If you’re a regular reader of this column, chances are you enjoy wildlife and nature. Although I have been a wildlife officer for over 35 years, I am still thrilled when seeing a deer in a field, a rabbit along the road and a hawk soaring in the sky.

I am always intrigued by the animals, birds, plants, insects and even the forces of nature.

Insects are everywhere and often go unnoticed in our busy lives. That is until an insect, such as an ant, causes a problem for us. Then we scream to high heaven and want to annihilate every single ant.

If we take time to look closely at the insect world, we will observe very strange creatures.

Some of these creatures are born without mouths or stomachs and others have eyes so complicated that one eye could have 15,000 lenses. In this strange world, you’ll find soldiers, warriors, farmers, architects, weather prophets, tailors, trappers, cowboys, musicians, camouflage experts, actors, papermakers, kings and queens, explorers, cave dwellers, conquerors and peace makers. There are insects living 18,000 feet above the earth and deep within the earth. Some insects are thriving at temperatures a few degrees above zero, and others are living in the mud of a hot springs, where the water temperature reaches 120 degrees. Insects can also be found thriving in the Great Salt Lake while others thrive in petroleum.

Nine-tenths of all living creatures on earth are insects. No one knows just how many different species of insects there are because scientists are discovering new species every day.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates there are 25 million insects in the air above each square mile of earth’s surface. A rough estimate puts 3.5 million insects in one acre of soil. In his book “Exploring the Insect World,” Edwin Way Teal writes, “If you learned the name of 25 new insects each day, it would take you more than 60 years to memorize all those that scientists have discovered.”

There are more species of insects than there are species of plants and animals put together. Each year scientists are adding new species to the list.

Humans, in our wisdom, seek to change the conditions of nature to suit his lifestyle. This puts humans in immediate conflict with nature. Insects, on the other hand, have no quarrel with nature. They change to meet the altering conditions of nature. If their food supply gives out, they simply switch to another food source. If the climate changes, they alter their way of living to suit the temperature. Insects simply adapt themselves and endure.

Now I’m not trying to be a public relations man for insects since that would be an almost impossible job. Insects affect our lives in both good and bad ways. Termites eat at our houses, gypsy moths strip our trees, beetles cause problems in our gardens, mosquitoes bite us and carry diseases, moths chew holes in our clothes and ants invade our homes and food supplies.

Insects destroy one-tenth of everything we raise, and the annual farm crop loss caused by insects is put at $1.5 trillion each year. Even the lowly fly has us buying $30 million worth of wire screens each year. So it seems that anyone trying to put insects in a good light could have some difficulty.

However not all insects are harmful to humans, some are beneficial. Silk and honey are provided by insects, and the list could go on and on. The most important contribution made by insects is taking pollen from one flower to the next and enabling the plants to propagate themselves. Although some species of insects do eat our crops, there would be very few crops grown without the help of other insect species.

To study insects, one does not have to travel since insects live in the country, small towns and big cities. A lot of money is not needed for equipment to study insects since a magnifying glass and insect dentification book will do.

Have you ever wondered what an insect must think when a human stoops down to peer at him? Well, I imagine it compares to the same feelings we have when gazing at the stars, that of how the world above us is so distant and mysterious.

When I look at the stars, I’m in awe and feel very insignificant, and when studying the insect world, the feelings are much the same.

Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.