Insect Hazards

Definition

Insects have been an integral part of human culture since the beginning of recorded history, and most likely much earlier. The world’s few remaining hunter-gatherer societies eat insects as well as their products, suggesting that insects have formed part of human ecology throughout our evolutionary history. Then as now, insects posed a hazard to people impinging on their domain, for example, in harvesting honey from bees – the latter being the biggest insect killer of humans in the developed world. The relationship between humans and insects is thus a complex one, and they have been revered (sacred dung beetles of Egypt) and feared (insect phobias) with equal passion. This contribution focuses on insect hazards that can be defined in the same way as insect pests – that is, insects that are “judged by man to cause harm to himself, his crops, animals, or his property” (Dent, 1993, p. 1). Such harm can be readily discussed in the following categories: stings and allergies,...