The man who loves creepy crawlies

Want to know more? Well, all these interesting facts and many more about insects will be on the air in the forthcoming TV programme Insectia on National Geographic Channel (beginning in early April). The series, featuring Brossard, is based on one simple fact: insects outnumber every other living creature. There are 1.5 millions known insects and around 4,000 new ones are discovered every year. “If you put insects on one scale of the balance and all the other animals including man on the other, the balance would tip in favour of the insects,” reveals Brossard much to your astonishment. “Also, they produce products like honey and silk, are scavengers, pollinators and very useful creatures. They are the most adapted animals, most numerous in diversity and multiplicity.”

Brossard was in India last week. Chasing insects, what else? And by the way, he’s here to help promote Insectia, so that people actually watch it. He has weird ways of trying to hook you, convince you insects are cute creatures: at a talk that he gave in Delhi, a bejewelled stag beetle crawled all over him. “You find this beetle only in Mexico,” Brossard says, “And people are funny. To make the insect look more attractive, they glue jewels on its back and then the ladies wear it as an accessory!”

We had barely recovered from this statement when he opened his bag and out came brown boxes. He opened those and inside were the “most lovely creatures”: er, the Golden Beetle all the way from Costa Rica. Which is actually the colour gold and admittedly, very pretty. Next it was the turn of the tarantula. Brossard opened a jar and out crawled this huge thing. “He is my friend and will not bite me,” Brossard boasted. Then he kissed a giant jungle cockroach from Australia. Want more? Well, then you’ll have to watch the series.

Brossard gave up his career as a lawyer to embrace spiders, scorpions, tarantulas and the other million insects. “I just got fed up of all my crooked clients,” he explains. “Now, I represent only one class and that is the insect class. My mission now is to protect the rights of insects and help humans reconcile with them.”

“See, the jungle is the safest place in the world. You can get attacked or mugged in the city, but not in the jungle. When people walk out of the insectariums I have set-up in different parts of the world, they reconcile themselves with the existence of insects.”

To further convince people about how important and nice insects are, Brossard tells them the bikini story. “There are around 250 inventions that have directly been inspired by insects. Take the bikini for instance. There is a species of wasp where the female covers her genitals with leaves that resemble a bikini. Smart designers packaged the wasp’s leaves and sold it to the world as a bikini.”

Surprised? Don’t be: Brossard has a thousand stories to tell about his favourite creatures. Listen to this one on cockroaches: “This is not a cockroach problem, it is a human problem. Cockroaches will come inside your house if you leave it dirty. It’s like people barging into a party.” Convinced.