1y ago

Car ‘splatometer’ tests reveal huge decline in number of insects -- thanks to cars (from a 2020 report)

www.theguardian.com

Car ‘splatometer’ tests reveal huge decline in number of insects

19 comments

The article doesn’t implicate cars as the main reason, or even necessarily indirectly, it does mention climate change which can be linked with cars but I think it’s secondary to the abundant use of pesticides and general attempts to reduce bug populations than cars themselves.
That being said, fuck cars.
Yeah, as many bugs as cars kill, there's no way they have such a huge effect on their population. Pesticides and loss of habitat are mostly to blame.
- The headline is terrible (the article is fine). No one is claiming the cars kill the insects (apart from, possibly, the OP given the community they chose to post this in). They're using cars to measure the decline.
- I dunno... When I go for a walk along the local highway in Spring (like now) I'll usually see a dead bee around every... ten or twenty feet. And the bees are light enough that they get blown around by semi trucks passing, so they probably get blown off the road in short order.
Pesticides, mono crops, pollution are what is killing the insects, cars splatting them are mostly just an easy indicator of the decline
Nothing to worry about, just an essential link in the food chain dropping like flies.
This may be mean of me, but I cannot hate this. Insects are absolutely horrendous creatures, in my opinion, and the fact that there are less of them now than there used to be seems crazy. If I hate them so much now, I'm glad I did not live a hundred years ago when they were worse.
- Bugs are also the bottom of the food chain and without them entire ecosystems would collapse. They also fill many unique roles in the ecosystems like breaking down old organic wastes/other dead organisms and keeping plants and animal species in line through disease or other means.
  Without bugs we have no fish, no fresh soil, significantly less pollination and probably a thousand other problems that bugs currently take care of.
  
  Don't forget pollination!
  
  My big gripe is flying bugs such as flies, wasps, gnats, etc. Wasps and hornets are aggressive and sting. Not fun.
- For me i only really hate wasps, mosquitos and fruitflies
- Yeah, I understand bugs fill many critical niches of a healthy biosphere, but that doesn’t mean I need to like them. Their direct impact is as pests, annoyances, disease carriers
  
  But aren't they cute

19 comments