Insect Dissection: How Insects Work - Wednesday 20 March, 9-10pm
A colony of army ants can be over 700,000 strong. When a flea jumps it accelerates at a rate 20x faster than a rocket being launched into space. The combined weight of all the insects in the world is 12 times greater than the weight of the entire human population, and for every human alive, there are 200 million insects. These are just a few of the remarkable pub facts that I've picked up so far from BBC 4's insect season 'Alien Nation'
Clearly, insects are far more successful than we gangly bipedal humans have ever been - they thrive in environments where we wouldn’t last minutes, and they live on and within us. We mostly perceive them as pests yet without these bugs, entire ecosystems would collapse, crops would disappear and waste would pile high. 'Insect Dissection: How Insects Work' reveals the secret of their success? Their incredible alien anatomy.
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To reveal this extraordinary hidden world, entomologists Dr James Logan and Brendan Dunphy carry out a complete insect dissection (Gunther Von Hagens, eat your heart out). Cutting edge imaging technology shows us the beauty and precision of the natural engineering inside even the simplest insects. Stripping back the layers, they uncover ingenious body systems and finely tuned senses – a bug body plan that is the hidden blueprint behind insects’ global domination. And they discover how science is now using the secrets of insect anatomy to inspire technology that could save human lives.
As Marcus Herbert, Executive Producer, BBC Scotland says...
"Insect Dissection is about ... er ... dissecting insects. Not on the face of it, the most obvious TV proposition. But seen in ultra close-up, insect anatomy is truly amazing, and is one reason why they are the most successful creatures on the planet. So we borrowed the anatomy museum at Glasgow University, brought in two entomologists – James Logan and Brendan Dunphy – gave them some scalpels and some bugs, and left them to it. Of course we didn’t – we spent a lot of time thinking about which insects would be most interesting to cut open, and how we could film in enough detail to show what they discovered. But one of the things we do try to do in science programmes (and other factual content as well) is to let experts share their knowledge in as direct and natural way as possible. Not always easy to achieve with the cameras and the lights and the rest of the baggage that TV brings. But watching James’s excitement as for the first time he dissected the stomach of a mosquito that was full of his own blood, was a moment when you felt TV had captured real professional passion."
As Marcus Herbert, Executive Producer, BBC Scotland says...
"Insect Dissection is about ... er ... dissecting insects. Not on the face of it, the most obvious TV proposition. But seen in ultra close-up, insect anatomy is truly amazing, and is one reason why they are the most successful creatures on the planet. So we borrowed the anatomy museum at Glasgow University, brought in two entomologists – James Logan and Brendan Dunphy – gave them some scalpels and some bugs, and left them to it. Of course we didn’t – we spent a lot of time thinking about which insects would be most interesting to cut open, and how we could film in enough detail to show what they discovered. But one of the things we do try to do in science programmes (and other factual content as well) is to let experts share their knowledge in as direct and natural way as possible. Not always easy to achieve with the cameras and the lights and the rest of the baggage that TV brings. But watching James’s excitement as for the first time he dissected the stomach of a mosquito that was full of his own blood, was a moment when you felt TV had captured real professional passion."