, perhaps we women can take solace in the notion that in a billion years, things might be different.
Thought Question: Zuk brought up the idea that football represents the battle of competing sperm to fertilization (Zuk p. 111). I had never thought of it that way before.
My question for you: Does this subliminal representation have anything to do with why men tend to love watching football so much? Think about it.
Work Cited
Zuk, Marlene. Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language From the Insect World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2011. Print.
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