The 3/16 Science Times calls Hugh Raffles’s Insectopedia “miraculous . . . as inventive and wide ranging and full of astonishing surprises as the vast insect world itself.” Now is your chance to win a free copy of the book a week before the on-sale date.
Test your insect knowledge! Simply send your answers to the questions below to pantheonpublicity@randomhouse.com. The first three people to send in the correct answers will win free copies of Insectopedia.
1. Honeybees are famously ______?
a) Self sufficient
b) Neurotic
c) Cooperative
d) Antisocial
2. Which one of the following four explanations have scientists not used to account for homosexual sex among insects?
a) It’s practice for the real thing
b) It’s a mistake: he thinks it’s a girl
c) They just like it
d) It maintains group harmony
3. Ignis, by Flemish miniaturist Joris Hoefnagel, was the first European book devoted entirely to insects. In which year was it completed?
a) 1482
b) 1582
c) 1682
d) 1782
4. Chinese fighting crickets are isolated for five days before a contest to ensure they don’t compete under the influence of which drug?
a) Alcohol
b) Steroids
c) Vicodin
d) Ecstasy
5. Jean-Henri Fabre, known as the “Insect Poet,” argued with Darwin’s modern theory of instinct – a theory outlined in Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1871) – regarding which insects?
a) Ants
b) Fruit flies
c) Mosquitoes
d) Wasps
Insectopedia goes on sale on 3/23. Check out Raffles’s interview with Lewis Lapham on Bloomberg radio, and don’t miss his NYC events on 3/30 and 4/14. Go to http://insectopedia.org for more information.