Bugz In The Moviez - comparting bugs in movies to real life insects

Ranger Rick, June, 1999 by Deborah Churchman

Movies have been going "buggy" for many years. But are the insects on the big screen anything like those in the real world?

Do ants have real teeth?

The ants in the movie A Bug's Life (see photo, right) sure do. Gee, do you suppose they floss? Actually, insects don't have the kind of teeth that you have. But some kinds of insects are real biters. They use sharp jaw parts instead of your kind of teeth for biting and chewing. Trap-jaw ants, for example, use their jaws to trap and snap their prey.

Aren't insect eyes supposed to be a lot different from our eyes?

Yes, indeedy, just like the ones on the fly guy from The Return of the Fly (right). An insect has compound eyes, which are made up of hundreds--sometimes even thousands--of tiny lenses. Each lens sees a tiny part of the view. The combined views make up the big picture.

By the way, insects almost never wear suits and ties.

If male insects don't wear ties, how do the females recognize them?

Most male and female insects have ways of telling each other, "I'm just your type!" Some of them even do their courting by dancing, as the ants from Antz are doing in the photo above.

But in real life, courting ants don't dance. Also, only queen ants get to mate, and courting queens always have wings. The female in this picture must be a worker ant--no wings.

Workers don't court OR mate. As for the male, he'd have nothing to say to a worker ant except, "Hey, where's the queen?" or "What's for dinner?"

So, how do insects talk?

Well, they sure don't talk the way Jiminy Cricket does in the movie Pinocchio (right, top). Insects communicate with sight, smells, and special sounds. A cricket like Jiminy, for example, is supposed to rub his wings together to make noise. For Jiminy, it would be tough to talk with that coat on!

Jiminy has some other problems as well. His eyes are wrong (bet you guessed that already). His nose is wrong (insects breathe through little holes in their sides, not through noses). And insects have six legs and no hands.

Also, they don't have hats or umbrellas. Guess you knew that already.

Could insects grow really, really big and then attack people?

Lots of movies, including Starship Troopers (below, bottom), show huge, gross, scary insects attacking people. But insects just couldn't get that big. Why? First, insects don't have lungs. Instead, air goes through holes in their sides, which lead to tunnels that run through their bodies. This design just wouldn't give a really big insect enough oxygen.

Second, have you seen insect legs? Those joints and feet are really tiny--way too small to support much weight. A really heavy insect would be like a very fat person walking around on only the heels of high-heel shoes.

Third, their coverings would get really strange. Insects molt (shed their coverings) as they get bigger. Every time an insect molts, it has to wait for its new, soft covering to harden. The larger the insect, the longer the wait. If an insect were huge, the new, soft covering would sag. If it sagged too much and then hardened, the covering would end up being the wrong shape for the insect.

If insects were the size of buildings, their new, soft coverings would take a very long time to harden. In that time, the coverings could sag so much, they'd turn into insect puddles.

So don't worry--a giant puddle on toothpick legs, gasping for air, isn't going to attack you.

You mean a giant caterpillar couldn't take over a city?

That's right. And even if a caterpillar could get as big as Mothra (above), it wouldn't want to attack anybody.

If you want to get an insect to take over a city, use ants. When a troop of army ants is on the march, beetles, grasshoppers, roaches, tarantulas, and even scorpions flee for their lives!

OK, what if people shrank down to the size of insects--could they ride on ants?

Oh, probably. Many mites and other tiny creatures ride around on ants, flies, bees, and other insects. People would have to be careful, though. Insects are covered with a kind of wax that makes them really slippery. This kid in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (below) had better hold on tight!

But hey--don't let the movies bug you. Insects are cool, in or out of the theater!

Many thanks to Professor May Berenbaum at the University of Illinois for her help with this story.