Kamat's Insects: A Foreword

by Vikas Kamat
June 8, 2001

Foreword

While Dr. Kamat (my father that is, portrait, homepage) is man of diverse interests, he is an entomologist by his education (Ph.D. from SUNY), and has written about insects in widely read Kannada periodicals in India. My mother (portrait, homepage) and I have had put up with his constant fascination with ants, cockroaches, wasps, and beetles everywhere we went. For example, when we went to see Mysore in 1984, the city of palaces, he spent more time photographing the ants in the garden of the guesthouse than visiting the palaces. On another instance, to teach me the resilience of the cockroaches, he captured the fertile eggs of cockroaches in a sealed bottle and we watched it till what felt like eternity! (The baby roaches emerged one by one and since there was no food to eat, survived on their own egg shells for weeks. Then they ate the dead siblings. Yes, that was fascinating).

Father would always point out lessons from the insect world -- equality (and even dominance) of the females, the hard work of the ants, and drew numerous caricatures to illustrate them.

When I asked him to write about insects for Kamat's Potpourri, much to my surprise he declined saying that there was plenty of reading material in English language about the insects. But I think that the way my father looks at insects is different than other people look at them and I have built this section primarily based on his prior published works (see Cover of his Book on insects), and from his vast picture archive.

Table of Contents

• Planet Insect -- Cover of Kamat's Book on Insects

• The Angel Butterfly
• Delicious Husband!
• Egg Capsule of Praying Mantis
• Fighting Ants
• How do the ants cross water?
• Insect Goes to School !
• Insect or Bird?
• Kamat's Insects
• Love Stuck - Painted Grass Hoppers
• Members of Insect Society
• Mud Wasp in Nest
• Portrait of a Cockroach
• Praying "Praying Mantis"
• Queen Bee Kicks Out the Lazy Husband
• The unequal match of the termite couple

Kamat's Potpourri Timeless Theater Animals Insects