Somewhere on the outer reaches of the galaxy
There's a small planet
dominated by an alien life form creatures too numerous to count
they can survive conditions no other creature can tolerate
Other life forms try to destroy them
but their resilience has been their strength
for hundreds of millions of years.
They lurk in the darkest of corners or control entire landscapes.
They seem to come from the world of science fiction
but they belong to the world of science fact
welcome to the world of insects.
Planet Earth.
Temperature range - 80 to +50 degrees centigrade.
Atmosphere nitrogen oxygen.
Life abundant and diverse.
Humans think they own this planet
but they've only been around for a couple of million years.
This world belongs to insects
and it's done so for nearly four hundred million years.
Possibly 30 million differect kinds
more than the rest of the animal kingdom put together
a billion, billion individual insects alive at any one moment.
They range from the grotesque
to the bizarre
to the beautiful.
Insects are vital to life on earth without these tiny creatures
even the human race couldn't exist.
Each and every insect is a perfect miniature machine.
Insects owe their dramatic success to
sophisticated software and elegant hardware.
Humans have hardly begun to understand these designs
they've barely glimpsed this strange empire
but insects have invaded every corner of the human world.
And in the few hundred years since humans started trying to classify insects
they've only managed to name to pin down less than than a million.
And the most that's known about those is the Latin name they've been given.
Only a few thousand are understood well.
Most insects live in the tropics
but they've colonised every continent and island on the planet.
Transported by wind and wings
insects have conquered the globe
yet this beetle is as big as they ever get
a little bigger than a mouse.
Because they've so tiny
the world is a very different place to insects
and they've had to solve life's problems
in very different ways from bigger animals.
Unearthly shapes and weird structures designs
that go far beyond anything dreamed up by human imagination.
Living in a miniature world makes them
as different from humans as it's possible to be.
It's these differences that make them seem so alien.
Large animals are supported by a skeleton on the inside
and their soft tissue
muscles and skin are on the outside.
This rigid framework of bones works so well
that this design has supported the biggest creatures that ever lived.
Insects are built the other way round they've hard on the outside.
They wear a tough
waterproof armour that protects their soft insides
and supports their body the best design for their miniature world.
An external skeleton has another advantage
it can be moulded into any shape imaginable precision tools
or powerful weapons.
Even the fearsome horns of a rhino beetle
are just extensions of its skeleton.
And the skeleton is strong enough to stand up
to the strain of being grabbed and squeezed
these beetles would find it hard to actually hurt each other.
Their dispute is settled by a grappling match.
But insect design goes far beyond heavy duty engineering
they've also perfected micro architecture.
The glittering colours of a jewel beetle
are nothing to do with pigments
instead
it's all done with light reflecting off their delicately textured surface.
At a microscopic level
its casing is sculpted into tiny transparent plates
slanted and shaped like cut glass to reflect all the colours of the rainbow.
And these ridges are precisely the same distance apart
less than a thousandth of a millimeter.
They decorate each and every tiny scale on the wing of a morpho butterfly
and reflect iridescent blue that shimmers
and changes with the direction of the light.
The butterfly sheds a few scales as it flies
and still they reflect the light
leaving a sparkling firework display in its wake.
This hard outer casing may be a design miracle
with flexible joints that allow it to bend
but the problem is it can't stretch and grow.
And a caterpillar's life is dedicated to growing
these have to increase their size by 20, 000 times
between hatching and turning into moths.
So, when they get too big for their casing
they moult.
A new, soft skeleton is ready underneath
all the caterpillar has to do is loosen the old one and step outside.
The new casing is soft at first
so it can be inflated then hardened
giving the caterpillar a bit more room to grow.
Not only is this casing waterproof it's airtight.
Like most other creatures
insects need oxygen but they don't have lungs.
Instead, down each side
they have a series of holes
which are normally kept tightly sealed.
But every now and then
they open and the air rushes in.
The holes lead to a network of tubes made
from the same material as the hard casing.
Inside the armour in its liquid interior
the caterpillar's organs its tubular heart
and massive gut are all connected to a complex
branching network of air tubes.
Within the tissues
the tubes branch ever finer until they've so minute
they can penetrate individual cells
in fact each and every cell
is plumbed directly into its own oxygen supply.
Their elegant breathing system
and waterproof armour were the breakthrough
that allowed insects to invade dry land.
Before that, most life on earth lived in the sea.
But it was another design innovation
that allowed them to complete their conquest of Earth.
That happened 350 million years ago
in the great carboniferous swamps.
Insects evolved wings.
No one has any real idea how this happened
the earliest fossils had fully formed wings
like those of dragonflies.
Except that some of the first dragonflies were huge
they had a wingspan of half a metre.
Yet again
wings are made of the same material that forms body armour
but here, it's so thin
it's transparent and supported by a network of veins.
The wings of insects are unique
when birds, bats and pterodactyls took to the air
they had to compromise and turn a pair of legs into wings.
But insect wings evolved from scratch completely new structures.
No compromise here just infinite design flexibility.
The hind wings of a Madagascar moon moth developed long tails rudders
to keep it straight when it glides.
Insects were the first creatures to take to the air
for hundreds of millions of years
they had the sky to themselves.
Although they seem frail
insect wings can carry them over vast distances.
In the case of monarch butterflies
a journey of thousands of miles to their wintering grounds.
But the most sophisticated flying insect is the humble house fly.
Its wings are powered by special muscles
that can contract at very high frequencies up to 500 times a second.
They produce enormous amounts of power weight for weight
similar to a small aircraft piston engine.
And its flight path is controlled by an on board computer
that makes the latest electronic designs seem primitive.
It flies on one pair of wings the hind pair are reduced to knobs
that act like gyroscopic stabilizers.
The compound eyes are adapted for fast flight in confined spaces
they process data at phenomenal rates.
To human vision
anything flickering faster than 15 times a second appears a continuous blur
but a fly sees separate images up to a hundred times a second.
Neon tubes flicker fast enough to give constant light to humans
but look like a strobe to a fly.
A television picture is made up line by line so quickly
that humans see a single moving picture but a fly isn't fooled.
But there's one more design problem to crack wings are delicate structures
easily damaged on the ground.
Beetles have solved this problem
they've turned their front wings into hard wing cases
that protect their fragile hind wings.
This allows beetles to go
where other insects fear to tread to live in narrow tunnels
to burrow through wood or soil even dung.
And their legs are still free to evolve into
whatever's needed in the case of dung beetles
shovels for digging and packing the dung into balls.
Inventing wing cased was almost as successful
as developing wings in the first place
there are more beetles than any other kind of insects.
They're masters of the ground and on six legs
beetles have the power of speed this is one of the fastest
the giant tiger beetle from South Africa.
Within it's own world
it's more fearsome than a tiger
and faster than a cheetah.
It's jaws are just as specialized as its legs gripping
and crushing its victim so it can drink every last drop of nourishment.
When it's finished
there's nothing left of the moth except its outer casing
discarded like an empty bottle.
To co-ordinate this extraordinary hardware
insects also need equally complex software
the don't just have a single brain
they also have separate nerve centers controlling each pair of legs.
Humans are trying to build robots based on the same design
hoping they'll be able to cross any terrain
however rough or unforgiving.
But there's no contest.
Micro-processors are huge and clumsy compared to insect nerve centers.
All the robot can manage is an undignified lurch
while a cockroach can scramble over any obstacles at high speed.
In fact, the cockroach is the fastest thing on six legs.
At top speed it can cover a metre a second.
Most insects behave entirely by instinct.
They've made with their instructions 'wired in'
but that doesn't stop them having very sophisticated behaviour.
Toctoc beetles, for example
live in the vast scrublands of South Africa
and they can communicate with each other in a sort of Morse code.
They tap on the sand
and each kind of beetle has its own distinct code
so their software must be able to recognize a particular rhythm.
But some insects are not just pre-programmed machines
they can learn.
The most advanced software so far discovered belongs to the honey bee.
Different flowers open at different times of the day
and need different techniques to get at the nectar.
But a bee can remember it links the position of the sun
to the type of blossom and how to reach the nectar.
Bees can store data for up to six different blooms
but they can only cope with one kind of flower at any one time of day.
If the sun's at five o'clock
it must be yellow daises.
And if the sun starts to go away it must be time to go home.
These honey bees live their lives on permanent display
an observation hive in a museum
is a window onto a mysterious world.
Normally unseen in the depth of the hive
bees discuss their day among the flowers by dancing.
This dance language tells other bees the direction
and distance of the flowers and the quality of the nectar.
And this whole
complex communication system is driven
by a few tens of thousands of neurons packed into space
the size of a grain of sugar the brain of a bee
a masterpiece of micro-circuitry.
In both hardware and software design
insects are the ultimate miniature machines.
Their design has endured the test of time
insects have dominated this planet for hundreds of millions of years.
They witnessed the rise and fall of the dinosaurs.
And only a few million years ago
they witnessed a large brained ape climb down from the trees
stand upright and invent technology.
Since then, insects have invaded every corner of the human world
including the depths of their imagination.
People, on the other hand
have hardly begun to explore the insects' empire.
And for all their technology
humans will never be able to control this alien world.