We Crush, Poison, and Destroy Insects at Our Own Peril

https://nautil.us/issue/95/escape/we-crush-poison-and-destroy-insects-at-our-own-peril

by CapitalistCartr • 5 years ago

220 148 5 years ago

nautil.us

meerita2• 5 years ago

Just make mosquitoes disappear. The rest of the insects can be managed, but mosquitoes are the worst of them.

h_anna_h2• 5 years ago

Cockroaches too please.

sohkamyung• 5 years ago

Eliminating 4000 over species of cockroaches because 30 are associated with humans and 5 are pests is extreme, I think [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach

Cockroaches (or roaches) are insects of the order Blattodea, which also includes termites. About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. About five species are well known as pests.

azernik• 5 years ago

As scavengers, cockroaches actually fill a useful economic niche. Mosquitos are just pure shared-needle disease spreaders.

0xbkt• 5 years ago

I live in a Mediterranean city, and in summers (hell-hole hot and humid) they're my nightmare. The big ones! They swarm the entire city. I get along well with smaller ones lighter in color though. I freak out the moment I notice one on the wall to the bathroom. Poor me.

MildlySerious• 5 years ago

The diseases they transmit notwithstanding, I would take 10x the mosquitoes if it meant ticks, bot flies, intestinal worms, brain eating amoeba and any other parasitic creepy crawlies were gone for good.

choeger• 5 years ago

Yeah, some of these parasites really wouldn't be missed at all.

thaumasiotes3• 5 years ago

To be fair, ticks, intestinal worms, and amoebae are not insects.

jfim• 5 years ago

There is some research that shows that done of these parasites may have the beneficial action of preventing autoimmune disease by modulating the immune system response. See the layman version [0] or a more scholarly version [1].

[0] https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00032

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1618732/

gchamonlive2• 5 years ago

I am no biologist, but my guess is that if mosquitoes were extinct, some spider species would too, birds would also be affected, and so on.

zeristor• 5 years ago

And bats

huffmsa2• 5 years ago

Wolf spiders will take over. I don't think many people will be happy that they've traded small web slinging spiders for 2" diameter hairy ground spiders.

chr13• 5 years ago

There are many species of mosquitos, only a few of them bite people, even fewer live in cities and less than a handful transmit disease. We could start by killing the latter group.

throwanem3• 5 years ago

Dragonflies are pretty ferocious predators of mosquitos where they coexist, and I think I remember reading that dragonfly larvae also prey on mosquito nymphs, although don't quote me on that until I find a cite.

A layer further up, many birds include dragonflies in their diet. And a layer further down, fewer dragonflies means more of everything else they prey on, too.

OneGuy1233• 5 years ago

We cannot do this in isolation because we never know if that would eg affect bird population or if we geneticaly modify mosquitos that can have unintendend consequences that no study can predict.

Do not fool yourself that you can "make a study" for everything: you cannot. You can never predict what will happen if you mess with nature on a genetic level.

This was already proven to be true when they released some GMO mosquitos which were not being able to reproduce.

BUT WAIT!

They were able to reproduce sooner or later again!

How shocking! Who would have thought!

And those scientists then said "this was not supposed to happen".

These scientists got the problem completely wrong, up-side-down: they believed that they "studied" the problem enough. The believed that they "knew enough" that this "should not have happened".

But they won't ever learn that complex system (which is pretty much everything in nature) cannot be "studied and come to a conclusion with a high degree of confidence".

"High degree of confidence" and "complex system" are opposites that cannot appear in the same sentence.

throwanem3• 5 years ago

I'd be interested to read a paper discussing what appears to be a previously unsuspected failure mode of sterile insect technique.

Granted, I have to assume that that's what you're talking about under all the absurd hyperbole, because all the absurd hyperbole gets in the way. But if that is what you're trying to get at, do you have a cite?

Jon_Lowtek2• 5 years ago

Everything has unintentional consequences, because nothing exists in isolation. Arguing that doing nothing is the only moral thing to do, because one can not perfectly predict all that will happen when one does something is absurd. As is your mockery of science, that ostentatiously dissing of a straw-man. We all know the scientific method, please don't claim it is about absolute truth and certainty.

The GMO mosquitos are a good path because the direct consequences affect mosquito genes. If it is not effective enough, then we are back to poisoning the water with delta-endotoxins, where we know the consequences on things that are not mosquitos are far more severe.

gadders• 5 years ago

It's only about 10 species of mosquito out of thousands that spread malaria. It would be better to wipe out the plasmodium that spreads it.

This was a recent podcast on the subject, if you like your science more lighthearted:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rcpf

bottled_poe• 5 years ago

Interesting ethical dilemma. If we do ever encounter extraterrestrial life, I sure hope they are less brutal in their judgement of the species here on earth.

h_anna_h2• 5 years ago

If humans start injecting them with diseases then they would be in the right to get rid of us.

vincnetas4• 5 years ago

I was really hoping that this was sarcasm, but from replies i see that lots of people take it seriously. Wow, i'm shocked, hope we never will have such ability to eliminate a species on demand when someone got annoyed during camping, without even thinking about the consequences of such action and alternatives how desired outcome could be achieved.

baxtr3• 5 years ago

AFAIK, mosquitos are the animals that take the most human lives per annum. It is not only about "getting annoyed" during camping.

EDIT, I found a source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_h...

chr13• 5 years ago

We almost have a method that can work on almost any insect, https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4245 and we should definitely apply it to most mosquitos, and many agricultural pests especially in cases when it is an invasive species transported by us from continent to continent. Tzetze, kissing bugs, ticks also need to be eliminated though sadly we do not have a working method for ticks yet.

Chris20482• 5 years ago

Was it wrong to (near) eliminate smallpox too?

macspoofing• 5 years ago

Are we really really sure there won't be any unintended consequences to removing mosquitoes?

jbob2000• 5 years ago

Have you looked around you lately? What about the unintended consequences of... all of human technology and civilization? Please, get rid of the mosquitos! I don’t want to have to douse myself in chemicals just to go for a hike or enjoy a weekend of camping.

throwanem3• 5 years ago

Of course not, but when has that ever stopped anyone?

Cthulhu_7• 5 years ago

Plenty of animals make mosquitoes (and their eggs) a big part of their diets (fish, birbs, spiders, and usually involuntarily, humans).

b0rsuk• 5 years ago

Mosquitos eat mostly flower nectar. Males never bite. Females still eat nectar but need blood to produce eggs.

Mosquito larvae are very good for filtering water.

sylvain_kerkour• 5 years ago

Because the website seems down: https://web.archive.org/web/20210125095633/http://nautil.us/...

vulkoingim• 5 years ago

I think the mobile version is down (the one it is linked to), this one works for me: https://nautil.us/issue/95/escape/we-crush-poison-and-destro...

cupofcoffee• 5 years ago

Yes, we destroy the environment all the time. Yet nothing major gets done about it. The average person isn't the one that needs convincing, it's the higher ups and how to reach them?

Joe Biden got the US back to the Paris agreement, I hope that changes something for the better.

worldsayshi2• 5 years ago

The average person isn't the one that needs convincing

If the average person cared enough there would be political pressure on those higher ups. Looking at how people vote (not just thinking about US here) I'm not convinced people care all that much.

darkwater• 5 years ago

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. The problem here is that most of this issues have no visible direct correlation to our actions as humans, so to convince the average person you have to teach them very, very well. And starting from the very beginning, when they are small children. And that's not quick.

So, while this solution must be pursued for sure, at the same time we need quicker actions on those issues, and the quickest way is to deploy them at the management/politicians/law levels.

franga2000• 5 years ago

It's not that people don't care, it's that they've been put into a position where they have to care about other things more. The greatest threat for the average person isn't climate change, it's going broke. When you're living paycheck to paycheck, dumping every penny you earn into rent, food and (in the US) student loans and basic healthcare, are you really going to vote for the people who want to raise your taxes, ban the cheap crap you buy and regulate their employers who will pass the expense down to you in order to keep their margins high?

No, all of those things are immediate dangers to your ability to survive. Add to that the constant threats that terrorists/immigrants/communists... are "coming to destroy our freedoms/way of life" and people have so many more (both real and fake) threats looming over them that the distant and (to some) uncertain threat of climate change is basically at the bottom of their priority list.

Synaesthesia• 5 years ago

Research shows that the US govt is essentially an oligarchy. The opinions of ordinary people simply don't count for the ruling elites. Yes its up to us to make more noise and put pressure on leaders.

doublerabbit• 5 years ago

The average person isn't the one that needs convincing

I live near a bus stop, there is a trash can. You'd think people would have the common sense to use it. But not so, they would rather throw it behind the bus shelter.

I picked up three bin-bags of litter last night. I do this daily.

idclip2• 5 years ago

People keep mentioning what annoys them and how much they want it gone ... people here say its not the job of the average joe yet who is going to be affected? ...

Its all our doing. We will bear the brunt, if not the responsibility. I think some of us will survive whats coming .. most, i fear, wont.

bayindirh4• 5 years ago

As a person who hates to kill bugs (they're alive and absolutely required in nature), I have an agreement with them in my mind:

- The outside is yours, you can do whatever you want there.

- Inside the walls is my own territory. I want you in minimum numbers there.

- If you're an harmless bug (most except cockroaches, centipedes and venomous animals), I'll transport you to nature with utmost care.

Notes:

- Balconies are outside.

- I'll try my best to not to poison outside or kill you in high numbers unless you try to invade my home.

vincnetas4• 5 years ago

My wife had "Kill on sight" policy for spiders. Lots of screaming included. I have negotiated for them "safe escort to backyard" policy some time ago. Feel much better about them now.

hrktb• 5 years ago

I have the same base thinking, but had to adjust a lot as reality quickly becomes complicated.

For instance running after moths at night isn’t fun, and they don’t bring much troubles so I gave up on the in/out separation for them.

Or spiders: people who don’t want insects in their house might want to let spiders and other predators live with them, as a helping factor.

And then bringing plants inside also bring other kind of life and a lot of tradeoffs depending on the species.

rhn_mk1• 5 years ago

What makes centipedes harmful?

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 5 years ago

Ugly[0] as they are, centipedes are exceptional insect killers. It is worth considering letting the occasional common house centipede just go about its business. If you are seeing a lot of them though that's indicative of a really big problem.

[0] "Ugly" is used here as a stand-in for "fundamentally terrifying to many people"

alisonkisk• 5 years ago

Insects don't care about your charity. For each one you interwct with there are hundreds more out of sight. The one you saved will die of old age in a few weeks.

There are probably quite many bugs "inside your walls" in the literal sense.

cableshaft• 5 years ago

My policy is ignore them unless my wife complains (she hates big bugs for some reason) or they can cause harm to us or our dogs (yellow jackets, centipedes).

For the former I'll make an attempt to capture and transport outside (and if not I'll leave it alone), if it's the latter I'll either try to shoo it outside or kill it, with killing being the last resort.

I don't use pesticides or weed killer and I also actively leave a couple patches of wild flowers and clover in the back yard unmowed for bees and butterflies and other insects to use. If my dogs didn't like trying to eat bees I would consider doing some sort of beekeeping.

idclip2• 5 years ago

Fair if you ask me.. i practiced extreme meditation and sat with mosquitos one day .. it did wonders to how much i get stung now ..

They still take a bite or two on occasion.. it itches for less than an hour (worst was a week before did this ..) but not like before - its as if they let me be after i let them be.

There seems to be a strange relationship between prey and predator we still haven't understood that yet.

baxtr3• 5 years ago

I think some of us will survive whats coming

What is going to come?

bayindirh4• 5 years ago

Cascading collapses due to breakages in the food chain and population booms due to lack of predators for certain species.

Both will feed the cycles of imbalance more and more.

FrozenVoid• 5 years ago

The problem here is lack of "species-targeted pesticides"(biopesticides), current insecticides are broad-spectrum chemicals that will poison every insect(and aquatic animals too).

lai-yin• 5 years ago

Wind turbine blades in many parts of the world are regularly coated in insect biomass.

mauvehaus• 5 years ago

Highly recommend A Sting in the Tale and A Buzz in the Meadow. Both by Dave Goulson, entomologist focusing primarily on bees. A Buzz in the Meadow is a bit more general than A Sting in the Tale. I enjoyed them both.

george3d6• 5 years ago

These sort of naturalist arguments seem to make little sense when thought about more clearly.

Of course that:

a) Destroying the environment is probably more destabilizing than keeping it intact... that's almost always the case with conservation vs change, conservation is the safe move

b) Destroying all insects (i.e a whopping 2/5th of all multi-celular bio diversity) would result in catastrophic damage... destroying 2/5th of all biodiversity would result in catastrophic damage.

The onus on any given insect conservation advocate is to prove:

1. Insects are more critical to the environment than other things we put more money and time into preserving (e.g Australia should spend more on preserving black widows and less on preserving koalas)

2. A very specific insect is critical and thus should be preserved at all cost, even if it means putting more money into the nature-preservation system

3. The bio-diversity of insects as a whole is dropping at an alarming rate compared to other species and this is harmful and unprecedented (biodiversity boom and bust cycles are the norm, usually)

I'm not saying the above 3 points can't be made.

But this article doesn't make them.

It sounds just like someone signaling "Hey, I'm a hippie ecologist, I love nature, even insects that sting, I'm that much of a group member, love me" rather than providing any new information or concrete policy proposal or even a meta-level argument for getting new information or creating new policy proposals.

The general idea of "we shouldn't destroy" nature has been around since, I assume, at least 5000 years ago or so, when bronze-age humans burnt down most forests in Europe and then realized this was bad and proceeded to replant and protect, or even venerate, forested areas. It's old new, nobody disagrees we should protect nature, it's just a typical tragedy of the commons problem, and one that hasn't been handled that badly thus far.

kzrdude• 5 years ago

Government and engineering alike usually apply the precautionary principle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

Which says we need to use grave caution if we make changes with uncertain long-term effect.

beaconstudios• 5 years ago

You should consider Chesterton's fence before either destroying something, or allowing it to be destroyed.

Chesterton's fence is the idea that you should understand a thing thoroughly, including its present function and what might change if it disappeared, before removing it. The hypothetical example being a fence in the middle of nowhere - seemingly useless, but you should really make sure before pulling it up as it may be serving a vital function to somebody else (or the system at large).

The point being, we're stumbling into an scenario where we've killed off the majority of animals in a major ecological category, which is likely to destabilise the environment in both known and unknown ways. If we value the environment's self-sustaining capabilities, this should be greatly concerning.

TomSwirly4• 5 years ago

"Maybe we can wipe out insects and everything will be just fine," is NOT what I want to base the future of humanity on.

I'm an older guy. In my lifetime, we've killed half the flying insects, half the wild mammals, half the aquatic mammals and in fact half the aquatic creatures bigger than my two fists put together.

And the devastation only continues to accelerate. And your response is just that we can't prove for sure that killing everything else off is bad for us.

https://xkcd.com/1338/

Hey, I'm a hippie ecologist,

The appropriate response to your cynical screed would have me thrown off this site. For shame.

BlueTie• 5 years ago

I have a feeling that in a few generations people will look back and wonder how we were so concerned about an iceberg melting when we were eating a credit card per week of plastic and wiping out most of life on earth.

(For the record I do think global warming is a big deal - I just think the latter issues will hurt humanity far more far sooner)

cowpig• 5 years ago

Global warming is going to be disruptive on the scale of COVID (probably worse), and it's going to happen during our lifetimes.

sdoering• 5 years ago

Without insects for pollination, it will be difficult to feed the current, let alone the growing, world population. At least at a reasonable price.

Artificial pollination works. Just not at the price that nature "demands".

And of course, climate change will play a massive role. But so will the sixth extinction.

Given the fact that we have studies showing -75% of insects in some regions (of Germany) [1], I feel that the system is already way out of bounds.

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

pinipedman4• 5 years ago

Climate change is one of the main factors in "wiping out most life on earth." Habitat fragmantation means that flora and fauna cannot shift (generally poleward) to remain in regions they are suited to climatically, so the effects of climate change on biodiversity are worse than they would be otherwise. Even without habitat fragmentation, or the other pressures humans exert on the biosphere, the rate of climate change is such that it alone could potentially induce a mass extinction.

I do agree that the biosphere as a whole should be the primary concern and the focus on only one component, namely climate change, is incredibly short sighted.

burlesona3• 5 years ago

I think one of the problems with most of the climate change and environmental articles like this is that they focus entirely on the negative.

We aren’t going to see the massive cultural change that it would take to bring massive (positive) environmental change, until we have a shared narrative of how it’s going to be awesome and make life better for all of us.

Collective action to “stop the bad thing” just doesn’t happen at the scale required unless the harm is severe, immediate, and personal. Environmental damage is not like that: each individual can barely perceive it. We do see some cultural change on the things people can perceive (such as recycling and litter reduction, the tremendous growth of “organic food”). But the majority of major environmental problems are big cumulative things that happen slowly over time and are hard for individuals to perceive.

Meanwhile, you read an alarmist article and the question is “so what am I supposed to do about it?” Until we have a shared narrative on what it is we’re supposed to be doing about it, and that shared narrative paints the picture of a better future where everyone can see themselves being happier, healthier, etc., bottom-up change won’t happen.

And in the western democracies, you (by design), won’t get dramatic, sweeping change until there’s broad bottom-up support.

pinipedman4• 5 years ago

What if the necessary change is something like lowering the standard of living in order to reduce net resource consumption? If people will never voluntarily do that, then how do you propose to sell that as leading to a sunny future?

This might be why these articles are never positive. Because there isn't a solution that people will like or vote for. No one is going to publish your article if it says we need to impose limits on births or reduce everyone's standard of living to that of sub-Saharan Africa.

And in the western democracies, you (by design), won’t get dramatic, sweeping change until there’s broad bottom-up support.

Yes, this is precisely why there won't be the necessary change. And it's a great argument against democracy.

burlesona3• 5 years ago

One possibility is that it will never happen and we’re doomed. Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that.

But how does Tesla sell its cars for double the price of comparable gas-powered autos? How does Whole Foods sell people on $6 tomatoes?

Both of those represent a choice to consume less, since inherently if you spend more money on something than you have to, then you have less money with which to consume other things.

Yet nobody buying Whole Foods thinks they are “decreasing their standard of living.” Its the opposite!

So the very first thing, if you want to pursue change, is get this idea of “standard of living” out of your head. Think of lifestyle instead.

Can you sell people on an alternative lifestyle that results in less consumption? YES. This happens all around us all the time.

It doesn’t even have to be glamorous. During the world wars, gas was rationed and slops were collected for pigs... people bought war bonds, etc.

Free people can and do rise to meet collective challenges when they are well-led.

Right now it’s very hard to argue the west (as a whole) is well-led.

But things can change. There is a recipe that has a better chance of success, and historical precedent. So don’t give up hope.

rubinelli• 5 years ago

I think there is a lot of good to talk about, with just a little creativity: hundreds of thousands of jobs in a green economy, cleaner cities, ending the dependence on oil from autocratic nations, devices that you can repair and use for decades instead of discarding after eighteen months. You will never convince people to willingly downgrade their standard of living, but you can convince them to side-grade. Can you convince billions of people to turn vegan? Probably not, but you can convince them to eat synthetic meat, specially if it is cheaper, safer, and more consistent than beef from a live cow.

SanderNL• 5 years ago

Lowering our standard to sub-Saharan Africa is a shortcut to extinction. We need science and accompanying "standards" to remain as they are. I'd personally rather look elsewhere before resorting to authoritarianism.

What we IMO need is a push towards more technology, actually more resource use, more science and more rational thinking of any kind in general. We need to get out of the sub-Saharan mindset. Living in harmony with nature is not, and never was, sustainable and if it ever held any weight it is now a hollow, unproductive pipe-dream. We are created to do interesting things, hence the brains. So let's make interesting shit happen instead of waving flags in each-other's face and complaining about not being in harmony with the gods.

You ask how we sell that as a sunny future? Assuming the unwashed masses want to face the truth I'd think after some scrubbing they'd generally be onboard with a rational, abundance-filled, space-faring fucking utopia. Engaging further with our cultural and religious psychoses should be disincentivized and probably banned as the extinction-level threat it is. If you ask me, nationalism is the greatest threat humanity ever faced.

Also - while we still have nations - not voting for raging religious demagogues would be a start.

harimau7772• 5 years ago

If the future is going to be bleak anyways, then why bother trying to avoid climate change?

TomSwirly4• 5 years ago

I think one of the problems with most of the climate change and environmental articles like this is that they focus entirely on the negative.

This is because the news about the destruction of our planet is entirely negative - or more specifically, 100 pieces of bad news for every good one.

Meanwhile, you read an alarmist article

We read an _accurate_ article.

[until] that shared narrative paints the picture of a better future where everyone can see themselves being happier, healthier, etc., bottom-up change won’t happen.

Such a future does not exist, because we're going to have to cut down on our consumption dramatically to save the Earth.

You are uninterested in hearing about the problem unless there's a solution which makes everyone happy, and since no such solution exists, you just want everyone to stop talking about.

You and people like you are exactly why we will continue on our obsessive consumption until we're past the brink, if we aren't already.

We Crush, Poison, and Destroy Insects at Our Own Peril

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