
Buzz, Sting, Bite
Why We Need Insects
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Narrated by:
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Kristin Millward
About this listen
This enthusiastic, witty, and informative introduction to the world of insects and why we could not survive without them is “a joy” (The Times, London) and “charming...[h]ighlighting them in all their buzzing, stinging, biting glory” (The New York Times Book Review).
Insects comprise roughly half of the animal kingdom. They live everywhere - deep inside caves, 18,000 feet high in the Himalayas, inside computers, in Yellowstone’s hot springs, and in the ears and nostrils of much larger creatures. There are insects that have ears on their knees, eyes on their penises, and tongues under their feet. Most of us think life would be better without bugs. In fact, life would be impossible without them.
Most of us know we would not have honey without honeybees, but without the pinhead-sized chocolate midge, cocoa flowers would not pollinate. No cocoa, no chocolate. The ink that was used to write the Declaration of Independence was derived from galls on oak trees, which are induced by a small wasp. The fruit fly was essential to medical and biological research experiments that resulted in six Nobel prizes. Blowfly larva can clean difficult wounds; flour beetle larva can digest plastic; several species of insects have been essential to the development of antibiotics. Insects turn dead plants and animals into soil. They pollinate flowers, including crops on which we depend. They provide food for other animals, such as birds and bats. They control organisms that are harmful to humans. Life as we know it depends on these small creatures.
“Delivering a hail of facts with brio and precision” (Nature) Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson shows us that there is more variety among insects than we thought possible and the more you learn about insects, the more fascinating they become. Buzz, Sting, Bite is “a very enthusiastic look at the flying, crawling, stinging bug universe world, and why we should cherish it” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).
©2019 Anne Sverdrop-Thygeson (P)2019 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Author's Memoir
- By Leonora on 08-06-18
By: Karen Auvinen
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Pipe Dreams
- The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet
- By: Chelsea Wald
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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From an award-winning science journalist comes a lively, informative, and humorous deep dive into the future of the toilet - from creative uses for harvested “biosolids”, to the bold engineers dedicated to bringing safe sanitation to the billions of people worldwide living without.
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Powerful, intricate, and wide ranging
- By Carol F McCreary on 04-07-21
By: Chelsea Wald
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Clean Meat
- How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World
- By: Paul Shapiro, Yuval Noah Harari - foreword
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Shapiro gives you a front-row seat for the wild story of the race to create and commercialize cleaner, safer, sustainable meat - real meat - without the animals. From the entrepreneurial visionaries to the scientists' workshops to the big business boardrooms - Shapiro details that quest for clean meat and other animal products and examines the debate raging around it.
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Ingenious, terrific and prophetic book
- By Anonymous User on 04-10-18
By: Paul Shapiro, and others
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The Fun Habit
- How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life
- By: Mike Rucker PhD
- Narrated by: Mike Rucker PhD
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Doesn’t it seem that the more we seek happiness, the more elusive it becomes? There is an easy fix: fun is an action you can take here and now, practically anywhere, anytime. Through research and science, we know fun is enormously beneficial to our physical and psychological well-being, yet fun’s absence from our modern lives is striking. Whether you’re a frustrated high-achiever trying to find a better work-life balance or someone who is seeking relief from life’s overwhelming challenges, it is time you gain access to the best medicine available.
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A comprehensive manual on everything fun
- By Anonymous User on 02-18-24
By: Mike Rucker PhD
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The Insect Epiphany
- How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture
- By: Barrett Klein
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Insects surround us. They fuel life on Earth through their roles as pollinators, predators, and prey, but rarely do we consider the outsize influence they have had on our culture and civilization. Their anatomy and habits inform how we live, work, create art, and innovate. From ancient etchings to avant-garde art, from bug-based meals to haute couture, The Insect Epiphany proves that our world would look very different without insects, not just because they are crucial to our ecosystems, but because they have shaped and inspired so many aspects of what makes us human.
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Bee-yond Brilliant !
- By Sophie S. on 11-07-24
By: Barrett Klein
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Elephants
- Birth, Life, and Death in the World of the Giants
- By: Hannah Mumby
- Narrated by: Gemma Lawrence
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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From early childhood, Dr. Hannah Mumby has loved wildlife, especially elephants. Her first wild elephant sighting at 24 changed the course of her life. Since then, she has devoted herself to studying these incredible animals and educating humanity about them. Hannah's field work has taken her around the world, where she has studied many elephant groups, including both orphaned elephants and the solitary elephant males. These remarkable animals have so much to teach us, Mumby argues, and Elephants takes listeners into their world as never before.
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talks more about herself than elephants.
- By ERIC DUPREE on 09-11-21
By: Hannah Mumby
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Walking the Bowl
- A True Story of Murder and Survival Among the Street Children of Lusaka
- By: Chris Lockhart, Daniel Mulilo Chama
- Narrated by: Hlonela Ngqwebo
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on years of investigative reporting and unprecedented fieldwork, Walking the Bowl immerses readers in the daily lives of four unforgettable characters: Lusabilo, a determined waste picker; Kapula, a burned-out brothel worker; Moonga, a former rock crusher turned beggar; and Timo, an ambitious gang leader. These children navigate the violent and poverty-stricken underworld of Lusaka, one of Africa’s fastest growing cities.
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Amazing. Horrifying. But true.
- By Daniel W. Fox, Jr. on 03-23-22
By: Chris Lockhart, and others
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Our Island Story (Complete)
- By: H. E. Marshall
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott, Anna Bentinck
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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H. E. Marshall’s classic children’s chronicle of Britain, Our Island Story, includes all the best-loved (and most infamous!) stories from history: King Alfred and the cakes, King John and the Magna Carta, Lord Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar, Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada, and many others. This recording contains the complete and unabridged text, released previously in separate volumes. It is read with aplomb by Anna Bentinck and Daniel Philpott.
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This IS COMPLETE
- By Amber Youngblood on 06-04-18
By: H. E. Marshall
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That Bird Has My Wings
- The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row
- By: Jarvis Jay Masters
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1990, while serving a sentence in San Quentin for armed robbery, Jarvis Jay Masters was implicated as an accessory in the murder of a prison guard. A 23-year-old Black man, Jarvis was sentenced to death in the gas chamber. While in the maximum security section of Death Row, using the only instrument available to him—a ball-point pen filler—Masters's astounding memoir is a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit and the talent of a fine writer.
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Amazing books !
- By HD on 12-12-22
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Fuzz
- When Nature Breaks the Law
- By: Mary Roach
- Narrated by: Mary Roach
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.
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The footnotes
- By Alex on 09-24-21
By: Mary Roach
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The Incorruptibles
- A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
- By: Dan Slater
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry. But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands.
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Very Entertaining/Researched
- By ptr on 02-23-25
By: Dan Slater
such a book deserves a better narrator.
The narrator was horrible, but story is very good
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The book highlights a few interesting and amazing different types of insects, and sheds a bit of light on their world - and their importance to ours. The author does a wonderful job of explaining how they support the ecosystems around us, and the important roles they play - from pollination to assisting in the decay of things no longer alive.
She also discusses the their tumbling population numbers, hinting at the dire consequences that are attached to vanishing insect populations on all other forms of life and the ecosystems that depend so much on insect life.
It's a great read, for those with an entomological bent, and especially for those who know little about the amazing and mysterious insect world around us. Let Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson reveal some of those wonderful mysteries to you.
Nice Intro to Entomology
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excellent!
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Obnoxious narration
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Although I still loathe cockroaches, I am now a bigger fan of bugs than ever before. Just no cockroaches in my house.
Wonderful Entertaining Insight
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There surely isn't a better reader (performance) on all of audible.
Audible needs more of this!
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I enjoyed the book and have told others they need to listen to this book.
A must read.
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It seems like the only books to which I give 5 stars are nonfiction. This is no exception. There were kind of 2 different things about the book:
1st, She talked about different animals and their lives and stages of life. I thought she could have gone into a little more depth on this, but it was pretty good. Insects are amazing creatures, and we humans tend not to grant them their due!
2nd: She explained a good deal of how we do and can benefit from insects overall! She realizes the "ick" factor, and emphasizes that it would behoove us to get past it. We do have our favorites: bees and caterpillars for instance. But fertilization happens NOT ONLY by bees, but several other insects are better at particular plants' fertilization. It is very good and informative!
Getting past the "ick"
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might help insect phobia?
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Great narration, captivating writing
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