Armies have gone to extreme lengths to create weapons of destruction over the past few thousand years, sparing few natural resources from human manipulation.
Insects are no exception.
Professor of Natural Sciences and Humanities at the University of Wyoming Jeff Lockwood explains just how insects have been used in warfare in his book “Six-Legged Soldiers: A History of Insects in Torture, Terrorism, and Warfare,” and will present a lecture about his work Friday in the Life Sciences Annex at 2 p.m.
The book chronicles the long history of how humans have used insects as weapons of war, terror and torture, something which the public may largely be unaware of, Lockwood said.
“The rarest example and best documented was a Japanese biological warfare unit in World War II,” he said. “They used Bubonic Plague-infected fleas, produced them by the tens of millions and tested them on prisoners and used them in combat.”
The Japanese also created a specialized bomb that contained house flies fused with a jelly cholera concoction, which was responsible for nearly 400,000 Chinese deaths during the war, Lockwood said.
“The Japanese killed more Chinese with entomological weapons than [the U.S.] did in Japan with nuclear weapons,” he said.
Lockwood, a University alumnus, said he will use Power Points to elaborate further on issues in the book as he reads excerpts and takes questions.
The lecture is a part of the Jerry B. Graves Distinguished Seminar Series presented by the University Department of Entomology, according to Lane Foil, University entomology professor and Pennington regents chair for wildlife research.
The Entomology department hosts one speaker a year to lecture on interesting topics in the particular field of science, Foil said.
“When you get the opportunity to sit and get a lecture from somebody at that particular level, the story they are telling is one thing, but you actually get a mentorship on how to do science,” he said.
Lockwood said while he is excited to be back on campus to sample Louisiana food and connect with professors, he is mostly looking forward to sharing his two life-long passions: insects and military history.
“I grew up in a time when you watched the lottery system for the draft during the Vietnam years,” he said. “I grew up with Life magazine and images of war and it stuck with me. I’ve just held these two fascinations for the nature of warfare and the nature of insects.”
Lockwood’s latest work, “The Infested Mind: Why Humans Fear, Loathe, and Love Insects,” will be available in November, he said.
He said he is currently working on producing another work on the politics of energy production, especially in the Western U.S., to examine the way the energy industry is shaped.