Insect Mating Quotes

Female fireflies draw in strange males with dishonest signals and eat them; mantis females devour their own mates. Female insects, Kya thought, know how to deal with their lovers.

The male doesn't eat - it doesn't even have a mouth or an anus - so it does nothing but mate until death.

Nor was her love for Udayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging through her like some helplessly mating pair of insects. Anger at him for dying when he might have lived. For bringing her happiness, and then taking it away. For trusting her, only to betray her. For believing in sacrifice, only to be so selfish in the end.

I am a battery hen. I live in a cage so small I cannot stretch my wings. I am forced to stand night and day on a sloping wire mesh floor that painfully cuts into my feet. The cage walls tear my feathers, forming blood blisters that never heal. The air is so full of ammonia that my lungs hurt and my eyes burn and I think I am going blind. As soon as I was born, a man grabbed me and sheared off part of my beak with a hot iron, and my little brothers were thrown into trash bags as useless alive. My mind is alert and my body is sensitive and I should have been richly feathered. In nature or even a farmyard I would have had sociable, cleansing dust baths with my flock mates, a need so strong that I perform 'vacuum' dust bathing on the wire floor of my cage. Free, I would have ranged my ancestral jungles and fields with my mates, devouring plants, earthworms, and insects from sunrise to dusk. I would have exercised my body and expressed my nature, and I would have given, and received, pleasure as a whole being. I am only a year old, but I am already a 'spent hen.' Humans, I wish I were dead, and soon I will be dead. Look for pieces of my wounded flesh wherever chicken pies and soups are sold.

The systems we will be exploring in order are: ● Breeding Targets: Arousal patterns tied to systems meant to get our ancestors to have sex with things that might bear offspring (e.g., arousal from things like penises, the female form, etc.). ● Inverse Systems: Arousal patterns that arise from a neural mix-up, causing something that disgusts the majority of the population to arouse a small portion of it (e.g., arousal from things like being farted on, dead bodies, having insects poured on one’s face, etc.). ● Emotional States and Concepts / Dominance and Submission: Arousal patterns that stem from either emotional concepts (such as betrayal, transformation, being eaten, etc.) or dominance and submission pathways. ● Emotional Connections to People: While emotional connections do not cause arousal in and of themselves, they do lower the threshold for arousal (i.e., you may become more aroused by a moderately attractive person you love than a very attractive stranger). ● Trope Attraction: Arousal patterns that are enhanced through a target’s adherence to a specific trope (a nurse, a goth person, a cheerleader, etc.). ● Novelty: Arousal patterns tied to the novelty of a particular stimulus. ● Pain and Asphyxiation: Arousal patterns associated with or enhanced by pain and oxygen deprivation. ● Basic Instincts: Remnants of our pre-cognitive mating instincts running off of a “deeper” autopilot-like neurological system (dry humping, etc.) that compel mating behavior without necessarily generating a traditional feeling of arousal. ● Physical Stimuli: Arousal patterns derived from physical interaction (kissing, touching an erogenous zone, etc.). ● Conditioned Responses: Arousal patterns resulting from conditioning (arousal from shoes, doorknobs, etc.).

dear samantha i’m sorry we have to get a divorce i know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain: it’s not you it sure as hell isn’t me it’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do i love you.. far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night i know you would never DO anything, you never do but.. i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same. when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again. if either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. now that… is dedication. after Elizabeth and i broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together like if i knew what pots were mine like if i knew which drapes were mine somehow the pain would go away this is not true after two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down while he still has control over his motor functions he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift she then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes spooning every morsel into her mouth she wastes nothing even the exoskeleton goes she does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them now that.. is selflessness i could never do that for you so i have a new plan i’m gonna leave you now i’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices i hope you do the same i will jay walk at every opportunity i will steal things i could easily afford i will be rude to strangers i hope you do the same i hope reincarnation is real i hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures i hope we are reborn as flies so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth. If we could establish a deep abiding relationship with nature we would never kill an animal for our appetite, we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies. But the healing of the mind is something totally different. That healing gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds.

Some female insects eat their mates, overstressed mammal mothers abandon their young, many males design risky or shifty ways to outsperm their competitors. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick and the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds. Surely for humans there was more.

Heroism and obscenity appear no more important in the life of the universe than the fighting or mating of a pair of insects in the woods. All is on the same plane.

dear samantha i’m sorry we have to get a divorce i know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain: it’s not you it sure as hell isn’t me it’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do i love you.. far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night i know you would never DO anything, you never do but.. i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same. when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again. if either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. now that… is dedication. after Elizabeth and i broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together like if i knew what pots were mine like if i knew which drapes were mine somehow the pain would go away this is not true after two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down while he still has control over his motor functions he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift she then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes spooning every morsel into her mouth she wastes nothing even the exoskeleton goes she does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them now that.. is selflessness i could never do that for you so i have a new plan i’m gonna leave you now i’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices i hope you do the same i will jay walk at every opportunity i will steal things i could easily afford i will be rude to strangers i hope you do the same i hope reincarnation is real i hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures i hope we are reborn as flies so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to

Chickens, sheep, and donkeys. Manure and urine. Grunting and mating. The insect blizzard at the water trough. Hoof-churned dirt. It even came to me that these things might be holy, too, a sacrilege I kept to myself.

Of course, Storm-Lord! But why would a god marry a poor farm girl?" asked one of the bound novices, his voice thin and chirping as an insect. "All things must eventually mate," I shrugged, "having been cast into a man's flesh I must do as flesh does. And it hardly matters whether one mates with a woman or a rock or a river - the end result is the same. Once all the world wed stones and trees - but this is a degenerate age, and no one keeps to tradition.

Some male insects like the scorpion fly, gift the females tiny packets containing food. At times these packets are empty. They just serve as a clever distraction.while the female tries to open the gift, the male proceeds to mate with her.The rogue – how clever is that?!

Feral beauty tangled up and over every surface. Enormous vines and flourishing blooms swathed the area creating a shadowy, organic cathedral. A faint whiff of perfume breezed to her, like jasmine, but sweeter, more delicate—if jasmine could be more delicate without losing its scent entirely. The buzzing of alien insects reminded her of the sticky, summer days of her childhood in the South, and cicadas filled her memory with their incessant mating calls. Here, however, the insects grew louder as it grew darker. It seemed even they understood the dangers of daylight.

One article on reproductive strategies was titled "Sneaky Fuckers." Kya laughed. As is well known, the article began, in nature, usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics, such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests, and superior knowledge secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are thereby inseminated with the best DNA around, which is passed on to the female's offspring- one of the most powerful phenomena in the adaptation and continuance of life. Plus, the females get the best territory for their young. However, some stunted males, not strong, adorned, or smart enough to hold good territories, possess bags of tricks to fool the females. They parade their smaller forms around in pumped-up postures or shout frequently- even if in shrill voices. By relying on pretense and false signals, they manage to grab a copulation here or there. Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as "sneaky fuckers." Kya remembered, those many years ago, Ma warning her older sisters about young men who overrevved their rusted-out pickups or drove jalopies around with radios blaring. "Unworthy boys make a lot of noise," Ma had said. She read a consolation for females. Nature is audacious enough to ensure that the males who send out dishonest signals or go from one female to the next almost always end up alone. Another article delved into the wild rivalries between sperm. Across most life-forms, males compete to inseminate females. Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other's flesh. Though very ritualized, the conflicts can still end in mutilations. To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods. Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removes sperm ejected by a previous opponent before he supplies his own. Kya dropped the journal on her lap, her mind drifting with the clouds. Some female insects eat their mates, overstressed mammal mothers abandon their young, many males design risky or shifty ways to outsperm their competitors. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick and the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds. Surely for humans there was more.

Just listen to this: take two fruit flies and leave them in ideal living conditions for a year - equivalent to 25 generations for fruit flies. Every fruit fly mother lays 100 eggs. Let's say that they all grow to adulthood, and that half of them are females who mate and lay another 100 eggs. Once the year is over, you will be left with the 25th generation and that alone will amount to almost a tredecillion sweet little redeyed fruit flies. A tredecillion is the figure 1 followed by 42 zeros. To make this figure more meaningful, imagine packing these flies together densely, as densely as possible, into one enormous fruit fly ball. You'd end up with a sphere whose diameter exceeded the distance between the Earth to the Sun! It's a good thing these insects have so many enemies, because otherwise there wouldn't be any room left on Earth for us humans.

I have an antipathy to dogs, not because they are faithful, but because they are shameless. Because they carry on their love affairs on the street.” Again that crimson flush overspread her features. “Cats are more cultured about such things—if I may use that much misused word. There are insects that mate only in the darkest nights, in the most forsaken corners, so that no forester has ever succeeded in observing them. I've always held that there will come a time when we will speak of the barbarous practices of this century, or the last ten centuries, as if they were a fairy-tale. Just think how tremendously funny it must strike any sensitive person when two people, having conceived a certain desire to go to bed with one another, set a special date for the event. They inform certain public institutions, the State, the Church. They tell their friends and relations, their own parents, their own brothers and sisters. On the day which is to end in that night, they gather everybody they know about them, let themselves be observed by persons who stuff themselves and drink until they are sick, listen to suggestive songs and suggestive speeches—and yet do not get sick themselves. I've always had a feeling that marriage as it is practiced today would be fit punishment for a hardened criminal. It is such a cruel, such an exquisite torture. Metta, my child, oblige me and if you ever decide to marry, do it when you desire and not on some appointed day. Do it in utter secrecy so that no living soul can suspect the possibility of such a thing....

For a century after Darwin proposed the theory of sexual selection, it was vigorously resisted by male scientists, in part because they presumed that women were passive in the mating process. The proposal that women actively select their mates and that these selections constitute a powerful evolutionary force was thought to be science fiction rather than scientific fact. In the 1970s, scientists gradually came to accept the profound importance of female choice in the animal and insect world, and in the 1980s and 1990s scientists began to document within our own species the active strategies that women pursue in choosing and competing for mates. But in the early decades of the twenty-first century, some stubborn holdouts continue to insist that women have but a single mating strategy—the pursuit of a long-term mate. Scientific evidence suggests otherwise. The fact that women who are engaged in casual sex as opposed to committed mating shift their mating desires to favor a man’s extravagant lifestyle, his physical attractiveness, his masculine body, and even his risk-taking, cocky “bad-boy” qualities tells us that women have specific psychological mechanisms designed for short-term mating. The fact that women who have extramarital affairs often choose men who are higher in status than their husbands and tend to fall in love with their affair partners reveals that women have adaptations for mate switching. The fact that women shift to brief liaisons under predictable circumstances, such as a scarcity of men capable of investing in them or an unfavorable ratio of women to men, tells us that women have specific adaptations designed for shifting from long-term to short-term mating strategies

It was a brave new world that I found myself in. At night I would hear the sounds of the fruit bats as they came into the trees. Also in the mix were the strange, far-off grunts of the koalas as they sang out their mating calls. Herds of wild pigs passed right behind the tent. Venturing outside in the middle of the night with my dunny roll to go use a bush was a daunting experience. Steve was a natural in front of the camera. John had to give him only one important piece of advice. “Stevo,” John instructed, “there are three people in this documentary. There’s you, Terri, and the camera. Treat the camera just like another person.” Steve’s energy and enthusiasm took over. He completely relaxed, and he managed to just be himself--which was true of his entire career. This wasn’t just a film trip, it was also our honeymoon. Steve would sometimes escape the camera crew and take us up a tributary to be alone. We watched the fireflies come out. I’d never seen fireflies in Oregon. The magical little insects glowed everywhere, in the bushes and in the air. The darker it got, the brighter their blue lights burned on and off. I had arrived in a fairyland.

Now consider this. A small number of invertebrate species, a mere 2 percent of all species of insects, is capable of social behaviors that do rival in complexity many human social achievements. Ants, bees, wasps, and termites are the prominent examples.10 Their genetically set and inflexible routines enable the survival of the group. They divide labor intelligently within the group to deal with the problems of finding energy sources, transform them into products useful for their lives, and manage the flow of those products. They do so to the point of changing the number of workers assigned to specific jobs depending on the energy sources available. They act in a seemingly altruistic manner whenever sacrifice is needed. In their colonies, they build nests that constitute remarkable urban architectural projects and provide efficient shelter, traffic patterns, and even systems of ventilation and waste removal, not to mention a security guard for the queen. One almost expects them to have harnessed fire and invented the wheel. Their zeal and discipline put to shame, any day, the governments of our leading democracies. These creatures acquired their complex social behaviors from their biology, not from Montessori schools or Ivy League colleges. But in spite of having come by these astounding abilities as early as 100 million years ago, ants and bees, individually or as colonies, do not grieve for the loss of their mates when they disappear and do not ask themselves about their place in the universe. They do not inquire about their origin, let alone their destiny. Their seemingly responsible, socially successful behavior is not guided by a sense of responsibility, to themselves or to others, or by a corpus of philosophical reflections on the condition of being an insect. It is guided by the gravitational pull of their life regulation needs as it acts on their nervous systems and produces certain repertoires of behavior selected over numerous evolving generations, under the control of their fine-tuned genomes. Members of a colony do not think as much as they act, by which I mean that upon registering a particular need—theirs, or the group’s, or the queen’s—they do not ponder alternatives for how to fulfill such a need in any way comparable to ours. They simply fulfill it. Their repertoire of actions is limited, and in many instances it is confined to one option. The general schema of their elaborate sociality does resemble that of human cultures, but it is a fixed schema. E. O. Wilson

A friend of mine who studies tropical insects showed me a video of orchid bees crowding around a crater in a rotting log. Male orchid bees collect scents from the world and amass them into a cocktail that they use to court females. They are perfume makers. Mating takes seconds, but gathering and blending their scents takes their entire adult lives. Although he hadn’t yet tested the hypothesis, my friend had a strong hunch that the bees were harvesting fungal compounds to add to their bouquets.

In fact, higher animals are racialist and lower animals too. They won’t mate with anyone except creatures of their own race. Certain spiders will go miles and miles to get to the female spider of the same kind as himself. They have that instinct. The highest of the beings on Earth have that instinct and the lowest. And the intermediate ones haven’t got it. An average dog, especially what they call in India a pariah dog, will mate with any bitch. Spiders don’t. Insects don’t. Plants don’t. Minerals don’t. There are strict laws of combinations between minerals in chemistry. And higher human beings don’t. The intermediate human being is just like the dog: mates with anybody. We want to be the highest. National Socialism is for teaching the Aryans to become real Aryans, that is to say, the top of the race and to be able to guide others, to bring the whole race up. We don’t want any kind of people in our Aryan race who behave like dogs, like pariah dogs.

An article in this month’s National Geographic magazine quotes a scientist referring to the “undistractibility” of these animals on their journeys. “An arctic tern on its way from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, for instance, will ignore a nice smelly herring offered from a bird-watcher’s boat in Monterey Bay. Local gulls will dive voraciously for such handouts, while the tern flies on. Why?” The article’s author, David Quammen, attempts an answer, saying “the arctic tern resists distraction because it is driven at that moment by an instinctive sense of something we humans find admirable: larger purpose.” In the same article, biologist Hugh Dingle notes that these migratory patterns reveal five shared characteristics: the journeys take the animals outside their natural habitat; they follow a straight path and do not zigzag; they involve advance preparation, such as overfeeding; they require careful allocations of energy; and finally, “migrating animals maintain a fervid attentiveness to the greater mission, which keeps them undistracted by temptations and undeterred by challenges that would turn other animals aside.” In other words, they are pilgrims with a purpose. In the case of the arctic tern, whose journey is 28,000 miles, “it senses it can eat later.” It can rest later. It can mate later. Its implacable focus is the journey; its singular intent is arrival. Elephants, snakes, sea snakes, sea turtles, myriad species of birds, butterflies, whales, dolphins, bison, bees, insects, antelopes, wildebeests, eels, great white sharks, tree frogs, dragon flies, crabs, Pacific blue tuna, bats, and even microorganisms – all of them have distinct migratory patterns, and all of them congregate in a special place, even if, as individuals, they have never been there before. -Hamza Yusuf on the Hajj of Community

If one of these baby stick insects is removed as soon as it is born, and kept in a tank on its own, then it too will lay eggs which will hatch into little stick insects in their turn. This is despite the fact that it has never mated. Stick insects frequently reproduce this way. They are using a mechanism known as parthenogenesis, from the Greek for ‘virgin birth’. Females lay fertile eggs without ever mating with a male, and perfectly healthy little stick insects emerge from these eggs. These insects have evolved with special mechanisms to ensure that the offspring have the correct number of chromosomes. But these chromosomes all came from the mother.

The Australian jewel beetle has sex with beer bottles. The beetles are a light chocolate color with dimples all down their back and dark black legs and heads that peek out from underneath their carapeces. Their bodies are big and long instead of round, and they resemble cicadas more than they do ladybugs. The male Australian jewel beetle is hardwired to like certain aspects about the female jewel beetle. They like females to be big, brown, and shiny. The bottles they make love to are bigger, browner, and shinier than any female could ever hope to be. In Australia, a certain type of bottle called stubbies overstimulates male jewel beetles. In a trash heap filled with bottles, you will often see every single stubby covered in male jewel beetles trying to get it on. The stubbies are what evolutionary psychologists call supernormal releasers. They are superstimuli, better than the real thing. The beetles will mate with these bottles even while being devoured by ants.

When in a Mississippi jungle, you feel as if you’re at the mercy of dark desires and ancient impulses. Despite unprecedented levels of pollution, cancerous suburban sprawl, and devastating natural disasters, the animals and insects still thrive in Mississippi. But not as much as the humans, the worst of all in Mississippi’s animal kingdom, who reproduce with as little forethought as the cicadas restlessly moaning for mates in the bayou. Mississippi

Some species-like spruce-rely on timing. Male and female blossoms open a few days apart so that, most of the time, the latter will be dusted with the foreign pollen of other spruce. This is not an option for trees like bird cherries, which rely on insects. Bird cherries produce male and female sex organs int he same blossom, and they are one of the few species of true forest trees that allow themselves to be pollinated by bees. As the bees make their way through the whole crown, they cannot help but spread the tree's own pollen. But the bird cherry is alert and senses when the danger of inbreeding looms. When a pollen grain lands on a stigma, its genes are activated and it grows a delicate tube down to the ovary in search of an egg. As it is doing this, the tree tests the genetic makeup of the pollen and, if it matches its own, blocks the tube, which then dries up. Only foreign genes, that is to say, genes that promise future success, are allowed entry to form seeds and fruit. How does the bird cherry distinguish between "mine" and "yours"? We don't know exactly. What we do know is that the genes must be activated, and they must pass the tree's test. You could say, the tree can "feel" them. You might say that we, too, experience the physical act of love as more than just the secretions of neurotransmitters that activate our bodies' secrets, though what mating feels like for trees is something that will remain in the realm of speculation for a long time to come.

Vision is acute in the typically diurnal lizards, where it is essential for catching live prey such as fast-moving insects, and even grabbing flying insects out of the air as they pass. Their colour vision is also excellent, better in some ways even than that of humans, because as well as discriminating between the three primary colours that we do, some lizards’ eyes also have receptors sensitive to ultraviolet light. It is therefore no surprise that colour plays a more important role in the behaviour of lizards than in any other group of reptiles. Some species display extraordinarily conspicuous vivid colours and patterns to attract mates, even at the risk of increasing the chances of their being caught by a predator. For example, the garishly multi-coloured male of the Augrabies flat lizard of South Africa combines a bright blue head, greenish-blue front trunk, yellow front legs, orange hind legs and trunk, black belly, and tan and orange tail, not to mention a UV-coloured throat invisible to us. The female, in contrast, is mostly dark brown with cream stripes.

A housefly lives for a month, a mosquito for one to three months, and a cockroach for up to six months. Unfortunately, most insects live only for a brief period. There is one notable exception, though. Three species of periodical cicadas found in the United States can live for up to seventeen years. After hatching, baby cicadas, called nymphs, spend seventeen years underground feeding on the roots of plants and trees. After that time, the adults emerge together in billions (some say even trillions) beginning in the second week of May, get into a mating frenzy, lay their eggs on trees, and are dead by the end of June. The eggs hatch in about six weeks, the nymphs drop down from the trees and burrow underground, and the seventeen-year cycle begins again. This evolutionary strategy, called prey satiation, has been supremely successful for eons because no predator can consume such a large number of cicadas in just a few weeks.20

The sheer abundance of vitality on all sides oppressed me as the prisoners Below had, a physical weight on the mind. Everywhere I looked there was riotous, fecund life. Insects tore through the air on clattering wings and consumed one another voraciously. The trees were hung with climbing lizards, red-shot serpents, long-limbed verminous things, webs the size of double doors. The water around us was in constant turmoil as things alighted on the surface and were snatched from below. Beyond all this there were the calls of all the things we could not see, a thousand beasts marking their territory, pleading for mates or triumphing over prey. And it stank. It stank of rot and rebirth enough to make me gag. The world was alive. I

The next time you see a wee chickadee, calling contentedly and happily while the air makes you shiver from head to foot, think of the hard-shelled frozen insects passing down his throat, the icy air entering lungs and air-sacs, and ponder a moment on the wondrous little laboratory concealed in his mite of a body; which his wings bear up with so little effort, which his tiny legs support, now hopping along a branch, now suspended from some wormy twig. Can we do aught but silently marvel at this alchemy? A little bundle of muscle and blood, which in this freezing weather can transmute frozen beetles and zero air into a happy, cheery little Black-capped Chickadee, as he names himself, whose bravery shames us, whose trustfulness warms our hearts! And the next time you raise your gun to needlessly take a feathered life, think of the marvellous little engine which your lead will stifle forever; lower your weapon and look into the clear bright eyes of the bird whose body equals yours in physical perfection, and whose tiny brain can generate a sympathy, a love for its mate, which in sincerity and unselfishness suffers little when compared with human affection.

We soon arrive at the sandy trail that leads to the caretaker’s cabin, and the red wolf intern directs people to the parking area. People file out of their cars silently and gather around Kim. She waits till everyone is there and then explains that she is going to walk about a quarter of a mile down the trail to Sandy Ridge, where she’ll howl at the wolves inside. She tells us that sometimes it takes a few howls to get them interested, but we should hold tight and hope that they’ll howl back. Last week, she says, people heard one of the pups howl back. She sets off down the dark path with her flashlight aimed at the ground so as not to spook the wolves. We stand in a pool of weak, wobbly light cast from people’s flashlights and head lamps. The forest darkness encircles us. A few minutes later, we hear Kim’s call pierce the night air. The buzz and drone of insects create a background of uneven noise that I strain to filter out. I hear Kim howl again, and everyone around me seems to be holding their breath and trying not to move. We listen and wait for an answer. Nothing. Kim tries again. No response. I wonder what the people in the crowd are thinking. Is this all just a sham? Just another tourist attraction? Kim makes a fourth howl, and then it starts. A lone howl rises, forlorn and low. It meanders through a few octaves and claws higher and higher. It trails into a thin high-pitched note, and then a second and a third howl pick up at lower pitches. People in the crowd gasp, some lean forward straining to hear. Within thirty seconds, a parade of howls sings loudly from the dark woods. It is hard to believe the wolves are a few hundred yards away. They sound much closer, perhaps less than a hundred feet. Kim walks back to the crowd, flashlight downturned on the ground. Howls waft from somewhere behind her, persistent but not aggressive. The wolves sing. They sing to each other as much as they sing to us. One pitch stands out from the others, higher, thinner, and much lighter. It must be the pup. I imagine him standing next to his parents, watching them throw their heads back and open their jaws wide, letting loose with a call that says, “Here we are! Where are you? Here we are!” And the pup joins in, calling, “I’m here too! I’m here too!” I don’t know exactly what these wolves are saying, of course, but it is difficult to imagine the howling being anything other than a communication to locate other packs or individuals, a way to call out to the night and exclaim: I am here, and I know how to take care of myself so well that I’m going to let you know that I’m here! And my mate is here, and my kids are here. We are all here together in this place that is ours.

He knew his father would not have approved. A man is supposed to be fierce. A man is a hunter and a warrior. A MAN beats his mate because she is smaller and gentler than he is (Okor scowled as he thought this). A man should not be gentle. All other creatures on earth walk in fear of the one called Man. Man does not paint faces on little girls' dolls, and he does not rescue drowning insects - yet I knowthese things to be right and good - for I am different. I am still a man, but I am the Strange One - that is what I am. Okor wept.

I sit with the ponderosa pine, next to Big Stump. As the angle and quality of light vary through the day and through the seasons, the hue and luminance of the colors change, animated by the touch of the Sun. Before the volcanic flow, this redwood was seventy meters tall and more than seven hundred years old. Now it is fragmented stone column three meters tall and ten meters around. For such a long dead creature, the stump is an acoustically lively character. In the summer violet-green swallows wheel around the exposed trunk, chattering as they ambush insects. Mountain bluebirds gather on the stump to feed their squalling youngsters, to purr at mates, and to snap their bills at rivals. A hummingbird buzzes face first against the stump, investigating a streak of flower like orange in the rock. Fewer animal sounds enliven winter’s air. The wail of ponderosa needles dominates, interspersed with the kok-kok of passing ravens. Wind bends spent grass stems to the ground, as they move, their sharp tips etch curved lines on the snow’s surface, the scratch of a pen on rough paper. Snows falls in clumps from pine needles, a hiss, then a muffled blow.

If she was mine, I would guard her so close, nothing would have a chance to harm her. Have you considered that she could carry the lifemate to one of us? Perhaps my lifemate? Do not take chances with her just to give her the illusion of freedom. None of us are truly free, he warned. Jacques sent them both a look of reprimand and extended his hand to Raven with Old World gallantry. She took it and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. Mikhail rose beside her, his arm sweeping her into the shelter of his body. She needed the contact, the closeness, the solid reality of his hard frame. Greogir, the instant bodyguard, scanned the air, the ground, moving fast as he did so. His body continually blocked the prince of their people and his lifemate from any possible threat. The three imposing figures surrounded the smaller one, moving as a unit, an honor guard, their paces slow and leisurely, their minds serene, with no hint of impatience or sign of their desire to get on to the night’s work. Hunger gnawed at Mikhail, but that too was kept at bay. When her mind touched his, Raven felt only love and concern, the desire to please her. Raven enjoyed the feel of the soft leaves under her feet as they moved through the forest. She lifted her face to embrace the wind, inhaled deeply to take in every secret the breeze could carry and would divulge. Every insect, every rustle in the underbrush, every separate sway of a branch, lightened the terrible dread in her heart, pushed the fearful memories a little farther away. “I can take them away completely,” Mikhail offered gently. Raven flashed him a small smile, meant to reassure. Her body moved briefly against his. She was well aware of what a temptation that had been for him, how the other two males thought him insane for not taking the choice from her. “You know I prefer to keep my memories. All of them.” Mikhail nodded, leaned over, and brushed a kiss over her temple. He felt the weight of Gregori’s pale gaze, his blatant disapproval. He knew he would be facing even more objections when they were alone. Carpathian males never allowed their mates to suffer needlessly. Only Gregori would dare to question or challenge the decisions of his prince. Mikhail usually welcomed the rare clashes. This time he had no way of defending his actions, at least not in a way Gregori would understand. Mikhail just knew Raven needed this semblance of normalcy and the time to come to grips with everything that had happened in her own way.

By comparison, on a summer night, look at a moth lying under eaves. The fluffy antennae on her back, in a male moth, are simply receptor locations that have spread outside the body. As the sun sets, the moth is looking for a signal from a nearby female moth releasing a special molecule called a pheromone. Moths are small insects, and the amount of pheromones they will carry through the air is infinitesimal compared to the total volume of air and its enormous load of pollen, dust, water and other pheromones that animals of all sorts, including humans, secrete. One would not believe two moths could interact over any distance of any duration. But when a single molecule of pheromones arrive on the male antenna, its action is changed. He immediately homes in on the female, begins an intricate ceremony of courtship in the air, and continues with the mating act. Biologically speaking, one single molecule is the only thing that causes this complex action.

The mating rites of mantises are well known: a chemical produced in the head of the male insect says in effect, 'No, I don't go near her, you fool, she'll eat you alive.' At the same time a chemical in his abdomen says, 'Yes, by all means, now and forever yes.

She is still forming her conclusions but, above all, is convinced that their actions are borne of instinct: fixed patterns that take them to their source of food, to their safe havens, to their mates, and, ultimately, to their death, since their predators learn these patterns as surely as if they, too, had read Maud’s book.

6. Embrace the midge Everyone has a theory on what attracts the Highland midge to certain people. What can be agreed upon is that these miniscule biting insects are the greatest hindrance to enjoying life outdoors in Scotland. The midge is most common in any location where water meets land. They prefer acidic soils, peaty and rich in nutrients, and dance over rushes and reeds in a fast-paced mating ritual. Science suggests some people are more attractive to the midge because of the taste of their blood. Researchers deduced that the blood of subjects with the fewest numbers of bites contained high levels of ketone, a chemical produced when the body burns fat. Personally, I think it's worth running the gamut of midges to sip at least one hot drink on the patio.