> >       should i eat any insect that crawls within reach, trusting my
> >taste?  this question goes out to france, europe, san marcos, everywhere!

Sorry for not responding earlier, I was busy for a couple of days. Many
insects are edible but many, though a minority, are NOT. Taste should
give you quite interesting indications. The situation is the same as for
plants and vegetables : they can play an important role in nutritional
balance, and yet not all vegetable species are edible. The toxicity of
insects does not depend only on the species but also on the food they
have eaten (in some cases, edible species eating toxic leaves - not
toxic for them- can be toxic). For example I recall the story reported
in the "Food insects newsletter" (Wisconsin university) that a species
of migratory butterflies (with orange and black wings) found in the US
can be very toxic by eating toxic leaves at a certain season. I haven't
tried, but it would be interesting to check if instinct protects against
ingesting such toxic butterflies (no taste or repellant taste or smell).

Generally speaking, instinct (i.e. taste and smell) should help and
seems to work with my experience, in a variety of cases. Brightly
coloured insects are indeed generally not edible (for example lady bugs,
but also bright orange, bright red, bright blue, bright green, etc.
species). The edible and delicious ones are the better camouflaged ones
of grey, beige, brown or similar colours. This may perhaps be explained
by the fact that, from an evolutionary perspective, the ones easy to
spot and see for huùmans (brightly coloured) would not have survived as
easily as the camouflaged one's. Evolutionary selection therefore
automatically selects the delicious edible species only if they have
some camouflage to regulate their predator's appetite. In order for both
species (human and edible insect) to coexist there logically needs to be
a "regulation" system of the amount ingested, not only by taste and
smell of the predator but also by the fact that they aren't too easy to
catch or to spot visually. At least that's how it seems to be
explainable in a simple way. Please suggest other opinions. Notice how
the jumping speed of grasshoppers seems to match exactly the grasping
speed of the human hand : if you are tired or not trained, they are
almost impossible to catch by hand (jumping capacity slightly exceeds
your grapsing rapidity), but if the human is hungry and just a little
swifter (because hungry) : success rates in catching the grassy hoppy
comes close to 100%.

Cheers and love to all.

Bruno.