A bugged conversation with Ruud Kleinpaste

New Zealand’s world-famous ‘Bugman’ and long-time Auckland Zoo friend Ruud Kleinpaste dropped by recently to see and talk bugs and spread the love for these genius stars of nature - flies and cockroaches included!  

What sparked your life-long love for bugs?

I got a pair of binoculars when I was seven years old. I was bird mad and birds led me to bugs. My father also encouraged me, plus I had a seriously good biology teacher, and later, at university a study friend’s father who was an entomologist, inspired me. The rest is history. But I have to tell you the ‘Bugman’ is really a fraud as I studied forestry not bugs; it was my personal passion that drove me. It wasn’t until seven years ago in the Netherlands that I set foot in the entomology department of my university for the very first time!

What’s your favourite bug and why?

It’s always the one I’m looking at right now – for instance a rhinoceros beetle.  These guys develop inside the trunk of palm trees; the male adult beetles are very strong and often fight with each other for females and territory. They invented WWF wrestling!

We can all study and learn so much from all bugs. Bugs are part of nature and here are some examples: Nature doesn’t know the concept of waste.  Nature only uses real sunlight. Nature lives where she works – there’s no factory on the outskirts of town, so it needs to keep things pollution-free. Plus, nature only uses the energy she needs; and she’s not carbon neutral, she’s carbon positive.

In your view, what’s one of the most important bugs in the world?

The common house fly. It recycles everything that once lived. Without these recyclers and dung-removing insects, it would take just three years for us humans to be under seven feet of dung, and how would you get to school or work then?!

Why should we love cockroaches?

Cockroaches are the ultimate recyclers. They eat organic matter, including dead leaves, fruits and seeds. Like all bugs, they have their own recycling business-card that says ‘I’ve been doing this for 3 million years now, so don’t worry about the spaghetti Bolognese behind the stove, I’ll clean it up real quick’!

You consulted on and feature in Bug Lab Exhibition videos. What do you think is one of the best things about Bug Lab?

Bio-mimicry (a term that covers learning from nature). Take the jewel wasp. She stings the cockroach to immobilise it and is extremely accurate doing that! Just one sting by the jewel wasp gives us an idea and example for micro-surgery at its smallest, and these insects have been doing this for 3.5 million years!

You are pretty crazy about Aotearoa’s unique endemic wētā. Why?

They perform the job of mice and rats, but have another clever trick up their – well... bum! All wētā have four feelers (or cerci) on their last abdominal segment that detect vibrations, wind speed, temperature, relative humidity and barometric pressure.  Imagine walking around with a complete meteorological station up your bum, it’s genius!

There’s so much we can learn from wētā. Yes, it’s biomimicry again – learning from nature! Take the mountain stone wētā (Hemideina maori) from the South Island, which freezes to below minus 10 degrees for weeks and weeks. They increase the sugar levels in their cells while allowing themselves to freeze between the cells. That means the cells themselves will not be destroyed. When temperatures rise they thaw and come to life as if they’ve just had a long sleep!

When we transport human transfer organs on ice, we can minimize organ damage by studying the freezing techniques of our native stone wētā. Oh and very importantly, this knowledge also helps us to make better ice cream!

Should we eat bugs?

It’s crucial that with nine billion people in the world by 2040, we will need other sources of protein.  Bugs breed like the clappers, you can keep them in small containers and their turnover of green matter into protein is three times better than cattle or sheep – that’s a 300% improvement in efficiency! Plus, bug protein contains no cholesterol and all the right fats. No brainer, really

What can we do to help bugs?

Respect their jobs and enhance their potential. Work with them rather than against them, and preserve their habitats!