“The rainforest looks a lot better on TV.”
— Mario Croft-Hahn, American ornithologist in Brazil
At first it seemed to me there was nothing moving anywhere around us, but then Cohn-Haft began pointing out the signs of insect life and I began to see lots of activity going on in, to use Wilson’s phrase, the “little world underneath.” A stick bug hung from a dead leaf, waving its delicate legs. A spider crouched on a hoop-shaped web. A phallic tube of mud sticking up from the forest floor turned out to be the home of a cicada larva. What looked like a monstrous pregnancy bulging from a tree trunk was revealed to be a nest filled with termites.
— Chapter IX, The Sixth Extinction
