Of Cockroaches And Crickets: Learning To Love Creatures That Skitter And Jump, by Frank Nischk, Foreword by Carl Safina

The author of this book makes a strange choice that is not necessarily a good one, but it deserves to be noted, and that is by making this book deliberately about animals that are not viewed as being cute and cuddly by readers. The author speaks mainly about his own experience as a field scientist who somewhat providentially found himself involved in the world of determining various aspects of the lifestyle of insects that allowed him to develop a close understanding of cockroaches (not the most appealing of insects, it must be admitted) and South American crickets. As for the latter, the author’s experience appears to be far more profound and longstanding, finding that there appears to be some sort of adaptation of such crickets to their environment as well as notable efforts on the part of small towns and villages in Ecuador and nearby places in popularizing themselves as places where odd animals can be found and where refuges meant to preserve strange life forms has been undertaken. This is worthy work. As for the former, the author seeks to make the point that cockroaches do not deserve the horror that we tend to view them in, and although I have no particularly fond view of cockroaches as a species I do not wish to see them exterminated. They surely have some purpose for life even if I don’t particularly enjoy seeing them.

Among the most interesting aspects of this book is the way that scientific research is conducted in the eyes of the author. Much depends, as can be expected, on the sort of money that can be raised to undertake certain tasks. The author’s study of cockroaches, for example, depended on research funding from Bayer (that noted German pharmaceutical company) that was intended to find out enough about cockroaches and how they get themselves joined together in order to kill them more effectively. When it was found that the chemical that cockroaches use was insufficient on its own but that something else was required, the research funding dried up and the author was no longer in the business of researching cockroaches and had to find something else to do. The role of money in scientific research is a notable one, especially in a world where so much of that money is wasted on terrible research answering worthless research questions. That, though, is the subject of another book, perhaps. It is not the subject of this one, which focuses on the author and his life as a field scientist in the world of insect studies, a worthwhile if surely minor work.

In terms of its structure, this book is about 200 pages in length and is made up of 3 parts that together total 22 chapters. The book begins with a foreword and an introduction that deliberately focuses on animals that are not cute and cuddly. (This may be necessary for the author to legitimize his own works, but it certainly limits its appeal.) The first part of the book then consists of 8 chapters that cover a year of the author’s life where he served as a cockroach researcher. Among the most interesting part of this work was his moonlighting in film work where some of the cockroaches he was working with as a scientist appeared in various films made at the college campus where he attended. The second chapter then examines the author’s return to the rainforest and his investigations of crickets, with a detailed discussion of the deforestation going on in the remote region of the Amazon rainforest that he is familiar with and the esoteric matters of cricket songs and the way that many crickets can divide up space as well as the sound spectrum with specific calls for greater biodiversity. The third part of the book, mercifully short, discusses how people can give creation a fighting chance at survival. The author then ends the book with acknowledgements, endnotes, and a list of species.