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this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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My dad and I take (usually) yearly road trips west to visit various national parks. We've been doing this for nearly 2 decades now. We'll typically drive through the night with just a short, few-hour stop at a rest area if we are both too tired to drive.
I distinctly remember some of our earlier trips where by the time we got fuel in the morning after driving through the night there were SOOO many bug guts all over the front of the car no amount of car washes would get them clean.
Our last trip to South Dakota/Colorado there was almost none and I was actually thinking about this. It is very unsettling...something is changing and it's not for the better...
A global apocalypse has already happened (and is continuing, within what wreckage remains) in the insect and amphibian populations. Almost no one outside a small community of scientists that are specifically in that field has even noticed, let alone has a theory for why, or a guess as to whether it is an urgent problem.
But yes it seems like an urgent problem.
People have noticed...the majority just don't give a flying fuck
Most people i know are happy about less insects in the summer.
The older i get, the more i learn about insects and the more i like them. Also, knowing more about their importance, makes me want to have many more insects around me, instead of less.
Favorite insect fact?
Most insects are illiterate, and very few speak Portuguese.
lol
THEY TASTE LIKE SHIT YO
Nobody has a theory why insect populations are catastrophically falling? I highly doubt that.
I mean, wouldn’t the prolific use of pesticide be a pretty damn obvious cause? Wherever humans go, we spray for bugs.
Yeah; I should have said no one has a compelling proven explanation. There are a lot of theories obviously. This article goes into a little bit of detail about it, although in my opinion is proffering its "death by a thousand cuts" theory without that being the consensus of the scientists i.e. "yes this is exactly the combination of factors responsible and they are all significant, we are confident." It's more just that things are collapsing too completely and quickly to even be able to coherently study for root cause(s).
Probably closer to “death by a thousand chainsaws” but yeah. People try to kill insects, and they succeed. Add that on top of all the other stuff humans do that kills species unintentionally (deforestation, monocropping, climate change, etc.) and there’s no wonder the population is collapsing suddenly and rapidly.
I mean we used to have giant frog spawns every spring where we would have to be careful walking or we would step on several frogs at a time.
We haven't had one in 5 years.
Yeah I first noticed it like 10-15 years back when I visited my aunt in another town. Her place was always full of June bugs who would smash into your face repeatedly like a bunch of assholes, when we were kids. We even named her place after the bugs. But when I went back as an adult 15 years or so ago, there wasn't a single one. My aunt said they vanished over a couple of years. I always wondered if they just didn't like her property anymore or something, but it was likely climate change in the area.
Part of it is destruction of their habitat.