A Lifelong Search in the Hidden World of the Insects

By Zhuang Zhan-peng
Translated by Tang Yau-yang with permission of Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., Ltd.
Photographs by Sung-yang Lee

At Taiwan's Agricultural Research Institute, Dr. Sung-yang Lee's job was to study controls of soybean and rice insect pests. One morning, after he had sprayed the pesticide Endrin on soybean plants at the experimental field, he found out that a typhoon was approaching the island. It rained three solid days after he had sprayed, and he resigned himself to the thought that the pesticide would all be washed off and the experiment was a failure.

Four weeks later, he checked those soybean plants and was surprised to find that all the larvae of soybean stem miners (Melangromyza sojae, 潛莖蠅, a kind of fly) in the treated plants had died off. "Why? Heavy, sustained rains had followed the spraying of Endrin. Why was Endrin still so effective?"

He squatted there, as if to get closer to the perplexing question, pondering this unexpected outcome. "Does Endrin penetrate into the plants?" He designed and carried out a series of experiments to find the answer to how Endrin produced such effects.

After a soybean plant had budded, Lee put a drop of Endrin on the bud and cut the bud off two hours later. Two new buds would grow out in its place, one of which was again cut off. He arranged for stem miners to lay eggs on the remaining new growth. After the eggs had hatched, the larvae would get into the stem of the soybean. It was then just a matter of finding the exact location in the stem where the young larvae died to determine if and where Endrin had penetrated into the soy plant.

Lee took part in the experiments every step of the way in order to observe and experience them firsthand. Working with assistants or technicians, he himself went to the field to spray the Endrin. They dissected soy plants one, two, and three weeks after spraying to check if the larvae had died. This was quite laborious because every chosen stem had to be opened up for inspection.

After one year of painstaking work, he concluded that Endrin indeed possessed the capacity to penetrate and translocate once inside the host plant. This was a new finding. No studies had previously showed that Endrin could produce such an effect.

This study earned him a doctoral degree at Tokyo University of Agriculture in 1961. The publication of his study in the Journal of Economic Entomology caught the world's attention. Soon thereafter, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the use of Endrin.

A self-taught photographer

"Insects, no matter how small they are, must have a world of their very own," Lee thought. "If I could make a movie about them, people would get to know insects better. With such understanding comes a more harmonious world." So in 1968 he decided to make a film of insects. He made a detailed plan to show where they live, what they eat, how they eat (e.g., biting, sucking, licking), how they defend themselves, court and copulate, and take care of their young.

Now it was time to think as a photographer, which he was not. Some friends in the United States bought books on professional filmmaking for him. He delved into this brand-new subject as only a single-minded scholar could. He perused, studied, and scrutinized books and periodicals from cover to cover. Even ads for photographic equipment did not escape his attention.

He quickly realized that the lens that he had been using wasn't good enough for close-up photography. So he decided to design a better lens himself. The focusing mounts demanded a precision with such a close tolerance that he could not find any local shop that could make them. He figured that it would have to come from a firm that made professional cameras. He checked out companies in the United States and West Germany, but they either asked exorbitant prices or were too booked up to accept his order. Finally he found a Japanese company that would accept his order at a cost that he could manage.

Overjoyed, Lee immediately sent the design diagrams and money to the Japanese company. The result, however, was less than perfect. The new lens took blurry images. On closer inspection, he found one focusing ring was thicker than what he had called for in the design diagram by a whopping one millimeter (almost 4 hundredths of an inch)! Well, at least now he knew what the problem was.

For the repair job, he selected some super-fine, American-made sandpaper which he laid flat on the top of a desk. Holding the ring upright, he began rubbing the ring against the sandpaper. Taking care with every single move, he even tried to keep his breathing steady. Every now and then, he would put the ring back on the lens and the lens back in the camera to see if the problem had been corrected. Still blurry... Oh well, he would reverse the process, take the lens apart, and go back to sanding again. Back and forth like that he kept on grinding. Finally on the seventh day, the job was done. The ring fit the lens, which fit the camera perfectly. And the images appeared crystal sharp.

From the time he started designing this lens, a whole year had elapsed. A whole year of dogged perseverance and undivided attention finally put him over the hump--at least for this one task on a long list of tasks.

A nerve-racking task

Filming insects was best done indoors, in a studio. It was easier to control the filming process, including such things as lighting or the recovery of an insect actor or actress should it fly away from the stage. There was only one problem, though--the filming was as nerve-racking as working in an inferno.

To supplement his income, Lee used to raise birds for sale. He had built a small coop to keep his birds in. This extremely small, windowless, claustrophobic space was the new studio where Lee launched his filming career.

Extra lighting was a fixture in any movie studio, including Lee's. The intense heat from the lights was added to the suffocating heat and humidity put out by so many nonstop air-conditioners and car engines, all trapped in the Taipei basin. The coop was a hellish furnace. Ah, air-conditioning! Alas, there was none in this studio because even the slightest vibrations from the blown air could shake or ruffle an insect too much for filming. Not even a fan could be used. What made it even worse was that Lee had loathed heat since birth. Filming and moving about in this inferno for hours on end left him feeling half dead.

Overwork and exhaustion often brought on some of his latent illnesses. At times he really wanted to lie down, if only briefly. But an insect would not wait for him to lay its eggs. And if he did not film it then, there was no telling when he would get another chance, if at all. So, severe headaches, dizziness, fever, cold sweats, and convulsions notwithstanding, Lee carried on. Sometimes he just could not help but vomit as he worked.

Lee could tough out the bodily suffering, painful though it was. What was even more trying was the anxiety that he had to endure after sending the film abroad to be developed [Taiwan was unable to develop the film then]. Would it turn out the way he had intended? He could do nothing but wait patiently until the film was sent back from a foreign laboratory. He tossed and turned many nights thinking that he might have to film some particular scenes all over again. The fear of redoing the painstaking work was terrible enough to deprive him of sleep for the rest of the night.

More challenges

Filming occasionally took Lee outdoors, too. It was not uncommon for him to start a filming excursion from Taipei in bright sunshine only to reach a suburban destination in a downpour. There would be nothing to show for the lengthy bus ride. Oftentimes, several trips out of Taipei were needed just to produce a few seconds of film.

On one such occasion, carrying his bulky, heavy camera and tripod on his back, Lee walked up a hill. Before long, he started to sweat and gasp for air. His legs felt like lead, and he dragged himself one step after another grueling step up the dirt path. Finally, he reached his destination, but he had to rest for a long time before his muscles stopped trembling and he could hold the camera steady enough for shooting.

Aside from the heat, there were challenges even inside the studio. An insect is small and very difficult to put in precise focus. After much effort, Lee would finish setting up the camera, light metering, and focusing, and be almost ready to shoot. Just then, as luck would have it, the insect would move out of focus. Lee would have to repeat the tedious process all over again, and then again... often to the point of exhaustion.

He used an inordinate amount of film to get perfect shots. On average, only 10 percent of raw footage was useable in the final editing. He wanted to learn from past experiences to minimize unusable footage. So he wrote down in a notebook detailed information about each segment of film: insects, what the insects did, the length of film used for each insect activity filmed, aperture, shutter speed, ratio, lens filter... the whole nine yards. He also wrote down tips and lessons that he had learned along the way.

Once the film was developed, he would check and ponder the results against his notes. The bits and pieces of valuable lessons and experience started accumulating as he felt his way forward. He honed his skills with his unwavering devotion, sweat, anxiety, and dollars. He wanted the film to be something that was simply the very best that he could make.

The value of life

Lee was bent on achieving perfect lighting, backdrops, and composition. If it was not good enough, he would redo it. If he missed a shot, he would wait for the next opportunity. If the insect did not pass muster, he would get another insect to "star."

Such was the vintage Sung-yang Lee, with his extremely stubborn insistence on getting things just right, no matter what. Could that be called a kind of loony enthusiasm? He probably would not have minded, if that was what it took to take perfect shots.

Faced with the seemingly unceasing difficulties and pressure, even Lee occasionally considered quitting. "If I don't finish filming now, what can I honestly say that I have accomplished in life? What do I have to show for my life at the end?" Lee kept asking himself these questions during the many nights when he lost sleep to frustration and agony and when he contemplated quitting.

Fortunately for him and for the world, during those dark days there was music to accompany, comfort, sustain, and propel him. Hoping to pull himself through the tough times, Lee took out his beloved violin and intently played Beethoven's "Romance in F major," and his mind zipped back to 1941, to his violin lessons in snow-covered Tokyo where he was a student at the Tokyo University of Agriculture. The violin was so technically difficult for him, as it was for most folks, and he was deeply troubled by the mental hardships inflicted on him. He thought of quitting violin, but his teacher encouraged him to stay with it and face the distress head-on. The process of overcoming hardships or distress would help cultivate his resilience and strengthen his resistance in the face of challenges. These traits would come in handy in solving future thorny problems.

The violin teacher was right. Over the years, these traits indeed helped Lee struggle through much adversity and misery. The sweet sound of his violin filled him with warmth and equanimity, and he was ready once again to charge ahead.

"The Insect World of Dr. Lee"

The painstaking and scrupulous process of filming went on and on. Some days were better than others, and some worse. It took eight years for Lee to complete filming the insects that he had selected. As the end of this project approached, he started to arrange for the film to be published. He sent a copy of the work print to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) along with the detailed script.

The people at the BBC marveled at the film that Lee sent. They saw many insect behaviors that had never before been captured on film. Experts themselves, the BBC people appreciated the difficulties that Lee must have surmounted to have captured some of those splendid shots. Consequently, in April 1975, the BBC sent a camera crew consisting of a photographer, an audio recorder, a producer and his assistant to Taiwan to make a special documentary dedicated exclusively to Sung-yang Lee--the first program that BBC ever did on an individual in Taiwan.

The BBC crew started in Lee's coop-turned-studio to make "Sung-yang Lee Filming the Insects." It was simply too cramped inside the coop. The photographer shook his head as he recorded. April could be hot in Taiwan, as was the case when the BBC crew came. Adding the heat from the glaring lights in the studio to the April warmth made the coop unbearable.

Lee also took them to the outdoor locations where he had filmed some insects. The BBC crew diligently recorded as Lee carefully recalled or re-enacted his odyssey. The BBC foursome stayed for 16 days. When they were finished, a friend of Lee's took the visitors to dinner, and he asked the BBC producer why his team would expend so much energy and resources on Lee. "Is his film really worth so much?" the friend asked.

"There is no shortage of people filming insects in this world," the producer replied. "But nothing can rival what Dr. Lee has accomplished in terms of the depth of coverage." He told Lee that the program that they were making would be named “The Insect World of Dr. Lee." "We've worked on all sorts of insect films in our jobs, but we've never come across anything quite like what you've made. You are the Jean Henri Fabre of our times."

[Editor's note: To view a film by Dr. Lee, go to http://www.gio.gov.tw/live/av/sou_sig_c/ sight05_3c.htm and click on 300k.]

Striving to leave a memorable legacy

On January 11, 1976, the BBC aired "The Insect World of Dr. Lee" to its wide audience. This 50-minute program contained about 30 minutes of original footage by Dr. Lee. "Since deciding to make a documentary film on the amazing lives of insects, Lee's life and that of his family, sucked in by the filming process, have not been the same," remarked the BBC narrator.

Lee told the audience, "Honestly, it has never occurred to me to consider how much money or effort it would take to finish filming. It is my dream to capture and show the world just how fascinatingly charming insects really are. I would do whatever it takes to realize this dream."

Toward the end of the BBC program, Lee and his wife wandered in the Alishan forest in southern Taiwan photographing tiger beetles (Cicindela dorsalis, 虎甲蟲). These beetles feature conspicuous stripes on their exoskeleton. Like tigers, they are fierce and rob from others, hence the name. Holding his camera, Lee said with determination, "As a Chinese saying goes, 'After death, a person leaves nothing behind but a name, and a tiger its hide and fur.' This film will be my legacy for the world." The narrator followed, "We have just presented to you the 'Tiger Skin' of Dr. Lee. This is a most unusual will, one that shows a mosaic of unflinching perseverance, fortitude, intriguing design, and ingenuity."

On to a new book

In August 1987, Lee moved in with his second son in Neihu, Taipei. His new residence was on the top floor of an apartment building, and his son had an extension built on the roof of the building as Lee's workshop.

Lee devoted his energy to writing a book that would address the question, "Can insects think?" But his thinking on this subject was too nebulous to be committed to paper. He just could not get the writing process off the ground.

One day he talked to a new acquaintance, Togashi Naotaka, a chemical engineer from Japan, about the idea of writing such a book. Naotaka straightened up and said to Lee solemnly, "It would be a great sin if you did not finish this book for the world to read." This remark shook Lee up, and he realized just how important it was for him to finish writing this book. There was only one way to do the job: full steam ahead.

Whenever a thought popped up in his mind, he would jump out of bed, even at three in the chilly morning, to jot it down. He charged ahead full force, and unfortunately so did a longtime eye illness of his--he has been afflicted with optic nerve atrophy since he was 15 years old. Sometimes he would barely read half a page when this ailment would hit him with such a vengeance as to cause headaches, dizziness, and nausea. All he could do would be to lie down and wail in excruciating pain. It used to take about a week for him to recover from such agony. Now, however, he had to keep his eyes shut, even up to four or five weeks.

When this ailment afflicted and disabled him, he had to resort to a device that he had invented: "a writing template for the blind." The template was created by slitting rectangular rows in a piece of paperboard roughly the size of writing paper (8.5 by 11 inches). With the template laid over a piece of blank writing paper, Lee put his pen in the top cut-out row of the template and started to write--not in Chinese, but in cursive English script so he would not have to lift his pen between strokes as was required for Chinese writing. Lifting the pen would cause him to lose his place on the line, possibly resulting in some overlapped writing. When he reached the end of a row, the raised surface of the template would stop his pen and he would quickly open his eyes, move his pen to the next line, shut his eyes again, and resume writing. Line after assiduous line, Lee plowed through the pages, writing and rewriting, in physical pain all the while.

"So, what is creative writing? Lee wrote in his notebook. "After repeated rewrites and modifications, after one is exhausted from all this, a sprout of an idea breaks through the ashes on the ground and starts budding and climbing up. That's creative writing." This was how he really felt. This was how much pain he was enduring.

In March 2005, the longed-for book was finally published. Dr. Lee, aged 83, accomplished what he had wanted and set out to do years before. He distilled his vast entomological knowledge and presented it thoroughly but succinctly in this book.

The Virtuoso

Lee focused mostly on weevils, Sepedon flies (Sepedon sauteri, 野地蠅), and potter wasps (Anterhynchium flavomarginatum, 狩獵蜂) in his new book, although he also included many other insects. He detailed the hypothesis that he had deduced on the strength of many decades of mindful observations and analyses. He itemized many episodes of insect behavior to support his deep-seated belief that insects, though tiny, do possess the capacity to think.

He pondered the fate of the insect film that had taken him almost a decade to make. He decided to rearrange, edit, dub in background music, and eventually finished with a 60-minute program, one that Lee thought to be most valuable for scientific studies.

Lee took delight in dedicating his life's work--the film and the book--to Jean-Henri Fabre. Lee cut his entomological teeth on the French scientist's classic Souvenirs Entomologiques, and he regarded Fabre as his first and most influential teacher. Lee demonstrated his utmost reverence and gratitude by naming his film and book together My Entomological Remembrance, after the way Fabre named his own classic.

After years of hard work, Lee finally finished systematically recording what he had throughout his life observed, experimented, and learned about insects. He hopes that others in this field will give him feedback and comments about his life's work. He also looks to them to carry on the search for more understanding about insects and for a more harmonious world.

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Revealing Their Mental Capacity

By Sung-yang Lee
Excerpted from Sung-yang Lee's Entomology with permission of Yuan-Liou Publishing Co.
Translated by Tang Yau-yang
Photographs by Sung-yang Lee

When I was a junior in high school in 1937, our biology teacher, Mr. Matsumoto, had a profound impact on us. A newly minted teacher just graduated from Taikoku University in Taipei, Mr. Matsumoto introduced French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre's story to our class. He also urged us to read Fabre's classic Souvenirs Entomologiques. I promptly bought the entire set of 10 volumes. To me, the most fascinating part of this set was the behavior of hunter wasps.

Fabre's observation of insect behavior was all-encompassing and left nothing out, from the big picture to the small details. The techniques that he devised for observing insects were ingenious. I admired him and felt grateful to him for enlightening me. His work on insect behavior has had the most profound influence on me.

Professor Hidaka Toshitaka was a renowned scholar on animal behavior in Japan. Once he confessed in a newspaper, "One of my students gave me a lesson. I told my class that I wished I could make a significant discovery on animal behavior. A student stood up and asked, 'Sir, will it do you any good if you only think about it?'"

Professor Hidaka did not elaborate on how he responded to that student. But an esteemed scholar like him knew full well that there was no shortcut to any significant discovery. The only known formula to discovery included working out in the field with perseverance and diligence, a smart and clear head, and a pinch of serendipity.

Another important aspect is the affirmation that all beings are equals, and some mental aspects of other animals are fairly similar to those of human beings. This acknowledgement occurred to me when I was young, observing the mating behavior of rice leaf beetles (Oulema oryzae, 負尼蟲), and it has stayed deep in my subconscious like a seed all these years, waiting to germinate.

A fly's wedding cake

I have personally witnessed many insects in courtship rituals. The most gentlemanly of them all would have to be the male Sepedon flies (Sepedon sauteri). By chance I caught a scene of these flies coupling: the female was devouring a whitish foam on the stem of a rice plant while the male was on top of her. Wasn't this whitish stuff a "wedding cake" that the male fly gave to her? I decided to film the entire process.

"There!" my assistant yelled, pointing. A couple of flies were on the stem of a rice plant. Some whitish foam exuded out of one insect's mouth while the other insect waited a bit higher on the stem. When the foam had gotten to a good size, the male insect moved out of the way and the waiting female fly crawled down and started eating from the foamy lump. A few seconds later, the male jumped on top of the female to copulate. Seemingly enjoying the food that he had made, the female willingly let him proceed without any resistance.

We had brought quite a few specimens to this filming session. When not being filmed, the male and female flies were kept in separate boxes. After we had finished filming this episode, I put the flies from one box into the other. Several flies very quickly found their mates and started their breeding acts. This time, those flies did not need the "wedding cake" ritual; they just went at it straightaway.

Based on this observation, I have reason to believe that the foamy clump ritual was performed only because the female insect happened to be hungry at the time. There was nothing immoral in that ritual; i.e., there was no aphrodisiac in the foam.

Attelabid weevils: expert leaf rollers

Female attelabid weevils (Paroplapoderus pardaloides, 黑點搖籃蟲,又名黑點捲葉象鼻蟲) have a common trait: a female lays an egg on a leaf, which she rolls and folds into a neat package around the egg. After the egg hatches, the newly born larva will grow inside the package until it emerges as an adult weevil. Just a little larger than a grain of rice, a mother weevil is able to manipulate and make a leaf that is hundreds of times its own size into a cradle for her egg and future baby. For this reason, we could call this insect the "cradle weevil."

The building process goes like this: the mother weevil chooses a suitably pliable leaf and bites off its main water supply line to make the leaf softer and easier to work with. She cuts the leaf with her mouth as appropriate to facilitate folding, much like people slit cardboard in such a way as to make folding it into a box possible. She folds the leaf's edges lengthwise toward the central vein of the leaf. Now the folding part is done and the rolling part can start. First she rolls just enough of the tip of the leaf toward the base to form a small bundle. She bites a hole in the bundle and lays an egg in it before she resumes rolling the leaf from the tip toward the base, with the egg snug in the middle of the package. It usually takes a cradle bug two hours to roll a cradle for one egg.

[Editor's note: For 28 sequential photographs of a weevil (搖籃蟲) making a cradle, see http://www.ylib.com/activity/call-bugs/ paper_mv.htm. Scroll the "film" to the right to see the sequence.]

Are insects slaves to instinct?

It is a commonly accepted assumption that insects can't think. Their behavior is dictated entirely by instinct. They blindly follow instinct just like automated machinery performs tasks exactly as programmed. Even respected entomologists hold this view. But is this postulation true?

To elucidate different behavioral patterns among the same kind of insects, researchers of late generally cite the existence of slight variations in instinct--but still they insist that "It's all instinct." They just do not acknowledge that insects are capable of thinking. I believe that this is a prejudice on their part.

Observing hunter wasps over a long period of time, I noticed that even the same individual insect could use different approaches to perform the same task at different times and under different circumstances.

Cognitive ethology is an emerging branch in the study of animal behavior. Some researchers in this field claim that it is possible that sentient creatures, including insects, possess some consciousness. These scholars are working hard to substantiate their claims.

Let's see if hunter wasps have consciousness. Do they know what they are doing? Are they able to adapt their behavior to overcome an unexpected hurdle? Are they capable of thinking?

A hunter wasp built a nest in the hollow of a bamboo. A small hole was its passageway to the outside world. The wasp later left its nest to hunt for food. A gold wasp (Chrisis fuscipennis, 小青蜂) came to perch just below the entrance and waited there patiently for the return of the potter wasp. The wasp came back with its prey, a leaf roller (捲葉蟲). The wasp left the prey in its nest and went out again to hunt for more. No sooner had the wasp left its nest then the gold wasp entered to lay her egg, as a parasite, and then she quickly exited.

Upon its return, the wasp sensed that its nest had been invaded, so it started to remove the leaf rollers stored in the nest out to discard them, one at a time. But one of the leaf rollers was difficult for the wasp to remove, even after several attempts. The wasp then realized that the leaf roller was grasping the edge of the hole, preventing the wasp from pulling it out of the bamboo. So, the wasp changed its strategy. It changed the direction of its flight and with just a slight pull, the wasp was able to loosen the leaf roller's grip and pull it out.

Do insects feel joy?

This hunter wasp impressed me very much. If it had simply followed its instinct, it would have kept pulling in the same way and would not have changed its method even after repeated failures. However, it adjusted to the situation, identified the road blocks, and devised a way to remove the leaf roller from the nest. I think that it knew how to solve the problem and it also knew what it was doing. Is this awareness the manifestation of its consciousness?

The German poet Friedrich von Schiller wrote in his renowned An die Freude: "Even bugs can feel contentment." But can they really?

I once observed a wasp that rebuilt the deserted nest of a thread-waisted wasp (Ammophila pulchella, 細腰蜂). The original residence was cramped and hard to get in and out of, so the wasp worked hard to clear out the clutter and enlarge the cells. After much effort, the comfortable new residence was ready. The wasp laid some eggs. Since it was not in a hurry to hunt for prey, it lay down to sleep awhile.

Some might ask, "How did you know that it was sleeping?" We can tell by changes in the level of the displayed alertness. When it first lay down, its antennas were still moving actively. Initially, when I waved my hand in front of it, its antennas reacted very quickly. Gradually the antenna's reactions slowed down and eventually stopped. I believed that the wasp was in a sound sleep because my waving hand did not cause a stir. When it awoke, it took the time to relax and enjoy the moment, wagging its antenna leisurely. I believe that the wasp must have been feeling content.

Usually insects behave in accordance with their instinct. However, when they face hurdles, they know to modify their instinct-driven behavior. This kind of individual adaptability differed among the several wasps that I have observed. Clearly, the displayed variability in adaptability strongly contradicts the old theory that insects of the same kind behave the same way, based on the same instinct.

Think with love

Humans often think in contrasting pairs--true vs. false, good vs. bad, useful vs. useless. But I contend that kind of thinking may be wrong, as there is no set criterion for the dichotomies we produce, and the dichotomies that we devise may be entirely bogus. Instead, I, a man who has spent the better part of his life wordlessly communicating with insects, implore the readers to set aside such dichotomies, and instead to think of things only with love.

I hope that people will open up their hearts and look at the insects and people and things surrounding them from a different perspective. Only with love can we set our thinking straight and recognize the truth; and only when we 'think with love' can a problem truly find its solution. Only Great Love can lead humans away from self-destruction. This is what I firmly believe.