There's something to be said about choosing not to care about some stuff, though. Being constantly contemplating every single crisis in the world and worrying equally about them all will be damaging to your mental health... And these days there are more pressing issues than the moths to me. It's not that I don't value them
this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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"Hey Bro, you're really such a pussy, you're going to leave this coal mine because the canary died? I'm an alpha bro, don't be such a beta."
Now apply this to literally the entire fucking world. This is our current reality.
We should be concerned about endangered moths. Hard enough to get people to care about other people.
I'm glad this was your takeaway as well because it felt to me like the second person was belittling the first, and... they really should shut the fuck up.
To alleviate that feeling: they’re the same person.
We should care about all the species on earth. We have an interconnected food chain that is currently collapsing, enough of it goes, and we won't even be able to grow crops.
Nah, we're strutting around like we're the first mass extinction event the planet's ever seen. The K-T asteroid didn't worry itself with random moths, why should we?
It's the first mass extinction event caused by one of the affected species.
Also not true, the Great Oxidation Event likely knocked out 80% of the species on earth in the paleoproterozoic due to cyanobacteria respiration
Except mosquitoes please. Fuck those guys until death kills them dead.
Dragonflys, bats and many other animals rely on that as a food source, then other animals rely on the animals eating mosquitoes. Mosquitoes also spread disease which can act as a natural population control for some species. Everything is interconnected in ecosystems. The animals present, the temperature and chemistry of the water, the depth and nutrition of the soil, the plants that grow there. A minor change can ripple throughout the ecosystem and cause major consequences long term. Some of those changes occur naturally, but for the most part humans change ecosystems faster than they can naturally react.
This isn't really true though, especially since the mosquitoes in question aren't even native to the Americas, and whole ecosystems evolved without them. I have also read multiple things about how mosquitoes don't actually make up much of the diet of these animals anyway, because they are tiny and provide almost no nutrients, these animals prefer most other insects before eating a mosquito
Ehhh, I recently posted elsewhere: about 80 species of mosquito carry dangerous (for human) diseases. The other 3400 are harmless if very mildly annoying. And all of those species share a niche with their harmless genera mates.
It's really really hard to kill just one species though, especially if they DO share an ecological niche with the species you don't want to kill.
This is why releasing sterilized individuals into wild populations seems so promising, it's species-specific
It's my understanding that ecologists generally agree we could eradicate human-biting mosquitos and it wouldn't cause any real problems. Yes, other species eat them, but they're not a critical species in any ecosystem, apparently.
You know how there's those stories of scientists introducing a species into an ecosystem for one reason or another, and all sorts of unintended consequences happen? Ever notice how those stories are all from around the 1950s and earlier? It's because we actually got pretty good at thinking through all of the possible significant impacts. We only introduce/eradicate species now when we know doing so is a good idea and have worked through the consequences. But I want to be clear that I agree with your sentiment. You shouldn't intentionally change an ecosystem without serious planning and consideration for what will happen when you do.
South America agrees with you.
Hard agree. It's the one extinction event I'll make an exception for
Didn't we JUST have moth-ers day too?
Value is not what is in the present but what could be in the future.
Unfortunately not all share this assessment 😭
Can someone do this then for humanity? 😯 We may start to struggle ourselves in the coming future...
Chickens, cows, pigs, and sheep would be extinct if we had no use for them.
Actually not even close to true for chickens. The Red Junglefowl, the species that gave rise to the domesticated chicken, is classified as Least Concern. As is the Grey Junglefowl, the Sri Lankan Junglefowl, and the Green Junglefowl that contributed to the gene pool. If you're talking about Gallus gallus domesticus itself, then I think that gets a fair bit murkier as they never did survive on their own in the wild. However, with a population of 26.5 Billion in 2023, I think it would take a lot for them to go extinct, and it certainly wouldn't happen overnight. It really varies in my opinion. Obviously types* bred for meat consumption or cage eggs are going to struggle to survive on their own. But I have a Bantum hen that looks and acts like a Junglefowl, being able to clear fly over a 6ft tall person. She's able to nest up high for the night, and is near impossible to catch. I strongly believe she'd manage to survive in the wild quite easily.
in addition pigs can survive on their own and in the colonial era they were often left on islands when ships landed and when another ship landed the local ecosystems would be decimated by the pigs as they would outcompete local species.
Feral pigs have also caused huge issues in Australia.
Yes but with what's happening in America right now there will be a lot less tourism.
I should have been clearer. If we didn't domesticate and have use for them then they would have been hunted to extinction long ago.
If we stopped eating eggs and eating chicken for some reason then the domestic chicken wouldn't be around anymore. They would kill off what is left in farms since they wouldn't make profit off them, then they would be gone.
Again, I don't think that's true. Junglefowl live in incredibly dense tropical locales that would make it very difficult to hunt them.
As well, I think the concept that we would kill all chickens off so they would therefore be extinct because we have no use for them is, well, counter to what this entire post is about and not really much of a thought experiment. You could say the same about dogs, or cats, or any other animal humans decide to decimate. Hell, even each other at times... Even with junglefowl we could burn down their habitat until there were none left.
They would be a different type of animal, like dogs and wolf. Domestication is a hell of a drug.
Can wild pigs even physically die?
I once watched this nature documentary named "Princess Mononoke" and can confirm that wild pigs continue to live on even after physical death.
They are all different, not cut from the same moth, if you will.
Enough people do care but we have to fight for everything to safe something.
I'd imagine for most creatures the food chain collapse part is a relevant reason.