• PROGRAMME
• SYNOPSES

Insects & co

1. Original Title: Insetos & cia
2. Director: Solange Martins, Roberto Eizemberg
3. Direzione artistica: Celio Inada
4. Scientific Advisor: Nélio Bizzo
5. Editor: Ismael Lima, José Claudio Costa Manso
6. Photography: Luiz Alexandre Martins, Alexandre Delgado Dias, Sergio Montanini
7. Sound: Celso Mazzarelli
8. Production: TV Cultura
9. Brazil
10. 27 min.
11. 2002

This episode of the Brazilian TV show Ver Ciência has documentary film maker Roberto Eizemberg as its guest and features four of his films, showing the characteristics and curiosities of certain insect species typical of the Brazilian coastal forests. Although they may give some people the creeps, we discover that these creatures do some very surprising things. First of all, they disguise themselves, not simply by mimicking dead leaves, but by mimicking half-eaten dead leaves! They are thus able to protect their numerous offspring and set traps worthy of the most formidable predator. The ant lion, which is no more ant than it is lion, digs a conical hole into which ill-fated ants tumble. Unable to scramble out, they are seized at the bottom, paralysed and then eaten. Animal brutality? Is it really true that insects are generally undesirable? Absolutely not! And there are scores of would-be entomologists eager to tell the whole world. Their passion for these crawly creatures fuels a desire to use their knowledge to benefit agriculture and medicine and also simply to help people take a more sympathetic look at cockroaches, spiders, ants & Co.