‘Bugs That Rule the World' Review: A Crawling Kingdom on PBS
Swallowtail butterfly
Photo: PBS
If 'Bugs That Rule the World' were a typical documentary, its makers would have a found a couple of honeybees, interviewed them about their life's work, hobbies, romances, political points of view and life in the hive. Is the queen as mean to her employees as they say? Questions would have been raised about their plans for the future; whether there will be one; how well they get along with the other 10 quintillion insects around the world; and whether they all hate mosquitoes, too.
As it happens, the directors failed to get any direct comment for this four-part series, so all sources are secondary. And apt to be pro-bug. But the case is made that life is unsustainable without insects and their relatives (spiders, for instance); that their populations are imperiled; and that there may be as many as 10 million species that human researchers aren't even aware of. 'We don't know what we're losing,' says one expert, 'because we don't know what we have.'
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