Curious Facts in the History of Insects, Spiders, and Scorpions
Curious Facts in the History of Insects, Spiders, and Scorpions
Frank Cowan’s 1865 book is less a conventional zoological survey than a history of how people have imagined, feared, used, worshiped, and studied small creatures. Its central purpose is to collect memorable “extra-scientific” facts from chronicles, travel writing, medicine, folklore, religion, art, and everyday custom, while asking where belief ends and observation begins.[1]
For a first-time reader, the main lesson is simple: insects, spiders, and scorpions matter not only because of what they do in nature, but also because human societies have made them symbols, resources, omens, dangers, and objects of scientific curiosity.
The book’s major themes
- Superstition and omen-making. Insects are linked to weather, harvests, illness, death, war, prosperity, marriage, and personal destiny. Ladybirds, crickets, spiders, and locusts could each carry very different meanings depending on the belief system involved.[2]
- Belief versus evidence. Cowan often distinguishes between the fact that a belief was recorded and the truth of the belief itself. He uses Pliny’s account of beetles worn by children as an example: the historical report may be certain, while the supposed medical benefit remains unproven.[3]
- Destruction and usefulness. The same creatures that damage crops, buildings, forests, livestock, or people may also supply food, honey, wax, silk, dyes, medicine, ornaments, light, materials, and chemical products such as formic acid.[4]
- Cultural transformation. Small animals become religious symbols, royal emblems, artistic materials, household omens, commodities, and figures in myth. The scarab, cicada, ladybird, mantis, and spider receive especially rich cultural treatment.[5]
- Fear explained by natural processes. Phenomena interpreted as supernatural may have ordinary causes. “Blood rain,” smoke-like clouds, and the ominous ticking of the death-watch beetle are presented as examples in which biological or atmospheric explanations replace alarm.[6]
Memorable examples and insights
| Example | What Cowan highlights | Broader insight |
|---|---|---|
| Scarab | Ancient Egyptians associated it with creation, regeneration, fertility, the calendar, royal authority, astronomy, and funerary protection; scarab forms appeared on amulets, seals, mummy objects, and hieroglyphs.[7] | A small animal can become a comprehensive religious and political symbol. |
| Fireflies | In the West Indies, luminous beetles were kept in houses, carried during night travel and fishing, and worn as ornaments. Small cages containing twenty or thirty insects could serve as household lights.[8] | Insects could function as practical technology as well as natural curiosities. |
| Edible insects | Locusts, grubs, beetle larvae, termites, ants, grasshoppers, cicadas, caterpillars, eggs, and spiders are described as food in different regions. Locusts could be roasted, boiled, dried, ground into meal, or made into cakes.[9] | What one culture regards as repellent may be food or emergency nourishment elsewhere. |
| Termites | Termites are portrayed as capable of consuming furniture, buildings, paper, and parts of ships, while their clay mounds could be reused for ovens, floors, crucibles, and building material.[10] | Destructive power and useful material can coexist in the same organism. |
| Ants | The book records cooperation, load-carrying, trail-following, organized conflict, formic acid production, and stories of attacks on animals much larger than themselves.[11] | Collective behaviour can make tiny creatures appear extraordinarily strong. |
| Spiders | Spiders appear in accounts of rescue, weather prediction, music, medicine, silk, fishing, snake-catching, wound treatment, and scientific measuring threads.[12] | The feared creature may also be useful, technically valuable, or culturally protective. |
| Scorpions | Scorpion lore centres on poison and protective magic, including claims about their origins, behaviour, and treatments involving animals, plants, oils, substances, prayers, or roasted scorpions.[13] | Danger encourages elaborate explanations and remedies, whether reliable or not. |
Recurring insights
- Meaning depends on context. A cricket might signify luck in one place and death in another; mantises and spiders likewise acquire contrasting meanings across cultures.[14]
- Scale changes the threat. A single insect may be harmless, but a swarm can darken the sky, destroy vegetation, halt travel, threaten armies, and contribute to famine or disease.[15]
- The same species may bless and harm. Bees provide honey, wax, trade, and symbols of industry, yet their stings can be dangerous. Locusts can cause famine while also serving as food, and ants can destroy while supplying food and formic acid.[16]
- Knowledge develops unevenly. Cowan preserves older errors, including spontaneous generation and mythical creatures, alongside careful observations, experiments, species identifications, ecological explanations, and early scepticism.[17]
Overall perspective
Cowan’s perspective is curious, broad, and cautiously sceptical. He does not treat folklore as worthless: it reveals how people tried to interpret an unfamiliar natural world. At the same time, he frequently separates testimony from proof and exposes magical, medical, and prophetic claims as uncertain, exaggerated, or false.[18]
The book’s lasting insight is that insects, spiders, and scorpions are mirrors of human practical life and imagination. They can be worshiped as sacred figures, feared as omens, eaten in scarcity, used in manufacture and medicine, admired for beauty and social organisation, or investigated as natural phenomena. Their history is therefore also a history of human attempts to explain, control, benefit from, and live alongside the small creatures around us.[19]
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