OP:
Credits to LittleFuzzyWasp
Everyone thank OP for pollinating!
He’s a fucking wasp, he pollinates nothing but rot and death and misery.
What about ticks?
If nature doesn’t owe us safety, we don’t owe it kindness either.
What in the giving tree is this bullshit?
listen, i didn’t ask to be born with a functional aversion to isopods and insects in general, ok.
I didn’t want this shit, but i got it anyway.
They didn’t want you either, but here you are.
im pretty sure the insects don’t care, they keep showing up in my room and i keep killing them.
Of course nature doesn’t owe us safety. That’s why it’s up to us to ensure our own safety by killing it with fire.
Bees are like carpenters, they carry a knife but you’re not worried they might stab you for no reason.
Wasps are like meth heads.
They’re like meth head gang members that also call their gang to attack you after they do. That’s what terrifies me of them.
yeah, nature does not owe you safety, which is why i kill wasps on sight because I’m part of nature. get fucked, wasps, we all know you’re just fascist bees.
More wasp propaganda. Nature does not owe me safety. My house siding is NOT NATURE. I WILL REVEL IN THEIR DEATH THROES.
Bees, wasps, ok, got it.
But mosquitoes? I’be yet to find a biologist that would advocate for preservation of mosquitos. Kill them with fire.
Ehem
where is this from?
There’s a backstory that’s revealed throughout the first Lilo and Stitch movie that Agent Bubbles was in the CIA in Roswell NM in the 60s and was able to smooth over an intergalactic incident by convincing the intergalactic government that earth is a critical ecosystem for protecting the endangered mosquito and to classify Earth as a wildlife preserve.
So there’s jokes peppered throughout the film as Pleakley joins the escaped prisoner capture mission on Earth to ensure minimal disruption to the mosquito food chain.
In case its not obvious, I recently rewatched that movie with my kids
never watched it but the movie poster never suggested to me such a story! I thought stitch was just an ugly koala like animal
The first film is actually very worth watching. The TV series is worth paying attention to with your kids, at least for the first episode or two
Stitch is fucking awesome, wtf is this heresy
Curious how the non-humans will look in the live-action version coming out. They got Stitch right, at least.
almost right, still looks like an animated plush toy rather than an animal. they’re so close to getting out of the uncanny valley but didn’t quite make it
But the thing is, Stitch DOES look like a plush toy. To make him look realistic they’d have to change his design quite a bit.
he looks like a plush toy in the way that some cats and dogs do, not literally like he’s made of fabric and sewn together. He’s very explicitly organic what with the gene manipulation.
Mosquitos are one of the most prolific pollinators, I think you’d find most biologists would tell you this.
Damn, can’t even hate on mosquitos. Where will this ever end?
BTW I recently learned the itchiness is just allergies. Some people aren’t allergic to mosquito bites and donate their blood to them without consequences. Other than the odd transmitted disease, of course.
Frankly I’m waiting for humans to start infecting mosquitos with something instead of the other way around.
That thing we do where we dump genetically modified mosquitoes into an area to make sterile mosquitoes and kill them off is awesome because the gene dies out after a few years. It’d essentially a temporary and mild extinction we can do. It’s amazing because we don’t even need to decide if it’s correct to kill off a species.
It’s also worth noting that this technique has been used primarily in urban areas with introduced species of mosquitoes. It would have different effects if done in wild ecosystems on native species.
Shitty wasps like Yellow Jackets give almost all the other wasps a bad reputation. Yellow Jackets are mean and spiteful, even when they aren’t protecting their nest.
Most other eusocial wasps are pretty docile, unless you mess with their nest or really go out of your way to harass them.
In many parts of the world, like my own, there are far more species of solitary wasps than eusocial wasps. Solitary wasps are nearly all non-aggressive, they don’t have communal nests to defend, and they basically don’t have time to fuck around with stinging shit because they are too busy building a chamber for their eggs, collecting food for their upcoming progeny, and trying to stay fed and hydrated while doing it.
So what I’m getting at is that most wasps I encounter on a regular basis are pretty chill. Really, this goes for bees as well. Most of the ones I see on a regular basis are solitary types and non-aggressive. The most aggressive bees I tend to encounter are male carpenter bees. They are highly territorial and they’ll even buzz a human to scare them off. However, there’s no threat. Male bees and wasps cannot sting, they do not even have stingers.
The most aggressive bees I tend to encounter are male carpenter bees. They are highly territorial and they’ll even buzz a human to scare them off. However, there’s no threat.
No threat of stinging, anyway. They will absolutely wreak havoc on a wood framed house.
bzzzzbzzzBZZZZZ
Yes, sir, I see you. I see your little pile of sawdust on the fence, too. No, I’m not going to screw with it. I’m just installing this gate latch."
bzzzbzbbzbbzbzbzbzbzzzzz
This would go a lot faster if I didn’t have to keep ducking.
BZZZZZZ
Okay, I’m done, jeez.
BZZZZZzzzbzzzzbzzzz
…aaaaand under the fascia board it goes. Shit.
it’s kinda funny how the core issue of these posts is really just that people say “wasp” when they mean “hornet”
wasps are fine, most wasps are barely noticable and couldn’t give less of a toss about our existence.
hornets are the terrible ones, especially the kinds that grow way way way way larger than they have any right of doing, at least craneflies have the common decency to be thin and seemingly incapable of guiding their flight.Ok, fine, educate me, what do wasps contribute to the environment?
They eat the things that eat the things you eat.
(e.g. aphids, caterpillars and mfcking thrips and leaf miners)
PS: ok just one more: if bees are the plant matchmakers, wasps are broad spectrum pest exterminators.
Yeah… well the also eat my peaches and plums. So they eat my food, and that just ain’t cool. On top of that they set up shop by my front door and then sting me for just walking into MY house where I was letting them make a little room of their own. Not no more. Them bitchass mfers are back in hell where they belong, and my world is much better since I opened that portal for them.
People who post shit like this are being intentionally obtuse and provocative. “Wasp” is a big tent classification, and what everyone else thinks of are a few specific creatures.
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant;
Vast majority of things that are “wasps” don’t bite/sting and many are important pollinators.
The bitey stingy ones? Fuck em.
You lost me at the end. Now you’re the one being obtuse and provocative. Just because something stings or bites doesn’t mean it isn’t good for the environment.
Stupid question.
Could a wasp be bred/altered to not have a sting, or at best not have a sting that can penetrate human skin? It’s akin to domestication, but we selectively breed wasps to not be such cunts.
isnt this like just like, wasp eugenics
I’m all for it.
I’m unashamedly a vespidaephobic eugenicist.
fuck it why not
I feel like humans are the only species whose extinction would not have a negative effect on Earth’s ecosystem (quite possibly a positive one)
Aedes mosquitos serve no known ecological purpose. They are purely parasitic, are not unique pollinators (as in, any plant they do pollinate is also pollinated by other species), and do not make up a substantial portion of the diet of any species.
I would venture to say their extinction would have a positive effect on the Ecosystem by closing that transmission vector for the diseases they carry.
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how many billionaires have mosquitoes killed so far? that is the correct question 𓆤
Humans are not bad for the environment. Capitalism is bad for the environment. Before imperialism and capitalism, most places on earth were populated by indigenous humans who actually protected the land they relied on to survive. There was no drive to exploit the land for all its resources, and there was an existential motivator for preserving nature as best as possible.
See OP’s comment in a different thread: https://lemmy.world/comment/11768484
arguably, if we’re talking about what’s bad for the planet, you could easily just make the argument that humans are over populated due to our advances in science and engineering allowing us to both live longer, and protect ourselves from the various threats in the environment meant to keep is at a reasonable level of population.
Presumably, mother nature never intended for species to be consciously countering her very own playbook at every fucking turn possible.
Mother nature never intended anything because mother nature is just random chance and multiplication of the best fit
overpopulation is a fascist dogwhistle, just so you’re aware
this is true, it’s also a dog whistle for many other things.
This is a more philosophical consideration, rather than a political one though, mostly just a tidbit on how everything is relative and nothing actually matters lol.
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Fun fact: I’ve been doing a lot of reading about indigenous peoples, and one of the constant themes is how those peoples’ traditional life ways were net positives for the environment. In California, for instance, Native American agriculture involved controlled burns every twenty years or so - keeping the soil fertile and encouraging a healthy mix of the “wild” species they cared for. They had been doing that for maybe 20,000 years. So when “environmentalists” in the early 20th century decided native lifeways were primitive and bad for the environment, and established enormous national parks where natives were no longer permitted to hunt or gather and fires were stamped out immediately, those national parks turned into tinder boxes - instead of the controlled burns the plants had evolved to take advantage of, we ended up with decades of fuel building up in the undergrowth, turning into massive uncontrolled burns that killed everything, and then invasive species rolled up and finished off the native plants.
“But untouched pristine wilderness”… No. That never existed. That’s a racist trope spread by white colonists who wanted to think of Native Americans as enemies of nature in order to justify genocide. It’s the opposite of the noble savage myth and equally racist. Fuck John Muir.
Over and over again, when you compare areas where indigenous people had lived in their traditional lifeways to areas where the people were killed or exiled but the environment was left untouched, the areas where humans were genocided have less species diversity, less fertility, and less healthy environments overall.
And if we, 21st century humanity, can use our science and technology to rediscover the old knowledge, we can take up our previous role and manage the environment around us for the benefit of all. Hell, in a lot of environments we have a duty to do so - we brought the rabbits to Australia, who’s going to get rid of them if not for us?
And all that rant is to say, humans aren’t the problem. Capitalism is the problem. Greed is the problem. Humans have lived as beneficial parts of the environment for approximately 150,000 years and we can do so again.
Is there a bee-ologist who can tell me if hornets are wasps, or are they their own thing?
The wasps around here have always been pretty chill around me, but I get wary around hornets.
So, first of all a bee-ologist can only help you marginally, as bees are in the same order as wasps, hornets and ants but relatively far removed from them. Hornets (genus vespa) and classic wasps (genus vespula) on the other hand share the same subfamily vespinae and are both considered wasps. This was a nice short dive into wikipedia. As I am a crystallographer any real entomologist can feel free to correct me.
