Look Up! The Billion-Bug Highway You Can't See

[n2doc]

by ROBERT KRULWICH

Step outside on a clear day this summer and look up. What do you see? Blue. And maybe a plane or a bird up there, but otherwise ... nothing. Or so you think. It turns out that right above you, totally invisible, is an enormous herd of animal life. There are so many creatures up there, they are so busy, so athletic, so tiny, that we had to fly up and give you a peek.

When British scientist Jason Chapman told us (listen to the radio piece or watch our video) there are 3 billion insects passing over your head in a summer month, he was talking about his survey in Great Britain. Closer to the equator, he says, the numbers should rise. He wouldn't be surprised, for example, that in the sky over Houston or New Orleans there could be 6 billion critters passing overhead in a month.

What Are They Doing Up There?

Sometimes insects and spiders need to leave where they are and go someplace else for food, for sex, for space. For a variety of reasons bugs disperse. You can see them launching themselves, says entomologist Matt Greenstone:

"They just stand straight up on their little back legs and just by doing that they can get part of their body up into this layer where it’s more turbulent and then, if you can get a ride on a parcel that's going up, you can get off the ground and then if you’re lucky you can get carried aloft."

more with video

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128389587

[damntexdem]

1. Actually, over Houston, a lot of them have likely perished from the smog.

;-)

[Igel]

2. Then again, given the state of my garden,

I suspect that they fled the sky for the ground and so all 3 billion of them pass through my back yard each month.

[Lorien]

3. My grandmother used to say "how can anyone ever be bored when we have so much

in nature yet to see"? She would have loved this.