We are prone to obsessing over ourselves and over animals like us. But most of the life on Earth is not like us at all. Barely 5% of all known living creatures are animals with backbones. The rest – at least 1.3 million species, and many more still to be discovered – are spineless.
All hail the invertebrates, animals of wondrous diversity, unique niches and innovative and interesting ways of making a living on this planet. They include insects (at least a million), arachnids, snails, crustaceans, corals, jellyfish, sponges and echinoderms.
And yet, despite their numerical advantage, originality and dazzling charisma, invertebrates are overlooked in favour of animals that more closely resemble ourselves or, more precisely, a human baby: big, slow-moving species with two soulful eyes; species with whom we can empathise or anthropomorphise. We lavish money on saving a polar bear stranded upon a melting glacier or a giant panda isolated in a fragmented forest because we feel their pain. Meanwhile, we’re not even sure if nematode worms feel pain.
A tiny elite of invertebrates is on our radar because they are visible in our daily lives – red admiral butterflies, say, or giant house spiders or honeybees – but the vast majority live beyond our ken, untouched by human acclaim or scientific study. These animals certainly don’t need our applause; mostly they simply need to be left alone. Unfortunately, the Anthropocene does not leave any species alone; many living things are being decimated without us even realising. The sixth great extinction is under way, and we are its architects.
We must take action to slow and halt this extinction crisis, not least because this wave of extinctions will ultimately engulf Homo sapiens. As the US biologist EO Wilson warned in 1987: “The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don’t need us.” He predicted that humanity would not last more than a few months without invertebrates. If we wipe out pollinators, oxygenators, food suppliers, hygienists and all those other unheralded roles performed by invertebrates that bequeath untold benefits to us, we are not long for this world.
And yet despite evidence of plummeting flying insect abundance around the world, most invertebrates are more resilient than we are. Insects predated dinosaurs by millions of years. They’ve survived the five previous mass extinctions. We are more likely to wipe out ourselves before we can destroy every invertebrate, but while we are here we surely have a moral obligation to allow as much of the planet’s life as possible to flourish alongside us.
In Britain, the global extinction crisis is unfolding in microcosm. Because of its long history of human occupation, its early industrialisation, its high population and its alienated-from-nature culture, Britain has become one of the most nature-depleted countries on the planet. Even so, alongside the paltry 107 mammals of land, sea and air that regularly appear around our archipelago, we still share our land and seas with at least 40,000 invertebrates. Conservation scientists estimate that one in six species are at risk of extinction in Britain.
This week we’re launching a competition to celebrate the diversity of invertebrate life found in Britain. In showcasing the wild world of invertebrates, their innovative ways of being and their importance, we hope we can raise awareness of the loss of their abundance and diversity, and what we can do about it.
We’ve chosen a shortlist of 10 species for British invertebrate of the year 2024. It’s hopelessly inadequate of course, because so much life is invertebrate. We’ve picked a mixture of well-known and more obscure invertebrates from a range of phyla and classes. Each nominee tells a story of a remarkable way of life and a way of surviving in the Anthropocene.
Some nominees carry a message of hope and herald a warning. A few are thriving in an era of global heating. (Never underestimate the capacity of a small animal to adapt to the extremes of our world and the climate we are changing.) Others are declining, and here they are non-human ambassadors and activists, urging us to change and take action.
If you are a marine biologist or entomologist or amateur naturalist, or even if you don’t hold much knowledge of other life at all, you will almost certainly spot glaring omissions in our shortlist. So please nominate your own invertebrate of the year, and tell us your reasons, and we will add one of the best to the shortlist.
Whoever wins will be worthy. Hopefully the big winner will be the wonderful world of every invertebrate, as we take notice, take heed and take action to allow them to prosper on our planet alongside us.
Our first nominee: Glowworm – the ‘love torch’
Our second nominee: Clifden nonpareil – the monster of the moth world
