How might we really hear and respond to insect needs? For our third print edition, we would like to offer a tiny window into understanding the culture of insects, including their sound and music, their organisational and social systems, their games, and their design. Through exploring their world further, we find that they are not only fascinating and beautiful, but that they might also be familiar and relatable.

Cover artist Claire Morgan’s works reveal and challenge our own biases as their gorgeous and ordered forms are revealed on close viewing to incorporate greenbottle, bluebottle, and fruit flies. Kuai Shen explores how ants might play and Lisa Schonberg how they sound and communicate. Alexandra Daisy Ginsburg and Marlene Huissoud develop designs with pollinators in mind, Joseph Yoon discusses the potential gifts of insect agriculture, and Fiona Benson illuminates insect relationships to one another, revealing bridges to our own. Catherine Chalmers speaks to us about her collaborative working with ants and cockroaches, Una Chaudhuri investigates insects in the theatre, and Steven Kutcher shares stories and techniques about his insect-wrangling work on films such as Exorcist II, Arachnaphobia, and James and the Giant Peach.

So let’s take an exploratory and celebratory trip through the intricacies and wonders of the insect world. Perhaps, on understanding them more deeply, we might be able to really hear them too.