|
Moses_Davidson
Non-Prophet



Registered: 05/21/20
Posts: 613
Last seen: 3 months, 28 days
|
Eating Bugs for a Greener Earth
#28467840 - 09/13/23 05:02 PM (4 months, 12 days ago) |
|
|
If fruits evolve to taste good to suit the flavor preferences of the animals that spread their seeds,... and bugs actually taste good, like nuts,... and bug-eating reptiles evolved long before mammals who much later developed a taste for nuts...
Does this mean that nuts have evolved to taste like bugs?
-------------------- "In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable." --Sir Winston Churchill "The world may not only be stranger than we suppose, it may be stranger than we can suppose." J.B.S. Haldane "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." Mark Twain
|
redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,530
|
|
nope
--------------------
_ đź§ _
|
BrendanFlock
Stranger


Registered: 06/01/13
Posts: 4,216
Last seen: 2 days, 13 hours
|
|
Put a bunch of insects in a blender..
Good source of protein!
|
jack_straw2208
Doctor



Registered: 02/12/07
Posts: 3,115
Loc: Earth
|
Re: Eating Bugs for a Greener Earth [Re: BrendanFlock]
#28468207 - 09/13/23 09:28 PM (4 months, 12 days ago) |
|
|
Do they eat cheese in china? Cause they cherish plenty of insect dishes over there but I'm not sure they're even all that big on milk!
-------------------- If you can’t tell what you desperately need, it’s probably sleep.
|
Moses_Davidson
Non-Prophet



Registered: 05/21/20
Posts: 613
Last seen: 3 months, 28 days
|
|
Quote:
jack_straw2208 said: Do they eat cheese in china? Cause they cherish plenty of insect dishes over there but I'm not sure they're even all that big on milk!
Yeah its so weird. They have this huge new class of people developing into a middle class in China. They are Westernizing. They want to own cars and have TVs and all of that. This includes our bad habits... so they have been learning about Pizza, Cheeseburgers, and Tacos.
The Chinese government wants kids to all drink milk so the population can all be tall like us, but they just can't get enough milk. They don't have the infrastructure for it. Also, they test milk strength differently than we do-- in the US we test for milkfat content to determine quality. They use a chemical test, and some producers figured out how to cheat it by adding malamine. So they were adding so much malamine that a whole bunch of school kids died, which left the public with a distrust of Chinese milk.
-------------------- "In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable." --Sir Winston Churchill "The world may not only be stranger than we suppose, it may be stranger than we can suppose." J.B.S. Haldane "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." Mark Twain
|
RJ Tubs 202



Registered: 09/20/08
Posts: 6,010
Loc: USA
Last seen: 3 minutes, 19 seconds
|
|
Quote:
Moses_Davidson said:
They have this huge new class of people developing into a middle class in China. They are Westernizing. They want to own cars and have TVs and all of that. This includes our bad habits... so they have been learning about Pizza, Cheeseburgers, and Tacos.
Diabetes (and complications from diabetes) contribute to about 1 million deaths in China each year. 40 million Americas have diabetes.
Defund US healthcare. It is really really harmful.
|
dreamninja
Stranger

Registered: 04/30/23
Posts: 34
Last seen: 14 hours, 30 minutes
|
Re: Eating Bugs for a Greener Earth [Re: RJ Tubs 202]
#28486906 - 09/29/23 05:10 PM (3 months, 27 days ago) |
|
|
Bug bars. Would be fun to eat
|
sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
|
|
Quote:
Moses_Davidson said: If fruits evolve to taste good to suit the flavor preferences of the animals that spread their seeds,... and bugs actually taste good, like nuts,... and bug-eating reptiles evolved long before mammals who much later developed a taste for nuts...
Does this mean that nuts have evolved to taste like bugs?
A lot of bugs aren't evolved to taste good, and try their best to taste extremely unpalatable, often displaying bright colours to warn predators. It's called aposematism.
Quote:
Aposematism is the use of warning coloration to inform potential predators that an animal is poisonous, venomous, or otherwise dangerous. Oftentimes orange or red patterns may be warnings (as in coral snakes), but do not assume that red is always a warning (see Chapter 7
But a lot of bugs evolve to taste poor, and are coloured brightly to show it through apotism. some non poisonous species even mimic the colouring and patterns of bugs like wasps too, from mimicking hover flies to moth species etc.

Crow butterflies for example eat the latex filled saps of certain plants that make them inpallatable to birds. It doesn't kill the birds but they learn quickly from youth not to eat the black and white butterflies.
This is an example of Batesian mimicry.

Quote:
Batesian Mimicry occurs when a harmless/ palatable insect looks like and acts like a harmful/unpalatable insect in order to avoid predation.
To answer the question, I reckon the wasp would taste fine, the mimic moth would be fine.
The defended model would be inedible, and the butterfly mimics could be a mixed bag.
If you can choose which bug tastes like nuts, we can try and get to the bottom of why that might evolutionarily be.
I think it would really depend on the diet of the bug though. Like how poisonous dart frogs in captivity don't develop any poison because they get it from digestion certain ant species in the wild by extracting from ant anatomy like formic acids.
So if a bug tastes poor, it might be because it's eating plants or other invertebrates that they can safely metabolise.
If a cricket at a farm is fed oats and carrots from birth, it'll probably taste better than a wild one.
I want to taste some bugs but I haven't been exposed to their market.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
Edited by sudly (09/30/23 05:05 AM)
|
Milleresque
Stranger
Registered: 04/10/22
Posts: 326
Last seen: 2 days, 1 hour
|
Re: Eating Bugs for a Greener Earth [Re: sudly] 1
#28487373 - 09/30/23 06:11 AM (3 months, 27 days ago) |
|
|
It’s difficult to wrap my head around the breadth of the fell sociological/philosophical/anthropomorphic strangeness that underlies the prospect of eating bugs—not to mention the backhanded irony.
From plain dwellers and hunters, villagers and communities, we sourced the richest of animal proteins from herd-loving plain dwellers. Now, growing more swarm-like ie bipartisan though we are, we are also popping out new copies of ourselves too fast for a sustainable herding plain dweller to accommodate, without them apparently affecting the atmosphere with their farts. We spawn like locusts. And I’m not saying people are a bad thing, not at all.
But and so we move on, still decimating the seas because fish farts don’t count. We raze the Amazon for soy and Indonesia for palm oil. We want to keep the climate comfy for US, so we look at the bugs, more plentiful than ourselves, and we think: NEXT!
I’ve eaten crickets and they’re delicious. And I see no problem it, overall. As long as I’m allowed a steak, too. There’s just something to the push of this that, well it strikes me how it does.
|
RJ Tubs 202



Registered: 09/20/08
Posts: 6,010
Loc: USA
Last seen: 3 minutes, 19 seconds
|
Re: Eating Bugs for a Greener Earth [Re: sudly]
#28488958 - 10/01/23 02:45 PM (3 months, 26 days ago) |
|
|
How would eating bugs create a "greener" Earth?
|
redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,530
|
Re: Eating Bugs for a Greener Earth [Re: RJ Tubs 202]
#28489109 - 10/01/23 05:03 PM (3 months, 25 days ago) |
|
|
our poo would turn green
--------------------
_ đź§ _
|
sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
|
|
Not sure why unless they were doused in food colouring. Plus it's fruit and veggies like Dragon fruit and pumpkin that'll turn your poop purple or yellow.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
|
sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
|
Re: Eating Bugs for a Greener Earth [Re: RJ Tubs 202]
#28489164 - 10/01/23 05:38 PM (3 months, 25 days ago) |
|
|
Quote:
RJ Tubs 202 said: How would eating bugs create a "greener" Earth?
And the greeness of bugs is related to the amount of land they require and the cost of farming them being lower. Bugs can be a cheaper more space efficient meat alternative.
With agriculture you're killing millions of bugs anyway so I wouldn't agree with any ethical concerns from vegetarians.
So less land, water and feed grain could be used for bug farming, but a lot of the land used for pasture isn't useful for much anyway and usually isn't good for vegetable farming.
So a good way to use less land and resources to make an alternative meat source.
I'd like to see them find a recipe for cricket burgers.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
|
RJ Tubs 202



Registered: 09/20/08
Posts: 6,010
Loc: USA
Last seen: 3 minutes, 19 seconds
|
Re: Eating Bugs for a Greener Earth [Re: sudly]
#28489836 - 10/02/23 10:01 AM (3 months, 25 days ago) |
|
|
One potential problem is that insects are very low in fats.
Fats are very important for good human nutrition.
|
redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,530
|
Re: Eating Bugs for a Greener Earth [Re: RJ Tubs 202]
#28489927 - 10/02/23 11:46 AM (3 months, 25 days ago) |
|
|
--------------------
_ đź§ _
|
|