In this season of countdowns, a list of charismatic creepy crawlies

Jumping spiders: Small, with bright forward facing jewel eyes, they lurk on walls, or in foliage, waiting like boxers in the ring for an unsuspecting victim to come within range. The leap is quicker than you can blink – but they are not foolish: a safety silk line unravels behind them as they leap just in case, and they can jump 50 times their own body length. They are carnivorous. One variety, the Portia spider is known to deviously plot and plan its method of attack, often ambushing its victim (even another spider squatting in the middle of its web) by total surprise.

Jumping spider (Photo credit: Ranjit Lal)

Dung beetles: These tubby fellows are vital to the hygiene of the planet. With shovel-like legs, they will land square on a patty and begin rolling a ball of dung towards a suitable spot where it can be buried, consumed or stored as a food supply for the young. Usually, the male does the rolling with his back legs, the lady shouts encouragement. In case he’s disoriented, he will clamber on top of the dung ball, take his bearings from the sun, and trundle on. Fiercely competitive, dung-beetles often rustle dung-balls from one another. The dung is turned into rich nutritious soil and is not allowed to fester into something infectious. Look closely at the next patty you come across and you will smile!

Dragonflies & damselflies: Avian hunters par excellence and gorgeous to look at. With around 30,000 lenses in each eye — thank heavens they don’t need contact lenses — they have the best vision among all insects. In the air, they resemble fighter planes of yore, and are armed with barbed legs that form a gin-trap like basket. Prey is often consumed on the wing. Their glittering cellophane wings are powered by individual muscles. Ironically, they spend most of their lives under water in the guise of predacious nymphs.

Praying Mantis: Who cannot fall for this epitome of evil? She lurks among the leaves, slim, lanky and chinless, with great pea-like eyes, her barbed arms extended beseechingly, swaying hypnotically from side to side. Her camouflage is so perfect, that in one variety – the flower or
orchid mantis – pollinators are more attracted to her than to genuine flowers. She has a reputation for chewing off her sweetheart’s head during the honeymoon itself; something many girls would vociferously endorse!

Butterflies and moths: Fluttering around in their party frocks, butterflies may look decorative and fragile, — Mother Nature’s Cinderella story — but be not deceived. Nectar apart, they relish blood, sweat, tears and putrefying flesh (even yours), mud and dung, and can indulge in mind-
boggling migratory flights across continents. Moths outnumber them many times over and party at night, dancing dizzily around bright lights and scented blooms. Some have learned to jam
the radar of predatory bats. Alas, many are picked off by birds and lizards, while hung-over supine on walls after a night of partying.

Ants: There’s nothing to beat ants for industry, organisation, warring, and sheer physical strength; they are able to lift over 50 times their own body-weight. They can smell five times better than dogs and are relentless in attack: I’ve watched them rip a furiously buzzing carpenter bee to shreds in minutes. They will build ‘bridges’ with their own bodies and form rafts if their colonies get flooded.

Fireflies: Their winking emerald lights, wafting through misty trees in the hills are the stuff of romances, and yes, the fireflies do flash their lights for this purpose. The gents fly and flash their invitations; the ladies wait on the leaves and flash back their acceptance. Deliciously, danger lurks here, too: one species of female has learned to mimic the ‘come-hither’ signal of another and when the eager suitor arrives by her side, thinking he has met his princess, he realises too late that not every girl is what she seems: this lady is a ravenous femme fatale!

Beetles: From the cannon-firing bombardier beetle, which mixes two incendiary chemicals in its butt and shoots a sizzling, acrid concoction in the face of its attackers, to the sumo-wrestler like ponderous rhinoceros beetle, which can bite through zinc and copper, and the ever-popular VW-
like ladybirds which mysteriously have been found tucked under the Himalayan snows in their millions, this largest group of insects is jaw-dropping in its variety and skill-sets – and appetites.

VW Ladybird Beetle! (Photo credit: Ranjit Lal)

Bees: We’d starve without bees, which pollinate so many of our vital food-crops – and produce delicious (and nutritious) honey in the bargain. In response, we have sprayed so much poison over our fields that we are killing them off en masse. And yes, when we mess with them by cross-
breeding, they mess right back at us, as the ferocious killer bees in the west are doing.

Grasshoppers: Which child cannot resist tickling the bum of a grasshopper to watch it zing off in a trice, and then vanish in the grass? They have a ratchet-cum-rubber-band catapult system that enables them to do this and of course, those thunder thighs. In their locust avatar however,
they are devastating.