To see as the insect sees
More specifically, what do they think of us?
We do often perceive them as an irritation, a source of discomfort, or a danger. Surely we are all those things and more to them.
The startling reality of species extinction appears aggravated in the insect world. Wagner et al in Insect Decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a Thousand Cuts label it an "insect apocalypse" with nature "under siege". Though many different factors contribute to species extinction, many of the catalysts for the decline of insect communities have human origins. Deforestation, pollution, urbanisation. We uproot ecosystems and do not linger to count the bodies. We cannot even see the bodies.
From the perspective of the insect, we are the aggressors. The world conquerors. The predators who do not discriminate.
If I do not meet the gaze of the fly, or the beetle, or the strange many-legged creature whose name I do not know, it is not because I am ashamed of helping orchestrate their apocalypse. It is because I do not want to admit that there is an apocalypse. I am quite happy for the bugs and the beetles to stay at the periphery of my life. I want to pretend they do not exist-- until, of course, my fiction becomes a reality.
The University of Huddersfield, in compiling suggestions for how individuals can help prevent instinct extinction, recommends "always look(ing) on the small side of life". Perhaps that is all we can offer: an increased awareness of the insect worlds that interlock and intermingle with our human ones. It is nice, it is pleasant, it is positive, but I am not satisfied. I want to attempt something greater. It is not enough to look at the small side of life; I want to look with it. I want to peer out at our world with the eyes of an ant.
Apparently, I am not alone. In 2013, a group of engineers at the University of Illinois created a compound camera intended to imitate the unique, multi-lens structure of an insect's eyes. Though Colin Shultz' article suggests that their work is not equal to the complexity of many insects' vision structures, at least we have a glimpse of the manner with which an insect sees. Insect eyes are made up of thousands of separate lens which develop separate images that are pieced together and perceived as a whole. The biological make-up is different, but so too is the result. Insects see less clearly but more broadly, and in some instances they see what we cannot (see Paul Patton's Seeing With Insect Eyes).
The insect eye poses a challenge to human thought. It is bizarre, almost alien, and it is separated from us by a chasm of biological difference. More unsettling is the knowledge that we are looking at something that is itself capable of sight. It sees us differently to how we see it, and thus forces us to reevaluate our perceptions of ourselves and our world.