There are times, admits alumnus Richard Conniff, when he has doubts concerning his vocation as a writer about the natural world. For instance, there was the morning when he found himself standing in a field in northern England "with the sheep spread out like gravestones," while holding "a wriggling, cold lump of 130 earthworms." And there was his recent visit to the tropics, when his host served him sauteed palm beetle grubs -- he ate two to be polite.
Mr. Conniff has witnessed nature in its many manifestations first-hand as a writer for National Geographic, as well as many other magazines, and host of several television specials on the natural world. A number of his articles are collected in the recently published book "Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World." He discussed his career and offered insights into some of his favorite invertebrates during a talk on Nov. 12 at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
A member of the Yale College Class of 1973, Mr. Conniff admitted that the only time he visited Science Hill during his undergraduate years was "to protest the war in Vietnam and to work as a projectionist." An English major, he confessed that in those days the world of invertebrate zoology was "absolutely alien" to him. In fact, he began his writing career as a journalist on a daily newspaper, eventually leaving because he "found leeches more interesting than politicians."
Through his writing style, which he describes as "animals for urbanites," Mr. Conniff has attempted to raise his readers' awareness about the wonders around them. In recent years, that mission has led him to write about invertebrates -- a category that ranges from insects to squids to polyps.
"People tend to view the animal world from a wildly distorted perspective," he said, noting that there are only 4,500 species of mammals, compared to an estimated 10 to 30 million invertebrate species. In fact, he noted, 99.5 percent of all animal species are invertebrates, and a spaceship visiting the planet to collect specimens "would take them, not us, as typical earth species." He said that his own "odyssey through the invertebrate world" has given him "a more balanced perspective."
While most people experience a "sweet sensation of horror" when confronting the invertebrate life around them, "people are beginning to understand that invertebrates are indispensable to life on earth," he said, pointing out that invertebrates play vital roles in pollination, fertilization of the soil and the creation of coral reefs, among other things. "They are creatures that are not at all like us -- which is one reason why they fascinate me," he said. "With invertebrates, nature always seems to be one-upping herself."
Mr. Conniff illustrated his talk with slides of "beautiful invertebrates" engaged in their major pursuits, which he described as "having colorful sex, reproducing in ungodly numbers and killing each other." He then focused on four of his favorites.
Fire ants. Known as the "Red Menace" in the areas of the South that they inhabit, these insects "sting en masse and quite painfully," noted Mr. Conniff. He discovered just how fiery their bite could be while filming a National Geographic special, and he had to stick his hand in a nest of fire ants 20 times before a scene was completed. "For a week, my hand was a mass of welts and pustules," he recalled.
The insects' half-inch-long queen produces 60 to 200 eggs per hour during the approximately six years of her life -- which, Mr. Conniff pointed out, "is equivalent to a 120-pound woman giving birth to 500,000 eight-pound babies a year."
Tarantulas. With venom that can kill a small animal although there have been no documented human deaths from their bite, tarantulas are "the dominant predators of the rain forest," according to Mr. Conniff.
People are fascinated by these creatures, he contends, noting that one woman who suffered from arachnophobia had nevertheless described them to him as "spiders in a mink coat." Because the cure for arachnophobia is to "shatter" the horrific images surrounding spiders "just once," he said, when writing about tarantulas for National Geographic, he attempted to do just that. He later received a letter from a woman who said she had overcome her revulsion long enough to read parts of the article but had ultimately torn out the offending pages and burned them thoroughly. "She underlined the word 'thoroughly,'" quipped Mr. Conniff.
The writer's own family has a pet tarantula, named Queen Mary, who "is different from other pets," he said. "She has warm eyes, yes, but eight of them."
Fleas. While commonplace, these insects -- which he described as "amiable little vampires" -- are so well adapted to their individual animal hosts that, before the discovery of plate tectonics, a researcher used flea anatomy to hypothesize the movement of the continents, said Mr. Conniff.
"The modern mind boggles to remember how intimate we once were with fleas," he commented, pointing out that women once wore flea traps in their undergarments and that "men once wooed women with poetry about their fleas." In fact, he said, there was once a whole "entomological erotica" surrounding the flea -- an association made even more interesting by the scientific discovery that some fleas spend "three to nine hours in a single act of copulation," he added.
Moths. Mr. Conniff first became interested in these winged creatures while writing about a scientist in Connecticut who had identified 1,000 moth species in his own backyard.
Some species of moth eggs can masquerade as twigs, bark and even bird droppings, he said. In one species, the moth caterpillar resembles a snake and vomits noxious fluids when attacked. In another species, a female moth can mate with up to six males, and later select the one who will fertilize her.
Writing about moths and other invertebrates has given him a new perspective on his own backyard, concluded Mr. Conniff. When he looks out at it these days, he says, he realizes that the backyard "now belongs, as it always has and surely always will, to these spineless wonders."
- By LuAnn Bishop