Squirm learning

"I fear, my lord, that ye wound doth worsen," said the doctor. The king looked alarmed. "By the Lord Harry!" he exclaimed. "What dost thou recommend, good doctor?" The doctor picked up a bucket of squirming white maggots. "This, my lord," he said.

Until recently, most doctors would have laughed at such old-fashioned medicine. But now they are starting to take it seriously.

Maggots clean wounds by eating bacteriaA large group of single-cell microorganisms. Some cause disease in animals and humans. and dead tissue. They were popular with doctors in the Napoleonic WarsA series of wars (between 1803 and 1815) between the French Empire under Napoleon and differing European powers. .

Maggots fell out of favour a century ago when penicillin and other antibiotics were invented. But with the rise of superbugs which are resistant to antibiotics, maggots are making a comeback.

Between 2007 and 2019, there was a 47% increase in NHS patients being treated with them.  

Medicine is not the only area in which humans are using or copying insects. Car design is another.

To help stop cars crashing, scientists are designing devices based on a neuronThese are the cells found both in the brain and throughout the nervous system. While they are essential for memory, they do not themselves contain memories. Indeed, an adult brain contains around 41% fewer neurons than a baby's brain. in locusts' brains. This allows millions of insects to fly in swarms without bumping into each other.

It is hoped that the technology will prevent self-driving cars from hitting other vehicles - and people.

"We are always looking for animals with unusual abilities, ones that do something better than humans," says one of the team, Saptarshi Das.¹ "Locusts are just incredible."

Using insects to inspire design is known as biomimicry. Furniture designer Marlene Huissoud, who comes from a family of bee-keepers, has created a wardrobe made out of thousands of silkworm cocoons.

Computer scientists have studied the way ants find the shortest route to food. They have used this to produce algorithms to solve difficult problems. Many post offices use the example of ants to work out the best way of making deliveries.

Yes: Where humans have gone wrong is in thinking that they can design things better than nature. By studying the way that even the smallest beings work we can learn the best way to go about things.  

No: Insects are fairly basic creatures and we live in a highly complex world. Locusts might be able to help us avoid crashes, but we could never have invented cars except through our own ingenuity.  

Or... The most important thing we can learn from insects is how to work together in large communities. The problem of climate change could be solved if we all co-operated as well as ants.