# Mzansi’s Insect of the Year: Meet the finalists vying for the title

An episode of [Afternoon Drive with John Maytham](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1212305258), 23 Oct 2026, 9:15.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/1951050295/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/5dcefa8e-00a9-4595-8ce1-a4ab0080f142/e2113905-04ff-472c-9fff-a6cd00b63b20/3d4bb786-323a-437a-92c8-b4ec00ec8869/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=cab9ce5d-42b6-4239-9177-a6cd00b6d1ff

John Maytham speaks to Dr Charlene Janion-Scheepers, senior lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences, about the Top 10 finalists in the Mzansi Insect of the Year 2026 competition. From the colourful spiny flower mantis to the notorious Parktown prawn, the finalists showcase South Africa's remarkable insect diversity. They discuss the fascinating adaptations of these creatures, their importance to the environment and why insects deserve greater appreciation. \ Presenter John Maytham is an actor and author-turned-talk radio veteran and seasoned journalist. His show serves a round-up of local and international news coupled with the latest in business, sport, traffic and weather. The host’s eclectic interests mean the program often surprises the audience with intriguing book reviews and inspiring interviews profiling artists. A daily highlight is Rapid Fire, just after 5:30pm. CapeTalk fans call in, to stump the presenter with their general knowledge questions. Another firm favourite is the humorous Thursday crossing with award-winning journalist Rebecca Davis, called “Plan B”. Thank you for listening to a podcast from Afternoon Drive with John Maytham Listen live on Primedia+ weekdays from 15:00 and 18:00 (SA Time) to Afternoon Drive with John Maytham broadcast on CapeTalk https://buff.ly/NnFM3Nk For more from the show go to https://buff.ly/BSFy4Cn or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/n8nWt4x Subscribe to the CapeTalk Daily and Weekly Newsletters https://buff.ly/sbvVZD5 Follow us on social media: CapeTalk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@capetalk CapeTalk on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ CapeTalk on X: https://x.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CapeTalk567 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Yes, the ten finalists for the Insect of the Year
[0:04] Speaker 1: competition have been named. They are, in no particular order,
[0:09] Speaker 1: the Spiny Flower Mantis, which is utterly gorgeous, the Caledon
[0:15] Speaker 1: Heel Walker, which is space-age bizarre, the Honey Bee, the
[0:23] Speaker 1: Brush Jewel Beetle, which would have been my favourite, until
[0:29] Speaker 1: I saw the rainbow cuckoo wasp. What can I say
[0:34] Speaker 1: that word? I'm so excited by this animal. I'm so
[0:37] Speaker 1: in love. The rainbow cuckoo wasp. The giant cone-headed mantis.
[0:44] Speaker 1: Another thing out of George Lucas's imagination. The yellow-veined widow.
[0:50] Speaker 1: It's a beautiful, beautiful and delicate dragonfly. The splendidly named
[0:57] Speaker 1: Serious Donkey Face Weevil. And The Hawk Moth. And I
[1:04] Speaker 1: can't believe it's there, but The Parktown Prawn is one
[1:10] Speaker 1: of the finalists. And anybody who's ever spent any time
[1:15] Speaker 1: in Johannesburg will know how much we do not like
[1:18] Speaker 1: The Parktown Prawn. Ah, Dr. Charlene Janian-Skipris joins us now,
[1:24] Speaker 1: Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biological Science at UCT
[1:30] Speaker 1: and the champion of the Insect Top Ten. Hello, Charlene. Hello, John.
[1:36] Speaker 2: How are you?
[1:37] Speaker 1: I'm cross that the Parktown Prawn is there. Just looking
[1:40] Speaker 1: at it is giving me the shivers. I'm going to
[1:42] Speaker 1: have to apply for PTSD leave.
[1:46] Speaker 2: Well, you always need a villain, don't you?
[1:49] Speaker 1: I guess you do. And it was nominated by quite
[1:52] Speaker 1: a few people, I see.
[1:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been nominated by quite a few people. And
[1:59] Speaker 2: I think it's also because we ran a little article
[2:02] Speaker 2: before that. It's actually really important in gardens. It hunts slugs.
[2:08] Speaker 2: It's an important predator in the garden. So we hopefully
[2:12] Speaker 2: reach people to, you know, say, And ugly insects are
[2:17] Speaker 2: also very valuable in your garden. They don't always have
[2:19] Speaker 2: to be pretty.
[2:21] Speaker 1: It helps, though, if they are. Yes.
[2:24] Speaker 2: I mean, the cuckoo wasp is just absolutely gorgeous, as
[2:28] Speaker 2: you say.
[2:29] Speaker 1: Where might I see one? I wish I could describe it.
[2:32] Speaker 1: I mean, well, let me read the description that's on
[2:35] Speaker 1: the website where one can vote. glittering in metallic green, blue,
[2:40] Speaker 1: purple and red. It's one of Africa's most dazzling insects
[2:44] Speaker 1: and the colours are extraordinary and they really do look
[2:49] Speaker 1: as if they shot through with electricity.
[2:52] Speaker 2: Yes, it's absolutely perfectly described. It's a proper rainbow and
[2:58] Speaker 2: what's interesting, it is like a cuckoo bird. It lays
[3:01] Speaker 2: its eggs in other insects' nests. You can find it
[3:05] Speaker 2: Even in your garden, it's a solitary wasp. So like
[3:09] Speaker 2: many solitary other hymenopteras like bees, they need little holes
[3:14] Speaker 2: in the garden to lay their eggs. So they're actually parasites,
[3:17] Speaker 2: although they're very pretty. They're very pretty parasites, aren't they?
[3:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's extremely pretty. And I mean, not
[3:25] Speaker 1: only the donkey face weevil, but the serious donkey face weevil.
[3:29] Speaker 1: I mean, who knew?
[3:31] Speaker 2: I didn't even know about this weevil, I must be honest,
[3:34] Speaker 2: but it is just also gorgeous.
[3:37] Speaker 1: Well, I don't know about gorgeous. That's not a word
[3:40] Speaker 1: I would use.
[3:42] Speaker 2: Well, they're interesting looking, and you can see from many
[3:45] Speaker 2: of the insects under the top tin, they really inspire
[3:49] Speaker 2: alien movies, don't they? They just look out of the world,
[3:52] Speaker 2: especially the coronet mantis. That's been very popular. So they're
[3:57] Speaker 2: on restier plants, and they often... not seen because they
[4:02] Speaker 2: really look exactly like a little restio branch. They're so
[4:06] Speaker 2: well camouflaged. They're also very alien-looking.
[4:11] Speaker 1: Extremely so. It really does look as if it has
[4:14] Speaker 1: been created by a graphic designer, not by eons of evolution.
[4:21] Speaker 2: Yeah. No, we're very happy with their selection. Our panel...
[4:26] Speaker 2: selected um the top 10 based on popularity based on
[4:30] Speaker 2: the nominations um and this was our first um as
[4:34] Speaker 2: you know our first ever competition so we're very happy
[4:38] Speaker 2: the way it went um and you know we want
[4:41] Speaker 2: people to with the top 10 don't necessarily vote for
[4:45] Speaker 2: the ones you know go and read what they do
[4:48] Speaker 2: and about their biology and ecology and go choose the
[4:52] Speaker 2: most interesting one.
[4:53] Speaker 1: The Calodon heel walker only described as an insect group
[4:58] Speaker 1: on its own in 2002, which is relatively recent. So,
[5:07] Speaker 1: Ostrophasma calodonense. First described from Calodon, then? Can one make
[5:15] Speaker 1: that assumption?
[5:17] Speaker 2: Yes, yes, you can. This group, John, is incredible. They're
[5:21] Speaker 2: the Odomantophasmatodia. So as you said, they were only discovered
[5:25] Speaker 2: and described in 2002. The whole order, that is like
[5:30] Speaker 2: finding a whole order of mammals like bats, for example.
[5:33] Speaker 2: So that was absolutely phenomenal. They only occur in South
[5:37] Speaker 2: Africa and in Southern Namibia. So they are totally endemic
[5:41] Speaker 2: to our region. There's quite a few species, many undescribed species.
[5:47] Speaker 2: They fly as predators. And as we say in the description,
[5:51] Speaker 2: the males and the females have a very interesting courtship.
[5:55] Speaker 2: They tap their feet to find each other, and then
[5:59] Speaker 2: they find each other and they mate. They eggs overwinter
[6:03] Speaker 2: during the dry summer. So an absolutely amazing overlooked group.
[6:08] Speaker 2: They're often mistaken for mantises because they look like.
[6:12] Speaker 1: It does look very mantis-like, yeah.
[6:15] Speaker 2: Yeah. They're also known as gladiators, which is a very
[6:20] Speaker 2: cool name, this whole group.
[6:22] Speaker 1: Yeah. And the poor old honeybee seems so sort of
[6:26] Speaker 1: ordinary amidst all of this finery.
[6:31] Speaker 2: I think the honeybee, many, many people nominated it because
[6:34] Speaker 2: they're well-known for their function as pollinators. There are thousands
[6:40] Speaker 2: of other pollinators, of course, other solitary bees. But it's,
[6:45] Speaker 2: you know, it's an important species for crop pollination, also
[6:50] Speaker 2: for indigenous flowers. So we have two subspecies in South Africa.
[6:55] Speaker 2: One is based more in Cape Town. They've got a
[6:58] Speaker 2: darker abdomen. And then in the northern part of the country,
[7:02] Speaker 2: that is, that is the northern honeybee. And there's quite
[7:08] Speaker 2: strict regulations on transporting hives between the regions because The
[7:14] Speaker 2: Cape honeybee can be quite a parasite of the northern
[7:18] Speaker 2: honeybee because they can lay eggs without queens. So we
[7:23] Speaker 2: decided to put both the subspecies under the top 10.
[7:29] Speaker 1: And it's very simple. I mean, there's no prize. The
[7:33] Speaker 1: prize is knowledge. The prize is knowing something, perhaps recognizing
[7:37] Speaker 1: something that prior to this competition you would not have
[7:42] Speaker 1: been able to So it's a question of going, folks,
[7:46] Speaker 1: to EntsockSA, so Entomological Society of South Africa, EntsockSA.co.za, and
[7:57] Speaker 1: looking through and voting. Because in our first conversation about this,
[8:04] Speaker 1: I said that the brush jewel beetle was my favorite insect,
[8:07] Speaker 1: and I'm very tempted still to vote for it. But
[8:10] Speaker 1: this cuckoo wasp, I tell you, That is having me,
[8:13] Speaker 1: I'm going to have to think about this a little more.
[8:17] Speaker 1: When will the winner be announced and where will the
[8:20] Speaker 1: ceremony take place?
[8:24] Speaker 2: So you can vote for your favorite insect until the
[8:27] Speaker 2: end of Monday, this coming Monday. So it's just open
[8:31] Speaker 2: a short time. And then on Wednesday, the 28th, I
[8:35] Speaker 2: think we will announce the winner, probably from the Ezekiel
[8:39] Speaker 2: Museum of South Africa. live broadcast from there. And people
[8:44] Speaker 2: can just follow our socials for details on that. And
[8:48] Speaker 2: I'll let you know who wins. But yeah, go and
[8:50] Speaker 2: have a look and take your time to vote. And
[8:54] Speaker 2: if your favorite insect is not under the top 10,
[8:57] Speaker 2: then next year you can put in your nomination.
[9:03] Speaker 1: Go to the ceremony and stand there with a placard
[9:06] Speaker 1: protesting the absence of your favorite insect.
[9:09] Speaker 2: Dr.
[9:09] Speaker 1: Charlene Janian-Skipper, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Biological Sciences
[9:13] Speaker 1: at UCT.

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