A recent study 

Munthaii, Simon M.; Mughogho, Daniel E.C. 1992.  Economic incentives for conservation: bee-keeping and Saturniidae caterpillar utilization by rural communities.  Biodiversity and Conservation 1:143-154.  Department of National Parks and Wildlife, PO Box 3013 1, Lilongwe, 3 Malawi, and Kasungu National Park, PO Box 43, Kasungu, Malawi. 

This study is recommended reading for anyone concerned with agriculture, rural incomes and conservation in Africa.  The authors' summary is as follows: 

The economic viability of the wildlife based enterprises (bee-keeping and caterpillar utilization) in Malawi is discussed in relation to conventional agricultural enterprises(maize, beans and ground-nuts).  A strong incentive emerges for rural people to adopt wildlife management as an adjunct to subsistence agriculture, and therefore, to promote conservation of natural ecosystems and wildlife habitats in the face of growing human population and demand for land.  Dependence on agriculture has depleted the wildlife resource outside protected areas and has been less effective in improving the wealth and living standards of most rural people.  This study illustrates that the Malawi Department of National Parks and Wildlife needs to introduce economic incentives that integrate biological conservation with economic development for the rural people.  The management programme involves the adoption of a rotation burning policy that

promotes vegetation coppicing, eases harvesting and promotes high caterpillar yields. 

The study was conducted in Kasungu National Park (2316 km2) and 16 human settlements adjacent to its eastern boundary.  These settlements are populated mainly by families and their descendents who were resettled outside the Park when it was established in 1930.  Park vegetation consists mainly of Brachystegia/Julbernardia woodland with short to medium grass cover.  Soils are of low quality.  There is a good diversity of wildlife ranging from elephants to two emperor moth (Saturniidae) species, Gonimbrasia belina (L.) and Gynanisa maia (L.) which occur abundantly, the larvae being in season from about mid-October to December every year.  Fire is used extensively as a management tool with the following regimes each accounting for one-third of the Park: early annual bum (June/ July), late annual burn (September/October), and no annual burn. 

The authors state that extensive agriculture is the main cause of the rapid dwindling of Malawi's rich biodiversity, even though 22% of its total area (compared to a world average of 3%) is legally protected as national parks, wildlife and forest reserves.  Land adjacent to the Park is mainly occupied by smallholder farmers (50%) and tobacco estates (26%), with the remaining 24% in forest reserves, graveyards and leeway land for tobacco expansion or reserved fuel-wood for curing tobacco.  Tobacco is the main cash crop and estates occupy several thousand hectares.  Smallholder   
                                                                           SEE MALAWI, P. 2

Malawi (from page one) 

farmers average about one hectare per family and mainly grow maize, beans and groundnuts for subsistence and cash.  A survey revealed that the average annual cash income of families in the sampled communities ranged from MK 80-300 for 50%, MK 301500 for 17%, and MK 501 or more for 33%.  This compares with the national per capita income of about MK 425 (about US $170). 

Formerly, 100% of sampled families practiced beekeeping and utilized Saturniidae caterpillars and other products of the forest such as game animals, small mammals, medicine, mushrooms, firewood and poles.  Now, only 33% practice beekeeping outside the Park; the main reason given by those who don't was lack of year-round vegetation or "bee pasture." Caterpillars are non-existent outside the Park because of the absence of forage tree species. 

Management policies for protected areas have so far stressed nonconsumptive utilization through ecotourism and law enforcement.  For neighboring rural people, however, outdoor recreation is of low priority in their hierarchy of needs, and the cost of entry to parks and reserves is more than they can afford.  Further, as the money earned from ecotourism goes into the central firmury, rural people view the management policies as favoring the most affluent rather than addressing their own socioeconomic dependence on wildlife.  They manifest their antagonism through illicit encroachment into protected areas.  The Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW)  has recognized that these nonconsumptive policies and the attitudes they have spawned may critically cripple efforts in preserving the country's biodiversity.  Therefore, it has started allowing the rural people to use the parks and reserves sustainably. 

In 1990, the DNPW allowed 173 families (about 10% of all households around the Park) to harvest caterpillars in the Park, and simultaneously initiated modem bee-keeping in the Park in order to diversify the rural communities' income base and to win their support for wildlife conservation programs.  In Kasungu National Park, caterpillars and honey are harvested to provide direct economic benefits to the rural communities. 

It was found during the study that significantly greater yield of caterpillars was obtained from plots that were burned early every year, followed by no bum, and lowest yield from late bum.  Late burning obviously is destructive to the eggs, larvae and foliage on which the caterpillars depend for food. 

Yields also varied significantly with for-age tree height, with highest yield from height class 1-3 in, followed by 3-10 in and 0-1 in, and lowest yield at heights greater than 10 in.  For example, dry weight caterpillar yields for the four height classes under early bum were, respectively, 9.83, 6A8, 5.81 and 4.07 kg/ha; for no bum, yields were 4.16,2.74,2.46 and 1.73, respectively; for late bum, they were only 2.48, 1.63, 1.47 and 1.03, respectively.  The average market price for caterpillars during the study was 29 MK/kg. 

The authors cite another study that protection from burning produces dense coppice growth with a high density of stems in the 0-4 in height class, while early burning produces fewer stems in the 0-

4 in class.  The authors therefore recommend a rotation burning policy that promotes both good caterpillar yield and vegetation coppicing with more stems in the 1-3 in height class.  This height class has the added advantage that it puts the caterpillars within easy reach for harvesting.  Cutting trees to pick caterpillars is prohibited in the Park. 

Relative to beekeeping productivity, the yield of both honey and wax was found positively correlated with the hive occupation rate which ascends from years I through 5, then declines.  Beekeeping requires modest investments in new hives and other equipment in year one and after the fifth year.  Fifth year peaks in honey and wax production were 191.1 kg/ha and 15.3 kg/ha, respectively.  Market price for honey and beeswax was 7 MK/kg and 6 MK/kg, respectively. 

Munthali and Mughogho used gross margin analysis as a measure of each enterprise's economic efficiency, and a demonstration of the economic viability of bee-keeping and caterpillar utilization in relation to other rural enterprises.  Gross margin is defined as the enterprise's output minus the variable costs associated with it, expressed in money terms.  The gross margin values (MK/ha) for caterpillars was 418.47, for beekeeping 596.65, for tobacco (flue cured) 2272.00, for maize (all types) 173.95, for beans (all types) 92.00,andforgroundnuts 151.40.nuscaterpillarsandbeekeeping had more than twice to several times the gross margin values of maize, beans and ground nuts. 

The wildlife-based enterprises not only produce earnings that exceed those from agriculture, but they do not directly compete for labor with the existing agricultural enterprises.  When asked if they would find time to practice bee-keeping and/or harvest caterpillars even during crop season, 84% of families replied affirmatively, while 16% said they would find time only during crop off-season.  Of the small-holder families in the study area, 50% run out of food stocks by November, which is, coincidentally, when caterpillars and honey are in season. 

The authors conclude that "the advantages of bee-keeping and caterpillar utilization are strong incentives for the rural people to adopt wildlife management as an adjunct to conventional subsistence agriculture, and therefore, promote conservation of natural ecosystems and wildlife habitats in the face of growing human population and demand for land." Because the local people's negative attitudes stem from their removal from the Park and their denied access to protected wildlife resources, Munthali and Mughogho believe that the utilization of honey and caterpillars by the rural people in the Park is an important turning point in the history of wildlife management in Malawi.  While taking full cognizance of the Park's primary purpose of preserving the country's representative biotic communities, "The DNPW needs to take full advantage of the rural people's willingness to be allied with wildlife management programmes and consolidate it through the validation of sustainable traditional land use practices." 

(Ed.:     For more reading on caterpillars and forest conservation in Africa, see the July 1991 Newsletter.)

A Swarm of Tasty Treats

by Kevin Krajkk                                                                                      

Food: Industrial-scale cultivation of beetles, water bugs and other edible insects might (gulp) help tame worldwide hunger and malnutrition.

It was May, and time for the annual ant harvest in Barichara.  Juan Gonzalez, a 24-year-old day laborer, headed for the arid, red-dirt hillsides near the small central Colombian town to scoop up fat, inch-long queens by the bucketful as they swarmed out of their holes to mate.  Later he would strip the hormigas culonas (big-assed ants) of wings and legs, fry them in oil and salt, and sell them--a sort of rich, acrid popcorn with eyes.  "You make good money," he says, "and the ants are tasty." 

Food with more than four legs is just part of home cooking in rural Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.  In Mexico, where many Indian tongues include no separate word for insect, people consume at least 308 species.  The Thais fix a zesty hot-pepper sauce with ground-up water bugs.  In Cameroon a dish for special guests is palm grubs with salt, pepper and onion, cooked slowly inside a coconut.  The Nepalese squeeze live bee larvae through cloth and fry the resulting liquid like scrambled eggs.  You don't want to know what folks in Venezuela do with giant tarantulas. 

But entomophagy has never gained global acceptance, partly because ancient hunter-gatherer methods limit harvests, and because the only insect most Westerners eat is the accidental fly in the mashed potatoes.  Now a growing number of scientists and businessmen want to make insects a main course for the masses, using industrial-scale cultivation.  According to recent studies by Third World entomologists, this most plentiful of creatures - rich in nutrition and agricultural potential - could substantially cut malnutrition in poor countries.  'This resource has hardly been exploited," says Gene DeFoliart, a University of Wisconsin entomologist arfd editor of The FoodInsects Niwsletter.  "Once insects gain the respectability they deserve, they could really take off." 

This study of edible insects is a growing specialty: African and Asian researchers are documenting insects' role in human diets and pushing governments to promote them.  Analyses of Mexican and African food species show that some contain 60 or 70 percent protein, carry more calories than soybeans or meat and offer vitamins and minerals lacking in plant-dominated Third World diets.  Insects comprise as much as two thirds of the animal protein eaten in parts of southern Africa.  Says John Lupien, director of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's Food Policy and Nutrition Division, "If we could find ways to increase intake, it might solve a lot of nutrition problems." 

Fantastic yield: Supplies are unpredictable, though.  Most species must be gathered wild and are hard to capture.  A swarm of African locusts weighs 30,000 tons: 'Just think if you could catch them all," says DeFoliart.  "By studying how to breed insects,' says University of Wisconsin entomologist Richard Lindroth, "we could achieve the fantastic yield increases we've seen with hybrid plants." Many insects grow more efficiently than mammals - often on materials that

From Newsweek (International Edition) August 23, 1993, pp. 58-59, Newsweek Inc. All rights reserved.  Reprinted by permission.  Five colored photos accompanying the article are not reproduced here.  A restricted number of copies of the  September 20, l993 Newsweek distributed in the U.S. contained a slightly condensed reprint of this article. 

livestock can't digest, such as wood and manure.  Crickets may be smaller than cows, but they convert plants into biomass five times faster.

Researchers can claim some early successes.  Faced with shortages of agave worms, an expensive delicacy, scientists at Mexico's National Autonomous University recently increased per-acre yields 20 times over by raising them on plants the creatures do not eat in the wild.  They have also boosted crops of ant larvae and "Mexican caviar" (water-bug eggs).  University entomologist Julieta Ramos says campesinos could use the new methods not only to feed themselves but to earn cash from rich countries like Japan, which imports the agave worms.  Nutritionists are experimenting with insect-fortified tortilla flours and talking up insect cuisine. 

They must fight Western acculturation ("People want to eat what they see on TV," says Ramos) as well as crop farmers.  Pesticides and clearing of forests have reduced many species.  But some farmers are finding they can protect crops - and boost profits - by collecting insects, not spraying them.  Pesticides once devastated South Korean metdugi, edible rice-field grasshoppers, but some farmers stopped spraying in 1989 in order to grow organic rice; now metdugi are surging and farmers sell them at good prices.  Entomologists say that low-tech bug catchers, like light traps and tractor-hauled vacuums now used to remove pests from some organic crops, could easily be adapted to increase insect yields. 

Insect cultivation may also help the environment.  Scientists in Colombia, El Salvador and China are feeding pollutants such as coffee pulp and livestock manure to beetles and flies, whose larvae provide cheap, high-protein feed for livestock and fish.  "We can get rid of more serious contaminants and make meat more affordable at the same time," says Jose J. Castro, a Bogota biologist who is doing some of the experiments. 

In the squeamish West, entomophagy is still largely a matter of fad.  Riding a new fascination with native food, Australian restaurants are serving Aborigine tasties like grilled index-finger-size witchetty grubs.  The Dong Shan Restaurant in Guangzhou, China, sports fancy creations like fried silkworm with cashews and scorpion fermented with 100 flowers.  This month the San Francisco Zoo plans an insect cook-off with celebrity chefs, but perhaps the only U.S. eatery regularly serving insects is Washington, D.C.'s Insect Club, which successfully put its raison d'etre on the menu in March: chef Mark Nevin is now buying 25,000 live crickets and mealworms from a California grower each week. 

Protein factory: Part of Nevin's success may be that most of his six-legged victims ("euthanized" by freezing) are ground up with other

SEE TASTY TREATS, P. 4

New Book Notice 

Poultry Feed from Waste: Processing and Use.  Edited by A.R. El Boushy (Poultry Nutrition) and A.F.B. van der Poel (Feed Science and Technology, Dept. of Animal Nutrition, Agricultural University, Wageningen, The Netherlands), Chapman & Hall (2-6 Boundary Row,London, SEI 8HN, U.K. Telephone: 071865 0066; Fax: 071-522 9623).  April 1994,448 pp., 85 illus., E95.00 + shipping. 

This is a textbook based on the use of some neglected vegetable and animal wastes as a poultry feedstuff.  The contents include a section on Dried Poultry Waste: biological conversion of layer manure by means of house fly larvae, earthworms, aerobic fermentation, oxidation ditch and algae.  The authors emphasize the following points: 1. Minimizing the competition between humankind and poultry on grains and soybeans.  It means using the waste by-products instead of cereal grains like maize, wheat and of pulses such as soybeans.  The latter products can be used in human nutrition, when needed in developing countries. 2. Producing cheap animal protein (eggs and poultry meat) as a food in the developing countries where there is a great shortage and low income. 3. Reducing pollution of the environment by recycling wastes such as poultry manure and industrial agricultural wastes from potato, citrus, wine, beer, apples, tannery waste, slaughtery waste, etc. 4. Creation of new industries and reducing unemployment rate.  5. Lowering the imports of feedstuffs with unavailable foreign currency and recycling the local waste. 6. Stimulating the exchange of knowledge and know-how of the technology of waste processing and its use as a feedstuff in the nutrition of poultry in the developing countries. 7. The developing funds may be delivered to the developing countries in a form of machineries to use in the processing of their wastes.

Tasty Treats (from page three) 
ingredients into comforting dishes like wontons, veggie burgers and chocolate desserts.  Robert Kok, an agricultural engineer at McGill University in Montreal, has taken the idea to its logical end; he wants to build a factory to raise insects in "true industrial quantities"10,000 tons a day - for processing into familiar forms, say simulated hamburger or chicken breast.  Kok says that in the crowded, hungry planet of the future, 100 huge factories could supply much of the world's protein, replacing mammalian livestock.  Using a scaled-down model, he's started small: a tent-caterpillar meat loaf, a few flour-beetle hot dogs--"every bit as bad as the real ones," he claims. 

Will sausages someday be made from bugs, while cows are listed as contaminants?  Attitudes will need adjusting.  Dama Dufour, a University of Colorado anthropologist who has eaten grubs and termites with the Tukanoan Indians in the northwest Amazon, says her hosts retched when she mentioned the insane idea of cow's milk.  "To them, ifs a secretion from an animal ifs like drinking saliva," she says.  She has a point; it depends on what you're used to.  One hopes that if we do adapt to eating insects, it won't be because we are starving - but because we've discovered they taste good.

From newspapers here, there and everywhere chronologically 

Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, July 30, 1993 (Reuter).  By Anton Ferreira.  Sent in by Tom Slone, Berkeley, California. 

Jan Crafford popped a locust into his mouth and extolled the virtues of the insect lightly fried in olive oil with just a hint of crushed garlic. ... The occasion was a cocktail party for delegates to a meeting of the South African Entomological Society.  The snacks, appropriately, were four kinds of insects.  Latecomers missed out on the apparently irresistible stinkbugs and termites, but only small dents were made in the piles of locusts and mopanie worms.  "Just pop the heads off like this," an insect expert explained, expertly decapitating a mopanie worm before placing it in his mouth.  "With the locusts, you just eat the abdomen 

As the evening wore on ,and with regular cleansing of the palate with beer, the mopanie worms took on the addictive properties of peanuts.  Especially after being dipped in sour cream.  Unfortunately the locust bellies tasted like locust bellies throughout the evening.  "The bigger locusts are better," said Marcus Byme, mastermind of the bug banquet..... My favourite way of cooking them is with garlic butter and peri peri sauce." Byme said the serious message was to educate people on the importance of insects [and] that "they are themselves an important food source." Mopanie worms ... are widely eaten by Africa!s peasant communities, usually after being dried.  "Stinkbillas are a delicacy in Natal," said Crafford.  "The chemical which gives them their name is quite harmless and actually tastes like coriander." He said "Some black communities obtain 80 percent of their protein from insects." 

Crafford is researching the role in insects in the diet and folk lore of the Venda tribe in northern South Africa.  "It's a pity there's a psychological resistance to eating insects," said Crafford, who is gathering material for a South African Gourmet Insect Cook Book.  'In fact they're closely related to prawns and crayfish." His favorite insect dish is mopanie worms with tomato and onion sauce. 

(Ed.:     The mopanie worm is the larva of Gonimbrasia belina, one of the giant silk moths or Emperor moths (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae).  The stinkbug eaten in S. Africa, and also in Zimbabwe, is Euchosternum delegorguei (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae).  Several species of termites and locusts are eaten in S. Africa, but the brown locust, Locustana pardatina, is probably the major locust species of food interest. 

The Baltimore Sun, September 5, 1993.  By Happy Eater columnist Rob Kasper.  Sent in by Will Werley, Stevenson, Maryland. 

It happened at the state fair ... I swallowed sauteed crickets served during a demonstration at the Maryland State Fair on the fairgrounds in Timonium.  The crickets tasted like onions, which is what they had been cooked with.  I ate several.  They were OK.  But I didn't run home and say "Honey, we gotta have crickets tonight." . . . I was encouraged to eat the crickets by Linda Scott and Gaye Williams.  They work in the plant-industry and pest-management division of Mary-

land's Department of Agriculture in Annapolis .... Ms. Scott said she and her colleagues periodically saute the crickets and attempt to feed them to school kids and other eaters.  They do this, they said, to show that insects have a variety of uses.  Insects, they said, are an excellent source of protein, and are a major part of the diet of residents of many countries. 

[Kasper uses several paragraphs to describe reactions of two samplers, one good, one bad.] [The crickets] "cost about $14 for 500 crickets." To give them a distinctive flavor, the crickets had been fed apple slices.  After a few days the apple-fed crickets were frozen . . . . They were then baked on thick cookie sheets for half an hour in a 350-degree oven.  Finally they were sauteed in a frying pan with butter and chopped onions. 

This year was the fust time crickets had been served at the state fair.  After Tuesday's demonstration and attempted giveaways, there were a lot of leftovers.  It seemed uncertain whether the cricket cooking experiment would be repeated at next year's state fair. 

Wisconsin State Journal, September 29, 1993 (AP). 

This short item, datelined Ames, Iowa, notes that the Iowa State University Entomology Club will again be offering unorthodox fare at its annual Insect Horror Film Festival October 6-9.  Fairgoers can sample banana worm bread or chocolate chirpie chip cookies.  The worm bread is described as a traditional banana bread with dryroasted army worms substituted for the nuts.  Roasted crickets are added to the chirpie cookies. 

The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1993.  By Miriam Jordan.  Sent in by Jennifer Henderson, Chicago, Illinois. 

This article, datelined Chiang Mai, Thailand, is about the Kaithong Restaurant which touts itself as a purveyor of "authentic jungle food.' For the famished, there's the house favorite, a " mixed jungle steak" of three meats - cobra, python and croc -with a heap of steaming corkscrew-shaped bamboo worms on the side.  The menu also lists mountain frog, ground lizard and soft-shelled turtle, in curry, stewed in lemon-grass soup or simply fried.  "Some days we get so many people, there aren't enough seats," says manager Sayan Uphaphar.  "Most are Americans, Europeans, Chinese and Japanese.  Only 5% are Thais." The Thais, he says, like their cobra local-style, sizzling with garlic and pepper. 

(Ed.:     We keep hearing about "bamboo worms" in Thailand and China.  I think it is probably alepidopteran, but am not sure.  Anyone know the identity?) 

The Globe and Mail (Canada), November 10, 1993.  By Margo Pfeiff and Jim Hutchison.  Sent in by Dr.  Yves Prevost, Thunder Bay, Ontario. 

This nearly full-page article is subtitled: Australia/Snubbing their noses at traditional fare, Aussies are discovering the joys of 'bush tucker' or bush food.  Or throwing another grub on the barbie.  We've extracted a few paragraphs:  
                                                                   SEE NEWSPAPERS, P. 10  

PCV gets first taste of termites in Kenya 

From Mark Mankowski, Shimba Hills, in part:
I am a Peace Corps volunteer doing agroforestry in Kenya.  I also hold an M.Sc. in Entomology from Oregon State University.  Two months agol was delighted to taste my firstroasted termites inwundanyi, Kenya.  The Taita people there collect the large- flying alates (called KumbiKumbi in Swahili) and fry them over a fire.  The taste was like greasy-burnt popcorn but wasn't bad at all.   

Since I am interested in insects as a food source, I'm requesting a subscription to your newsletter .... I look forward to receiving it and possibly giving any input on related topics when and if I can. 

They eat insects in New Zealand, too   

From Dr. John Edwards, Zoology Department, University of Washington, Seattle:   

As along-time entomophage, I was pleased to find your publication.  I did my Masters in New Zealand on a cerambycid whose delicious larvae were a favorite of mine, and were prized by the Maori in preEuropean times.   

(Ed.:  Dr. Edwards didn't mention species, but this is presumably Prionoplus reticularis (Wh.), which was prized by the Maori and also is the largest of all New Zealand beetles, the adults measuring up to 2 inches in length and the larvae to more than 2 1/2 inches.) 

More about naturally protein-fortified guava juice 

In response to a question in the Letters section of the November 1993 Newsletter, Dr. Ed Dresner, Vernon, Connecticut, wrote in Part: 

My very strong guess is the larvae in the cited letter are Trypetids.  In Hawaii and much of the Far East, Dacus dorsalis gets the nod.  In Central America the genus is probably Anastrepha or the Medfly, Ceratitis capitata. 

(Ed.:  Dr. Dresner also reminded me that, in an earlier letter, he had mentioned his own guava-eating experiences when he was working on the Fruit Fly (Trypetid) Control Program in Hawaii: "When I began my work there, virtually all ripe guavas on the trees (not a cultivated or pest controlled tree) were heavily infested with larvae of the Oriental fruit fly.  I, and most of my hiking companions, ate the fruits enthusiastically not discriminating because of larval infestation.  My impression is the larvae made the fruit a little less tart." Now, Ed, if you could just convince the public that all these little white larvae, including codling moth, apple maggot, etc., actually improve the flavor of fruit, think of the reduction in cosmetic pesticide use!)   

From the student section   

(Ed.:   The editor always hunkers down a little further in his chair and reads on with both anticipation and apprehension when the opening sentence of a letter says, "I am a student. . . ." The students we hear

from are usually well along on planning their project, and have a good idea of the specific resources needed, and they think big!) 

Soman Chainani, Key Biscayne, Florida, wrote in part: I am a 14-year old student at Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami, Florida.  Your work on the consumption of bugs has triggered my interest as I head toward the selection of a science project to enter in the National Science and Engineering Fair.  I plan to test alternative food sources found in the natural environment that may prove as a secondary choice to unhealthy modem meals.  If taken one step further, the success of this project may be used to further research on world hunger, where the land may be used as a source to receive the tested alternate foods. 

Already planned to be tested are seaweed, algae, soybean, tempeh, Chinese vegetables, Japanese meats, etc.  Your research on bugs inspired me for my final and most important sample.  What we see and loath everyday may be our savior.  I plan to test these alternate food sources through a calorimeter (for energy content) and in conjunction with a food laboratory (for nutritional content). 

What I ask of you is some aid in completing my project Is there any way ... ? 

From Andrea Croll, Aachen, Germany, in part: I am studying graphic design (visual communication) at the Academy of Aachen . . . . For my diploma I chose the theme "Edible Insects." In developing an advertizing campaign, an information folder, some packaging examples and a concept idea to introduce insect products to the German market, I would like to evoke peoples' interest and curiosity for this kind of food.  To be really convincing, I will organize an insect dinner as part of my presentation .... For this event I am looking for .... 

(Ed.:        Who knows?  We, and edible insects, may be at the dawn of a new age as the next generation gets ready to take over.)   

Brazilian student looking for graduate study opportunity  

From Eraido Medeiros Costa Neto, in part:  
First of all I would like to say that I read one of your papers entitled "Insects as food in indigenous populations." I appreciated it very much.  Ethnobiology has played an important role in my life.  Because of that I decided to study Ethnoentomology in my State. 

I have been studying Biology at Federal University of Alagoas since 1990.  I had been monitor of Entomology for 10 months.  Nowadays I am a probationer at the Natural History Museum of the same University where I have been developing research about the role played by insects in some communities of Alagoas, especially as medicine.  This research is supposed to end about July, when I will be graduated. 

I have professor Jose Geraldo Marques as my guider.  He works with Ethnoecology.  Once graduated I would like, to continue studying Ethnoentomology in my post-graduation .... (Neto's address: Rua Marques de Tamandare, 67 Peco, Maceio-Alagoas, Brazil).

Ants as Food/Medicine (from pag