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Entomology Quotes

Browse 10 quotes about Entomology.

Entomology Quotes

“She first peered into its fascinating cases of beetles and butterflies at the age of six, in the company of her father. She recalls her pity at each occupant pinned for display. It was no great leap to draw the same conclusion of ladies: similarly bound and trussed, pinned and contained, with the objective of being admired, in all their gaudy beauty.”

ScienceWomenFashionInsectsEmancipationButterfliesCorsetsVictorian AgeEntomology
Book:The Gentlemen's Club
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“Modern science has since discovered the positive effect of an infusion of salt on the nervous system, and for lactating mammals, but a tiny male moth with a huge appetite for salt also seems to back the notions of the ancient Greeks--- that salt is a key ingredient for successful sex. The male Gluphisia moth spends most of his short life accumulating enough salt to give his mate a nuptial gift of sodium. This act is achieved by "puddling," or sucking from pools of standing water or moist ground for several hours at a time and squirting out the liquid in strong jets. The process is nothing if not a test of endurance, with the most virile moths squirting out 4,325 jets, or 600 times their bodyweight. The moth only takes in sodium, expelling other nutrients like potassium. The act raises the moth's sodium levels to eight times that of the nonpuddling Gluphisia. Ultimately, the former will give half of this sodium to a mate in a reproductive act by incorporating the sodium into spermatophore, a present of nutrients, protein, and sperm that supplies the female with enough sodium to pass on to her larvae.”

SexSaltReproductionMothsSodiumEntomology
Book:The Best American Food Writing 2023: Eye-Opening Essays on Culture, Inequality, and Justice
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“A very successful method of dragon-fly-catching..is to use a captured female dragon-fly as a decoy. One end of a long thread is fastened to the insect's tail, and the other end of the thread to a flexible rod. By moving the rod in a particular way the female can be kept circling on her wings at the full length of the thread; and a male is soon attracted. As soon as he clings to the female, a slight jerk of the rod will bring both insects into the angler's hand. With a single female for lure, it is easy to capture eight or ten males in succession”

JapanMulticulturalAllusionCatchDragonflyEntomology
Book:A Japanese Miscellany: Strange Stories, Folklore Gleanings, Studies Here & There
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“A most extraordinary device for catching dragon-flies is used by the children of the province of Kii. They get a long hair, - a woman's hair, - and attach a very small pebble to each end of it, so as to form a miniature "bolas"; and this they sling high into the air. A dragon-fly pounces upon the passing object; but the moment that he seizes it, the hair twists round his body, and the weight of the pebbles brings him to the ground.”

JapanMulticulturalAllusionCatchDragonflyEntomology
Book:A Japanese Miscellany: Strange Stories, Folklore Gleanings, Studies Here & There
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“As increasing human population and fires from the savannah are continuously eating into the forest belt, it seems likely that the distribution of the forest members of the fusca group will continue to retract. In 1912 Simpson described how G. Fusca was found in Sierra Leone along a certain 37-mile stretch of road which ran through thickly wooded country skirting mountains densely clothed in thick forest; in 1946 I visited the area to find no fusca, but bare mountains, grassland, and only a few patches of low secondary thicket.”

DiseaseAfricaDeforestationEntomologyNaganaSleeping SicknessTsetse Fly
Book:Africa's bane: the tsetse fly
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“What she actually wanted was to see the world, the way Father had when he was a young man. She had found all sorts of geography books and atlases in the library---books about the Orient, full of steaming rain forests and moths the size of dinner plates ("ghastly things," according to Father), and about Africa, where scorpions glittered like jewels in the sand. Yes, one day she would leave Orton Hall and travel the world---as a scientist. A biologist, she hoped, or maybe an entomologist? Something to do with animals, anyway, which in her experience were far preferable to humans. Nanny Metcalfe often spoke of the terrible fright Violet had given her when she was little: she had walked into the nursery one night to find a weasel, of all things, in Violet's cot. "I screamed blue murder," Nanny Metcalfe would say, "but there you were, right as rain, and that weasel curled up next to you, purring like a kitten.”

Dare To DreamEntomologyZoophilistWhen I Grow Up
Book:Weyward
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