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# Mark W. Moffett

Ecologist Explorer Storyteller

## Sitemaps

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## Posts

- [Canopy Architecture](https://www.doctorbugs.com/canopy-architecture/) - The physical architectures of earth’s ecosystems are grounded on those species that live affixed to a surface—on land, these are almost entirely plants. This image gives us some idea of the structure of the ecosystem that houses much of our planet’s diversity of life, offering a clean cross-sectional view where the riverbank has very recently
- [Venice Biennale](https://www.doctorbugs.com/venice-biennale/) - Mark Moffett My exhibit at the current Venice Biennale for Architecture is accompanied by the following text: “Architecture is a human universal.” Or so archeologists have proclaimed. Before settling into villages, our hunter-gatherer ancestors crisscrossed the globe in scattered bands of a few dozen. For hundreds of thousands of years these nomads had to depend on the
- [“ranks with the best work of Jacques Cousteau”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/ranks-with-the-best-work-of-jacques-counseau/) - A stunning mix of adventure, nature photography and hard scientific inquiry that ranks with the best work of Jacques Cousteau.”—The Boston Globe
- [“a fine work”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/fine-work-broad-appeal/) - “This fine work should appeal to anyone curious about human societies, which is basically everyone.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
- [“Extraordinary!”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/extraordinary/) - “Extraordinary! I am amazed to follow Mark Moffett's thoughts and knowledge and take a mental trips that goes within a span of seconds from ants to Michael Corleone.” —Isabella Rossellini, actress who explores animal behavior
- ["mesmerizing...and uplifting perspective"](https://www.doctorbugs.com/mesmerizing/) - —Financial Times
- ["epic"](https://www.doctorbugs.com/epic/) - “Mark Moffett’s book [falls] in the epic achievement category” —Forbes
- ["a remarkable intellectual achievement"](https://www.doctorbugs.com/remarkable/) - “The Human Swarm is a remarkable intellectual achievement of sustained intensity, to be commended for navigating an important yet difficult area in between biology, psychology, sociology, economics, history, and philosophy.” —Quarterly Review of Biology
- [A great book “for thinking about how we got into this mess”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/sure-to-be-a-classic/) - —New York Times (Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter)
- [“A magisterial work of monumental importance”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/a-magisterial-work-of-monumental-importance/) - “In the past quarter century there has emerged a genre of Big History that includes such epic books as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. Mark Moffett’s The Human Swarm is destined to be included in future lists of such books that not only add to our understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we’re going, but change our perspective of how we fit in the larger picture of
- [“delightfully accessible and ingenious”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/delightfully-accessible-and-ingenious/) - “A fascinating exploration of how members of human societies identify who belongs and why most believe that their society is superior… A delightfully accessible and ingenious series of lessons on humans and our societies.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
- [“should fascinate any thoughtful reader”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/should-fascinate-any-thoughtful-reader/) - “The Human Swarm is a book by a biologist that should fascinate any thoughtful reader and deserves to be taken seriously by psychologists and social scientists alike.” —Roy Baumeister, one of the most cited living psychologists and author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
- [“wide-ranging, deeply interesting ...made my neurons pop”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/wide-ranging-deeply-interesting-made-my-neurons-pop/) - "A truer statement hasn’t been uttered: “Our “groupiness” shapes human history.” Mark Moffett’s book is a wide-ranging, deeply interesting analysis of how large numbers of individual agents become a society. His travels in the world and through vast intellectual landscapes give him a unique view of why we are the way we are, both in our similarity to other living beings and our differences from them – our ability to include once alien groups into our own, for example. There is no other book I’ve read
- [“well-researched and richly detailed”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/well-researched-and-richly-detailed/) - "Moffett argues his points well and provides a well-researched and richly detailed account of why societies have been a fundamental part of the human experience since our earliest ancestors. Highly recommended for fans of Jared Diamond's Collapse and Yuval Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.” —Library Journal, Starred Review
- [“intriguing”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/intriguing/) - “Homo sapiens is a small-group social animal that physically seems to be limited to personal relationships with a few individuals. Nonetheless humanity is struggling to deal with societies of billions as human technologies now pose existential threats tied to those numbers. In The Human Swarm Mark Moffett presents an intriguing overview of the biological roots and cultural evolution of this now-critical situation.” —Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford and author of The Population
- [“[An] enticing whirlwind tour”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/an-enticing-whirlwind-tour/) - “[An] enticing whirlwind tour of the fascinating patterns of behaviour and structures of societies revealed through the varied lives of people and animals across the globe.” —Nature
- [“have your mind changed”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/have-your-mind-changed/) - “This is a book of amazing ideas, many of them counter­intuitive. Mark Moffett's astounding stories of animal societies persuaded me that the future of human cities have been foretold by the ants. Read this manifesto if you like to have your mind changed.” —Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, futurist, and author of The Inevitable and What Technology Wants
- [“one jaw-dropping revelation after another”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/one-jaw-dropping-revelation-after-another/) - "The Human Swarm is surely the most accurate, most comprehensive, most original explanation of our social existence that we're ever likely to see, one jaw-dropping revelation after another, most of them astonishing, all of them fascinating. It’s true without question, which seems obvious as you’re reading, and it’s very well written—a joy to read.” —Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Harmless People and A Million Years with You
- [“rigorous in its science... deeply thought-provoking”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/rigorous-in-its-science-deeply-thought-provoking/) - "Our times are filled with garage start-ups that become Silicon Valley behemoths overnight. Such scaling-up pales in comparison to humans going from hunter-gatherer bands to our globalized world in the blink of an evolutionary eye – and thus now, a stranger a continent away can be killed when we press a button operating a drone, or rescued when we press a button marked “Donate now.” In The Human Swarm, Mark Moffett charts the
- [“A tour-de-force”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/a-tour-de-force/) - —Donald Johanson, author of Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind and the founder of the Institute of Human Origins
- [Page 341](https://www.doctorbugs.com/page-341/) - The year when Gabby Douglas didn’t place a hand over her heart while the American national anthem played was 2016.
- [Page 71](https://www.doctorbugs.com/page-71/) - The spider described is Cosmophasis bitaeniata, and not Myrmaplata plataleoides. An odd mistake, since I know both species very well!
- [Spectacular](https://www.doctorbugs.com/spectacular/) - Take a look at daring eco-adventurer Mark Moffett’s spectacular new ant book, Adventures Among Ants.—Margaret Atwood, New York Review of Books
- [graphic enthusiasm [and] provocative thoughts](https://www.doctorbugs.com/graphic-enthusiasm-and-provocative-thoughts/) - Adventures Among Ants is packed with graphic enthusiasm [and] provocative thoughts… Moffett writes with an entertainer’s instinct for hooking a restless audience. Luckily our voyeurism about the gory, pitiless world of insects is also his.—The New York Times
- [thought-provoking](https://www.doctorbugs.com/thought-provoking/) - Adventures Among Ants combines brilliant portraits of six species with thought-provoking lessons about the nature of social evolution—Richard Wrangham, author of The Goodness Paradox and Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human
- [‘the Jane Goodall of ants.’](https://www.doctorbugs.com/the-jane-goodall-of-ants/) - Mark has been described as ‘the Jane Goodall of ants.’ Certainly Adventures Among Ants, with its detailed account of his fieldwork, makes an invaluable contribution to our scientific knowledge of these creatures. But it does more. It is so will written and captures his excitement so wonderfully that it will bring this wealth of information
- [“A parallel universe”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/a-parallel-universe/) - The book will return you to the magic you knew as a child, when you watched a tiny parade of creatures and understood: here, too, is life. Here you will find a parallel universe of mysterious, alien creatures silently emerging from and returning to their dark and magical queendoms.—Dale Peterson, author of Jane Goodall: The
- [“dive into a bizarre world”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/dive-into-a-bizarre-world/) - I love this book. Mark Moffett’s excitement and joy will affect anyone willing to take a dive into a bizarre world. I will never intentionally step on another ant—perhaps out of a new love, respect, or fear. Adventures Among Ants will grow on you rather than swarm up your leg.—Kary Mullis, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
- [“stimulating read... stunning photography”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/322-2/) - Think you know about ants? Think again, and take it from Mark W. Moffett, who has travelled all over the world to study them. Ants seem to live in a parallel university to our own, one rife with warfare, terrorism, traffic jams, and highway infrastructure. A stimulating read, with stunning photography.—Bernd Heinrich, author of Mind
- [“a tour de force of scientific journalism”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/a-tour-de-force-of-scientific-journalism/) - “The High Frontier is a tour de force of scientific journalism as well as the visual and literary expression of an experienced and deeply caring naturalist.”—E.O. Wilson
- [“a superb photographer”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/a-superb-photographer/) - [Moffett] is a superb photographer, able to capture, while dangling from a rope or balanced on a branch, vignettes of life at the top...He says that he hopes people will see, from his book, that these environments are so rich, so valuable, that they will be moved to protect them. I only hope that this
- [“vivid and visceral”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/vivid-and-visceral/) - “Mark Moffett’s The High Frontier gave me a bird’s-eye view of the ecosystem with vivid and visceral pleasure.”—Amy Tan (from her book, Saving Fish from Drowning)
- [“spectacular photographs”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/spectacular-photographs/) - Illustrated with spectacular photographs taken by the author and written in a very readable style, The High Frontier will fascinate both the biologist and the general reader.”—The Library Journal
- [“excellent research...a visual feast”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/excellent-research-a-visual-feast/) - “Mark Moffett's book is a magnificent exploration of the most biodiverse environment known—the rainforest canopy—supported by the finest colour photographs I have ever seen....Moffett charts the explosion of new discoveries and the emergence of a new breed of arboreal naturalists... Good journalistic narrative is at all times underpinned with first-hand knowledge and the authority of
- [“elegantly written... stunning--and often unusual--photographs”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/elegantly-written-stunning-and-often-unusual-photographs/) - “Scientists have only just begun to explore the biology of the tropical rainforest canopy. In The High Frontier, Mark Moffett provides an elegantly written account of the ecology of this aerial continent. The book is packed full with his stunning--and often unusual--photographs of canopy architecture, animals and plants, taken while accompanying tree-climbing researchers working at study
- [“adventure story and poetic biology’](https://www.doctorbugs.com/adventure-story-and-poetic-biology/) - “Mark W. Moffett’s The High Frontier is a kind of cross between an adventure story and poetic biology.”—The New York Times
- [“A beautiful book.”](https://www.doctorbugs.com/a-beautiful-book/) - “A beautiful book.”—New Scientist

## Pages

- [Ecologist Story Teller](https://www.doctorbugs.com/) - Mark has embarked on three years of research with funding from the John Templeton Foundation to study the life and death of societies across animal species and what it might tell us about humans. Read about it here. "Mark has the soul of a 19th-century explorer, a wandering naturalist in the tradition of Darwin
- [Lectures](https://www.doctorbugs.com/lectures/) - Mark has spoken about exploration, tropical forests, and societies in humans and other animals to both scholars and the public, including at the Smithsonian Institution; NASA's Goddard Space Center; Google headquarters both in Mountain View and New York; the Institute of Human Origins; the Santa Fe Institute; a think tank organized by the Joint Chiefs;
- [Bio](https://www.doctorbugs.com/bio/) - A Short Career Summary "Some of Mark Moffett's job skills bear little resemblance to those found on a typical academic resume: a love of arboreal existence, an apparent immunity to tropical diseases, rock-steady hands and th ability to place his ankle behind his head. Fortunately, Moffett has discovered the singular occupation that brings together this
- [Academic publications](https://www.doctorbugs.com/academic-publications/) - The following are those scholarly publications of greatest concern to specialists for which I have PDFs. As for my publications of wide academic interest, find them here (while my articles for the lay reader are here). Or look for me on: Google Scholar. Convergent evolution of levee building behavior among distantly related ants in
- [Academics](https://www.doctorbugs.com/academics/) - Academic As a Smithsonian Research Associate I pursue 3 main themes: The life and death of societies in humans and other species; ant sociality; and the architecture of rainforest canopies, which harbor most of the earth's biodiversity. I have served as Associate Curator (in charge of the world's largest ant collection) and Research Associate at
- [Photography](https://www.doctorbugs.com/nature-photography/) - I came to photography by accident. In graduate school, I decided to do research on the ants of tropical Asia. I wanted to stay for as long as possible--a dozen countries in 29 months on that first trip, as it turned out. Anticipating I'd make extraordinary discoveries, I decided my PhD committee might wonder if
- [Supporting my work](https://www.doctorbugs.com/supporting-mark/) - I am sharing a request for the support of the continuation of my field research and my academic and community outreach that includes participating in conferences and organizing public events. Most fundamentally I have been pursuing the significance of animal societies to the survival of species ranging from elephants, lions and wolves to certain fish,
- [Cleaner Ant for free media use, April 2026](https://www.doctorbugs.com/cleaner-ant-for-free-media-use-april-2026/)
- [Supporting the efforts of Dr Moffett](https://www.doctorbugs.com/supporting-the-efforts-of-dr-moffett/) - Funding research
- [Exploration](https://www.doctorbugs.com/exploration/) - "Why shouldn't somethin' new and wonderful lie in such a country? And why shouldn't we be the men to find it out?" -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World (1912) Hard to Reach Places "The Indiana Jones of Entomology"-National Geographic Radio How does one grow up to be an explorer? A bit of my personal story is
- [Adventure](https://www.doctorbugs.com/exploration/adventure/) - Born in the mountain town of Salida, Colorado and raised in the midwest, I caught my first snake when I was six, cloned amoeba at 14, won awards for my insect collection in junior high, dropped out of high school while working with ecologists at a local college and published my first research while an
- [Face to Face With Frogs](https://www.doctorbugs.com/writing/the-books/face-to-face-with-frogs/) - "This book is gorgeous. I wish I was in it!" -Stephen Colbert Face to Face with Frogs is a book for young adults that describes the author's adventures looking for frogs around the world, among them the largest and smallest frogs, a dancing frog, the only vegetarian frog, and a frog that can kill you
- [Biodiversity](https://www.doctorbugs.com/biodiversity/) - The two greatest social crises of our age, our mistreatment of nature and bigotry toward other races and ethnicities, are psychologically linked, a fact that has important implications for how we might solve both problems. Mark has written about this issue for the LA Times and, in more detail, for an article in Skeptics magazine.
- [Writing](https://www.doctorbugs.com/writing/) - I have published enough articles in the National Geographic magazine to completely fill four issues (see them at page bottom), including, for example, one on the topic of pollination. I've linked to those articles on my photography webpage. I won the Bowdoin Medal, Harvard's oldest and most prestigious writing prize, awarded annually since 1745. I have
- [The Human Swarm](https://www.doctorbugs.com/writing/the-books/the-human-swarm/) - Mark Moffett is a maverick...The Human Swarm is a book of wonders. -New Statesman An Amazon Editors' Pick for a best history book Imagine an airport filled with strangers peacefully going about their business. Fill that airport with chimpanzees instead of humans, however, and panic is certain, carnage likely. How do we humans coexist harmoniously
- [Bugs Bunny](https://www.doctorbugs.com/no-title/) - I was known as "the Bug Man" at school growing up. Or Lizard Boy or the Frog Kid or whatever I showed an interest in that day. But I also loved Bugs Bunny, and I would eventually meet his creator, Chuck Jones, at a party celebrating The Grinch Stole Christmas special. So, yes, Doctor
- [Popular TV, Radio, & Blogs](https://www.doctorbugs.com/tv-radio/) - My lecture for the Templeton Foundation on how certain ants are conquering the world. "Dr. Bugs" Moffett has drugged-out toads, sex-champ ants for Conan. I converse about ants on CBS Sunday Morning for an episode so popular they've replayed it twice. How ants are like humans, for the website Big Think. Go behind the scenes
- [Army Ants](https://www.doctorbugs.com/writing/the-books/adventures-among-ants/army-ants/) - What is an "army ant"? Army ants are species in which the workers search for food in groups (Classically that food is described as live prey, but some species take plant matter by this means, too.) The idea sounds simple but many descriptions of what it means to "forage in groups" are confusing, so let
- [Micro-Landscapes](https://www.doctorbugs.com/nature-photography/micro-landscapes-nyc/) - Soon after moving to New York City I set out to get to know Manhattan in a manner suited to a man familiar with exploring the ground at my feet, & on foot: I spent less than $10 in public transport in the course of a week, walking and taking one macro photograph at each
- [Marriage](https://www.doctorbugs.com/exploration/adventure/marriage/) - Melissa W. Wells Marries Mark W. Moffett 15 January 2008 Traditional Ceremony at rim of Rano Kau Volcano, Easter Island arranged for us by the former governor of Easter Island. After ceremony at rim of Rano Kau volcano, with wedding guests (left to right) Lou DeMattel, Ken Kamler, the groom, the bride, Granis Stewart,
- [Adventures Among Ants](https://www.doctorbugs.com/writing/the-books/adventures-among-ants/) - Adventures Among Ants is an entomologist's answer to such classic books of wildlife adventure as Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man and Dian Fossey's Gorillas in the Mist. Mark travels the globe to investigate the social lives of six ant species, showing how social complexity can arise in incredible places. "Take a look at
- [The High Frontier](https://www.doctorbugs.com/writing/the-books/high-frontier/) - A stunning mix of adventure, nature photography and hard scientific inquiry that ranks with the best work of Jacques Cousteau."-The Boston Globe "The High Frontier is a tour de force of scientific journalism as well as the visual and literary expression of an experienced and deeply caring naturalist."-E.O. Wilson "A magnificent exploration if the most
- [Contact](https://www.doctorbugs.com/contact/) - SPEAKING: Deborah Benson Changemaker Talent hello@changemakertalent.com
- [The Books](https://www.doctorbugs.com/writing/the-books/) - The Human Swarm Adventures Among Ants Face to Face with Frogs See him Live: Events listing for Mark W. Moffett Mark is currently traveling extensively for research and is doing few public lectures
- [Exhibits](https://www.doctorbugs.com/nature-photography/exhibits/) - My frog exhibit at National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C. was described as "stunning" by the Washington Post. An exhibit of my photographs at a gallery in the Long Island town of Greenport was nicely reviewed by the New York Times. My 2009 exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. Farmers, Warriors, Builders: The
- [Joseph Slowinski](https://www.doctorbugs.com/joseph-slowinski/) - Taken September 10, 2001, the day before the snake bite, holding a bagged serpent given to him by a villager at Rat Baw. © Mark W. Moffett Joe on September 10, 2001, the day before the snake bite, holding a bagged serpent given to him by a villager at Rat Baw. © Mark W. Moffett

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