Misconceptions

Ander:
Mary Katherine:

The book The Earwig's Tail by Mary R. Berenbaum discusses the different types of misconceptions about insects. To be honest I did not know much about insects before this class, but have learned a lot more from taking it. The misconception that I had previously heard about was when a male and female praying mantis mate the female praying mantis kills and eats her partner, usually devouring the head first. The misconception with this is that the female praying mantis does not always do this (Berebaum 83). There are 2,000 species of mantids in the world and the phenomenon has been reported in only a tiny handful of them (Berebaum 84). Prior to this reading I had heard about this and thought that it was true. I thought it was really weird that after sexual activities the female would kill its mate. It sounded so vulgar that one would think it could be true in movies. After reading this book I found out that the female praying mantis does not always kill its mate. After researching this misconception more on they internet I found that one of the reasons why people believed this was because the studies were flawed. Most of the studies on the mating of praying mantis were done in laboratories in small tanks with bright lights shining on them. This was not the habitat that most praying mantis mate in and because of this it skewed the study. After creating an environment that more closely resembled their natural mating habitat the study would show that it was rare for the female praying mantis to kill her male partner after mating (http://www.cracked.com/article_19935_8-ridiculous-animal-myths-you-probably-believe.html). 

The most interesting misconception I found in the Earwigs Tail was the chapter about the brain-boring earwig. The misconception about this chapter is earwigs really do not live in ears. There has never been a case where there was an earwig in someone’s ear yet. The book talks about how the misconception is how people use to think earwigs would crawl into people’s ears and burrow into their brain laying eggs, which would later hatch and take over the person’s brain. Fortunately, this statement is false and that has never happened. I really thought that as interesting because before seeing and knowing what an earwig was, when we talked about them in class I related the “ear” in the word earwig to it being an insect that lives in people’s ears. This legend is claimed to be the “oldest arthropod urban legend” (pg, 10). They came up with this myth because “earwig” is a member of the order Dermaptera that translates to “ear wicga” or “ear wiggler or ear insect” (pg, 10). So they took that information and came up with the legend that earwigs climb into people’s ears at night and kill them by laying eggs in their brain. This misconception is disturbing but cool at the same time, although I am glad it is not true! After finding a couple of earwigs and examining them under a microscope carefully, I would never want something like that in my ear!

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/28806/title/The-Earwig-s-Tale/