February 11, 2009 4:16 PM
- Text
Don't Bug Out! Insects Are Important
(CBS)
Crickets, cicadas and katydids together can form a mighty choir. In fact, with many of these insects, the song changes with the temperature.
That is just one of the many interesting thing about bugs.
Many people are afraid of bugs. Others think they are disgusting pests that should be squashed. But now, Sunday Morning correspondent Serena Altschul found, bugs are getting some new respect.
After all, arthropods, creatures with skeletons on the outside of their bodies, far outnumber all other living things. And across the country, museums are trying to get them out of the realm of horror.
Nancy Greig, the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences' insect curator, says even cockroaches are important.
"Without things like cockroaches that are scavengers cleaning up dead vegetation, etcetera, yeah, we'd be piled deep in garbage," she said.
Learn more about bugs by watching the Sunday Morning segment .
That is just one of the many interesting thing about bugs.
Many people are afraid of bugs. Others think they are disgusting pests that should be squashed. But now, Sunday Morning correspondent Serena Altschul found, bugs are getting some new respect.
After all, arthropods, creatures with skeletons on the outside of their bodies, far outnumber all other living things. And across the country, museums are trying to get them out of the realm of horror.
Nancy Greig, the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences' insect curator, says even cockroaches are important.
"Without things like cockroaches that are scavengers cleaning up dead vegetation, etcetera, yeah, we'd be piled deep in garbage," she said.
Learn more about bugs by watching the Sunday Morning segment .
Latest Now in Sunday Morning
- Glen Campbell on getting off drugs
- Almanac: Indiana's pi bill
- Ben Stein: Facebook and American Airlines in the news
- A different side of Cary Grant
- The Super Bowl by the numbers
- Natural silence: The Kartchner Caverns
- Sunday Passage: Angelo Dundee and Don Cornelius
- A typewriter renaissance
- Wallis Simpson: Another look at "That Woman"
- Ben Stein: Wealth and misery in the news
- How hairstyles make the woman
- Cary Grant: Debonair dad
- Hazing: A dangerous tradition
- Seeking an end to hazing deaths
- The Super Bowl of hair
- Wynton Marsalis
- Top ten rudest U.S. cities
Latest CBS News Headlines
on Facebook
on CBS News
- Griffin, Paul lead Clippers over Bobcats 111-86
- Whitney Houston died in Beverly Hills hotel room
- Tibetan nun sets herself on fire in west China
- Stamkos leads Lightning to 2-1 win over Sabres
on Facebook
- Adele sings a cappella for Anderson Cooper
- Occupy protestors kicked out of CPAC
- CPAC: Will Sarah Palin spring a surprise?
- Beyonce and Jay-Z post first photos of Blue Ivy Carter
on CBS News





