Insects: The Invisible Animals
“We live in a world that is run largely by insects.”
— E.O. Wilson, biologist
Insects represent over 80% of all known animal species on Earth.1 At any given moment, there are approximately 10 quintillion individual insects alive on the planet2 — that’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 individuals, or roughly 1.25 billion insects for every human being. A typical square yard of forest floor contains more than 100,000 insects and other ‘arthropods’ (which include ‘arachnids’ like spiders, ‘crustaceans’ like lobsters, and ‘myriapods’ like centipedes). Over 400 million years, insects have weathered mass extinctions that felled dinosaurs, emerging not just intact, but dominant. Their small size makes them incredibly efficient, enabling them to consume less energy and reproduce rapidly, but also makes them essentially invisible.
This invisibility isn’t accidental — it’s the result of millions of years of evolutionary refinement. It starts with visual camouflage. Stick insects and leaf insects not only match the colors of their surroundings, but textures, patterns and even imperfections of plant materials. Chemical camouflage, where insects release or mimic odors to blend into their surroundings or evade detection, adds another layer of invisibility. Some ant species cultivate bacteria on their exoskeletons that produce antibiotics, making them invisible to fungal pathogens. Notably, insects can also employ behavioral camouflage — disguising themselves by how they move and act. Beetles, weevils, and some ants drop motionless to the ground when disturbed. Some caterpillars stay still to make them look like bird droppings.
One of the most remarkable things about insects is their role in building connections we can’t see. Beneath our feet, fungi form vast underground networks that scientists call the “wood wide web,” linking trees and plants like a hidden ‘internet’ of the forest. Insects keep this system running. Tiny beetles and springtails nibble at fungal threads in ways that help the network grow stronger and spread farther — like little repair crews working on underground cables. Some ants even farm fungi that plug into these networks, giving their colonies access to the same hidden system. Insects are the forests’ technicians. Without them, the forest’s internet wouldn’t work as smoothly.
Social insects have created some of the most sophisticated hidden infrastructure on the planet. A single super colony of Argentine ants in Europe spans thousands of miles, housing millions of workers in a seamless, borderless empire. Colonies large and small maintain fungus gardens, waste management systems, and climate control mechanisms that rival human agricultural technology, yet they remain almost entirely hidden from surface view.
‘Micro’ Economics
Agriculture owes insects an unpayable debt. While honeybee pollination receives significant attention, wild insects provide pollination services worth an estimated $235 billion annually worldwide:3 75% of all major crop types4 and 90% of flowering plants depend on animal pollinators5 — the vast majority of them insects. Without them, apples, almonds, coffee, and chocolate would be luxuries, if they existed at all. Many of these species are so small or specialized that farmers remain unaware of their presence, yet crop yields would collapse without their services. In medicine, insects have played an essential role for millennia. Maggot therapy, revived in the 20th century, uses sterile fly larvae to clean wounds by eating dead tissue, often saving limbs when antibiotics fail. Bees make propolis, a resin once used by Egyptians in mummification, which is now valued for its immune-boosting properties.6
Decomposition and nutrient cycling represent equally valuable but even less visible services. Insects process organic matter at a rate that dwarfs any human waste management system. A single colony of termites can process several tons of dead plant material annually, breaking it down into nutrients that support entire ecosystems. Dung beetles roll waste into the ground, fertilizing soil and reducing parasites for grazing animals. Flies and other decomposers turn decay into fertile ground for new growth. Without insects, dead organic matter would accumulate faster than bacteria and fungi could decompose it, fundamentally altering global carbon and nitrogen cycles.
Image Credit: Chairil Azmi / Shutterstock
Small Matters
Insect populations have crashed by roughly 45% in the past 40 years7 — a silent collapse driven by habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change. It remains one of the most underreported environmental crises of our time.
Modern agriculture has replaced diverse landscapes with monocultures, stripping insects of food and shelter. In the U.S., prairies and field edges have been cleared for corn and soy, while in Brazil, soybean expansion across the Cerrado and Amazon has consumed millions of hectares — driving nearly 20% forest loss and wiping out insect life, including a ~50% decline in dung beetles and a 64% species loss in fire-hit areas.8 Each hectare cleared erases pollinators, decomposers, and soil engineers, weakening the web that sustains the forest and global climate. In China, intensive rice and cotton farming now relies heavily on managed bees and silk moths as wild insect populations decline.
Pesticides amplify the problem. Neonicotinoids, a class of systemic ‘nerve-agent’ insecticides that linger in soil and water, are widely used on crops. A Nature study found that wild bee populations near neonic-treated fields declined by more than 50%.9 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that more than 140 million acres of farmland are treated with neonics each year — an area nearly one and a half times the size of California — turning vast landscapes into toxic zones for pollinators and beneficial insects.10
Climate change is reshaping insect life cycles and shrinking their ranges in ways scientists are only beginning to measure. A 2020 study in Science found that bumblebee populations in North America and Europe have declined by nearly 50% over the past century, with extreme heat events driving much of the loss.11 In the Amazon, droughts linked to El Niño cut dung beetle diversity by 64% in fire-affected forests, disrupting nutrient cycling and seed dispersal. Even in temperate zones, butterflies are shifting their ranges northward, while alpine species are being squeezed off mountaintops. Climate change is not just a future threat — it is already dismantling insect populations their ecological contributions.
The human use of insects continues to grow. Roughly 2 billion people worldwide eat insects as part of their diets, with more than 1,900 species consumed as food.12 Beyond the dinner table, insects are harvested at staggering scales for commercial goods. Silk production alone requires the killing of an estimated 420 billion to 1 trillion silkworms annually,13 with nearly 10 billion cocoons needed to spin 70 million pounds of raw silk. Other insect-derived products carry a heavy toll: a pound of shellac or carmine dye requires tens of thousands of insects. In nearly all cases, the process ends with insects boiled or scalded to death.
Edible insect farming is now being industrialized much like livestock factory farming. Millions of crickets and tons of black soldier fly larvae are farmed every month. These operations tout efficiency — using far less land, water, and feed per gram of protein than livestock — but the welfare calculus changes when viewed in terms of individuals. A single cricket farm can ‘process’ more animals in a week than many livestock operations handle in a year, typically through mass-killing methods like freezing, boiling, or grinding.
Emerging research increasingly supports insect sentience, showing that flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, and termites display strong evidence of actually feeling pain, while beetles, butterflies, and moths provide substantial indicators pointing toward pain perception.14 A growing number of consciousness researchers now include insects in their declarations of animal sentience,15 raising urgent questions about industrial insect farming as a massive welfare blind spot. Even with minimal capacity for suffering, industrial insect farming could inflict more total suffering than all livestock farming combined.
From Hidden to Heard
Some researchers warn of an ‘insect apocalypse’ driven by habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change. Fortunately, efforts are underway to preserve or revive the insect population. Notable projects include:
Habitat Restoration
‘Pollinator Highways’ in the U.S. and Europe are transforming roadsides into wildflower corridors, giving bees and butterflies safe passage across fragmented landscapes. By planting milkweed, clover, and native blooms along thousands of miles of highway, these projects turn transit routes into lifelines for pollinators. In India’s Western Ghats, restoration projects have increased wild bee diversity and boosted coffee yields for local farmers. ‘Green Corridor’ programs in Nairobi, Kenya are transforming roadside verges into strips of native vegetation, proving that even urban spaces can double as insect havens.
Pesticide Reduction and Sustainable Farming
Europe’s Farm to Fork Strategy, rolled out in 2020, aims to slash pesticide use by 50% by 2030.16 Bangladesh’s floating gardens — rafts of water plants topped with compost and soil to grow vegetables and spices — create micro-habitats that support insect life. In India, neem-based biopesticides are increasingly used in rice and other crops, shown to control pests while preserving beneficial insects and soil ecology.17 Healthier bugs mean resilient harvests, as one Punjab grower quipped, “My fields are alive again — no more silent nights.”
Tech-Driven Monitoring and AI Tools
Technology is turning the invisible lives of insects into data that drives smarter conservation. In Japan, drones equipped with hyperspectral cameras track dragonflies and hoverflies as indicators of rice paddy health. In Brazil, scientists use AI to analyze soundscapes in the Amazon, cheaply detecting shifts in insect communities across huge landscapes. Dutch berry farms are pioneering AI-based pollinator monitoring, giving farmers real-time insight into crop pollination.
Public Education and Community-Led Actions
Knowledge is the ultimate pollinator. The Bee City USA program now spans 350+ communities and campuses, each pledging to reduce pesticides and plant pollinator-friendly habitat.18 Children in Michoacán, Mexico are planting butterfly gardens for the monarchs that spend the winter there. In South Africa, grassroots groups are mobilizing neighborhoods to grow pollinator gardens that improve food security while supporting insect life.
Policy and Protected Area Expansion
Policy enables conservation at scale. Clean water laws in Europe and the U.S. have fueled an 11% per-decade recovery in freshwater insects.19 Costa Rica is moving to ban harmful pesticides, Brazil is expanding reserves in the Cerrado to protect native bees, while China’s Ecological Red Line shields ecosystems across an area the size of Mexico.
We’re not there yet, but the buzz is building.
Stork, N. E. (2018). How Many Species of Insects and Other Terrestrial Arthropods Are There on Earth? Annual Review of Entomology.
Smithsonian Institution. BugInfo: How many insects are there in the world?
IPBES (2016). Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production.
Tong, Z-Y., et al. (2023). New calculations indicate that 90% of flowering plant species are animal-pollinated. National Science Review.
Kujumgiev, A. et al. (1999). Antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral activity of propolis. Journal of Ethnopharmacology.
Dirzo, R. et al. (2014). Defaunation in the Anthropocene. Science
Nichols, E. et al. (2019). Ecosystem services: nutrient cycling and provision of food through insect biodiversity. Biological Conservation.
Woodcock, B. A. et al. (2016). Impacts of neonicotinoid use on long-term population changes in wild bees in England. Nature.
EPA (2023). Neonicotinoid Pesticides
Soroye, P. et al. (2020). Climate change contributes to widespread declines among bumble bees across continents. Science.
Rowe, Abraham (2021). Silk production: global scale and animal welfare issues. Rethink Priorities.
Gobbins, Matilda et al. (2022). Can insects feel pain? A review of the neural and behavioural evidence. ScienceDirect.
NYU (2024). The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness.
European Commission (2020). Farm to Fork Strategy: For a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system.
Pavan, JS. et al. (2024). Biopesticides in Indian agriculture: Advances, challenges, and pathways to sustainable crop protection. International Journal for Advanced Biochemistry Research.
Seibold, S. et al. (2021). Long-term trends in biodiversity in Europe. Nature Ecology & Evolution.