If you think eating insects is gross, you may be in the cultural minority. Throughout history, people have relished insects as food. Today, many cultures still do.

Ten thousand years ago hunters and gatherers ate bugs to survive. They probably learned what was edible from observing what animals ate, according to Gene DeFoliart, a professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Eating insects certainly is an old tradition," he said.

The ancient Romans and Greeks dined on insects. Pliny, the first-century Roman scholar and author of Historia Naturalis, wrote that Roman aristocrats loved to eat beetle larvae reared on flour and wine.

Aristotle, the fourth-century Greek philosopher and scientist, described in his writings the ideal time to harvest cicadas: "The larva of