Grubbs up

Twenty years ago, as a dumb so-and-so living in Taiwan, my favourite bar snack was deep-fried bumblebees. They appeared on tables the way peanuts do on any pub counter and I regularly consumed them by the fistful. Crisp and delicious, I munched them down without a care for the reality of where they might have come from, nor the circumstances of their transition into tasty morsel.

Whoʼd have imagined that, two decades on, bumblebees are among millions of insect species whose survival hangs in the balance? Insects are disappearing at an alarming rate.

To many this might sound like cause for celebration. Down with mosquitoes! Death to cockroaches! But when last did you see a ladybird? Would your children recognise a praying mantis?

The buzz, everywhere, is being silenced. Bees are dying out, beetles going extinct, and even creatures we will never know once existed are fizzling out before we have a chance to “discover” them. The rate of species collapse is flabbergasting – you can measure it by the number of tiny corpses on your car windscreen: notice