The Sting of the Wild (Audible Audio Edition) Justin O Schmidt L J Ganser Tantor Audio Books
Download As PDF : The Sting of the Wild (Audible Audio Edition) Justin O Schmidt L J Ganser Tantor Audio Books
Entomologist Justin O. Schmidt is on a mission. Some say it's a brave exploration, others shake their heads in disbelief. His goal? To compare the impacts of stinging insects on humans, mainly using himself as the gauge.
In The Sting of the Wild, the colorful Dr. Schmidt takes us on a journey inside the lives of stinging insects, seeing the world through their eyes as well as his own. He explains how and why they attack and reveals the powerful punch they can deliver with a small venom gland and a "sting", the name for the apparatus that delivers the venom. We learn which insects are the worst to encounter and why some are barely worth considering.
The Sting of the Wild includes the complete Schmidt Sting Pain Index. In addition to a numerical ranking of the agony of each of the 83 stings he's sampled so far (from below one to an excruciatingly painful four), Schmidt describes them in prose worthy of a professional wine critic "Looks deceive. Rich and full-bodied in appearance, but flavorless" and "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel."
The Sting of the Wild (Audible Audio Edition) Justin O Schmidt L J Ganser Tantor Audio Books
A fascinating exposition on the evolution of the insect sting, by an intrepid scientist who has spent decades observing insects in their natural habitats on six continents. Author Justin Schmidt is best known for inventing the Schmidt Scale of Pain to measure the relative efficacy of insect stings, providing biologists with a basis for developing testable hypotheses about the evolution of insect stings. This account is packed with details about the lives of the six-legged fellow travelers we share the planet with. The blue digger wasp uses its stinger to paralyze a cricket, and then lays an egg atop its victim, which revives a few minutes later and crawls back into its burrow, whereupon the larva hatches out and eats its hapless host alive, thereby saving mom the trouble of digging a burrow for her little one. The dwarf honeybee has invented a remarkable method of defending itself against the depredations of the much larger giant hornet: hundreds of dwarf honeybees will cluster in a ball around the invading hornet and then vibrate their wings muscles to generate enough heat to cook their would-be attacker to death.We learn about the harvester ant, which boasts the most toxic venom of any insect (35 times more deadly than rattlesnake venom) and the dreaded “cow-killer” wasp, which escapes predation by means of a combination of its massively painful sting, its rock-hard exoskeleton, and its powerful legs, which it uses to escape the grasp of attackers. We learn how to avoid being stung when approaching a hive full of honeybees (they recognize us by the smell of our breath, so hold your breath as long as you can and turn aside to exhale), and what to do when stung by the aforementioned “cow-killer” wasp (the sting is horribly painful but carries no lasting ill effects, so just lie down and scream, thereby avoiding the risk of hurting oneself further by dashing about in a fog of pain).
We also learn about the nineteenth-century British gentleman who eliminated yellowjackets from his estate, which subsequently was overrun by a plague of flies, and about the destructive and ultimately futile attempts to contain the spread of the fire ant, a struggle Harvard biologist Edward O Wilson has dubbed “the Viet Nam of entomology.”
All this is leavened by Schmidt’s reminiscences about his boyhood as a budding young naturalist growing up in rural Pennsylvania and the personality quirks of his fellow biologists. The author’s presence is constant but never overbearing, a seasoned guide initiating the reader into the arcana of the insect world. Terms and concepts are explained in plain English. This book is heartily recommended for anyone interested in learning more about the natural world.
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The Sting of the Wild (Audible Audio Edition) Justin O Schmidt L J Ganser Tantor Audio Books Reviews
I did love it! Wonderfully educational (about stings!), wonderfully entertaining and humorous, well written. And I hope to not run into any of the 3's or 4's on his sting scale!
One of the best purchases that I made for Happy Jolabokaflod Day. Thank you so much,. I highly recommend this seller & this book
Personally, I think the author is very brave or not ! With his willingness to endure all stinging creatures for science, has a wealth of knowledge on the subject, I discovered many things I've wondered about and many other facts I didn't know, all in an easy read [except for the formal names].
This is a fascinating book and gets the interest of the reader after the appendix of creative descriptions of how stings of various insects feel. We use it in a Nature Program at a state park here in Arizona.
I was interested in this because, initially, I was tired of all the insects in my backyard trying to kill me. The writing both educated me about the insects (wasps, bees, the dreaded fire ant, and more) behavior and chemical make-up of their various injectables, but also helped me see more to them than gross crawly things invading my space. The descriptions regarding pain-scale were pretty awesome. I laughed, I learned, I'd read it again.
I'd had this book in my wish list for several months. How could someone make the topic of being stung by many insects interesting? Finally, I said "What the heck", and ordered it.
It's a delightful book. There's a story behind the stings. the author's great sense of humor comes through very well.
If you have a general interest in bees or other Hymenoptera, and you want to what's in a sting, you'll enjoy this book. I highly recommend it.
This is a most enjoyable book, written by a scientist who really knows his stuff. Moreover, he loves his chosen research area. His fascination with the topic is more than evident -and quite contagious!- in every single page of the book. The author took me through a series of interesting tales based on the biology of representatives of a few types of stinging insects like bees, ants, and wasps. There was a little bit of something in this book for pretty much everyone. He talked about behavior, pharmacology / biochemistry, ecology, and evolution among many other topics. I loved his writing style, his prudent use of notes, and the nice set of references/further readings at the end of the book. This is good, because I was left wanting for more. Also, I liked that he minimized the scientific jargon without sacrificing accuracy but more importantly, he was not at all patronizing. This shows respect for the interested reader. Moreover, he is a natural storyteller; this is a rare quality that is sadly absent in most popular science books nowadays.
Dr. Schmidt is the inventor of the well-known stinging insects pain scale, but to him this was not a mere academic exercise, he came up with the scale directly from personal experience, by allowing (and sometimes encouraging) a wide variety of insects to sting him. Some have characterized his efforts as "crazy" and although I do not share that opinion, I must say that he is a braver person than most. I certainly would not engage in something like this voluntarily, you'll never know what will you turn to be allergic to. That being said, if you think Dr. Schmidt is nuts, wait until you read the story about another entomologist (Michael Smith, a grad student at Cornell University… BTW, where I got my PhD...(-)…) who refined the pain scale, also using himself as a research subject. I'll let you read about this other guy for yourself. You'll be either fascinated or totally freaked out, but it is well worth the read!
Now, if you are one of the two and a half people in this universe who read my reviews, you know that I am kind of a nitpicker. Here’s the only two “nits” that I was able to find in this book
Page 88 “…like a mongoose neutralizes the effects of cobra venom.” - As far as I know, this is not exactly what happens. Rather, the protein in the mongoose (a muscle receptor), that is the target of the cobra venom displays some mutations that make this muscle receptor venom-resistant. The venom is not neutralized, it merely cannot interact with its intended target.
Pages 202-203 The description of the mechanism of how Japanese honeybees defend themselves against giant Japanese hornets is not quite right.
Another thing that made me a little less enthusiastic about the book is that I felt that it ended rather “suddenly”, without general remarks leading to a conclusion. This book literally left me wanting for more.
Overall, great reading!
Note This review was originally posted in my personal blog, Baldscientist.
A fascinating exposition on the evolution of the insect sting, by an intrepid scientist who has spent decades observing insects in their natural habitats on six continents. Author Justin Schmidt is best known for inventing the Schmidt Scale of Pain to measure the relative efficacy of insect stings, providing biologists with a basis for developing testable hypotheses about the evolution of insect stings. This account is packed with details about the lives of the six-legged fellow travelers we share the planet with. The blue digger wasp uses its stinger to paralyze a cricket, and then lays an egg atop its victim, which revives a few minutes later and crawls back into its burrow, whereupon the larva hatches out and eats its hapless host alive, thereby saving mom the trouble of digging a burrow for her little one. The dwarf honeybee has invented a remarkable method of defending itself against the depredations of the much larger giant hornet hundreds of dwarf honeybees will cluster in a ball around the invading hornet and then vibrate their wings muscles to generate enough heat to cook their would-be attacker to death.
We learn about the harvester ant, which boasts the most toxic venom of any insect (35 times more deadly than rattlesnake venom) and the dreaded “cow-killer” wasp, which escapes predation by means of a combination of its massively painful sting, its rock-hard exoskeleton, and its powerful legs, which it uses to escape the grasp of attackers. We learn how to avoid being stung when approaching a hive full of honeybees (they recognize us by the smell of our breath, so hold your breath as long as you can and turn aside to exhale), and what to do when stung by the aforementioned “cow-killer” wasp (the sting is horribly painful but carries no lasting ill effects, so just lie down and scream, thereby avoiding the risk of hurting oneself further by dashing about in a fog of pain).
We also learn about the nineteenth-century British gentleman who eliminated yellowjackets from his estate, which subsequently was overrun by a plague of flies, and about the destructive and ultimately futile attempts to contain the spread of the fire ant, a struggle Harvard biologist Edward O Wilson has dubbed “the Viet Nam of entomology.”
All this is leavened by Schmidt’s reminiscences about his boyhood as a budding young naturalist growing up in rural Pennsylvania and the personality quirks of his fellow biologists. The author’s presence is constant but never overbearing, a seasoned guide initiating the reader into the arcana of the insect world. Terms and concepts are explained in plain English. This book is heartily recommended for anyone interested in learning more about the natural world.
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