HUGE WORM

[Vene]

This thread needs more invertebrate sex.

[Iason Ouabache]

This thread needs more invertebrate sex.

[Thurnez Isa]

This thread needs more invertebrate sex.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh2dTIRReXU&feature=channel_page

posted this in irc
this is actually incredibly pretty

[Kai]

I seriously doubt anyone could provide me with a compelling reason why slugs should be allowed to continue to exist.

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it? If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

[Elder Iptuous]

I disagree with that quote.  it seems to be a 'best of all possible worlds' type argument, but are we not better off eliminating certain diseases?  Then why not certain 'pests', even if they do serve some beneficial function?  My cost benefit analysis of mosquitos says that bats and swallows can learn to eat some other damned thing...

[Vene]

Because you never know what you're going to find.  Who knows, maybe mosquitoes produce an enzyme that is life-saving.  The bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes makes an enzyme known as streptokinase and it is used to break up potentially fatal clots.  Mind you, this is the same organism that can cause serious post-surgery infections as well as strep throat, pneumonia, and meningitis.  Even when smallpox was eradicated small samples of it were kept for study.  This is all ignoring potential ecological harm from going out and killing organisms we perceive as pests.

[Elder Iptuous]

Yeah. the small sample for study purposes makes sense.  the paralyzing fear of "what could happen if it goes wrong?!" just doesn't work for me.  It sounds like the guys that are paranoid about the LHC. (admittedly not as bad, though)  I say we do a cost benefit analysis and go where that leads us. 
hopefully to a world without mosquitoes and the cockroaches that infest houses.
fuckem.

[Cain]

I seriously doubt anyone could provide me with a compelling reason why slugs should be allowed to continue to exist.

Using them to assassinate immunologists from the inside, like on Fringe:

[Kai]

I disagree with that quote.  it seems to be a 'best of all possible worlds' type argument, but are we not better off eliminating certain diseases?  Then why not certain 'pests', even if they do serve some beneficial function?  My cost benefit analysis of mosquitos says that bats and swallows can learn to eat some other damned thing...

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

Both quotes were from Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. He was a far greater person than you or I, and he got it.

Leopold was less appealing to what you are talking about Vene and more appealing to ecological health, because who knows really how ecology works, or what hinges on what? Considering how often we fuck ecology up, and how arrogant we are as a species, its a good perspective to have.

He was more or less the founder of modern environmentalism. Not the PETA bullshit, but the real deal conservation and natural resource practices for the health of the land and all its inhabitants. Land ethic, what he called it.

[Elder Iptuous]

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

Both quotes were from Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. He was a far greater person than you or I, and he got it.

So, should a thing run afoul of this criteria and be 'wrong' due the course of natural events, should we work to change or eliminate it?  Or does that only apply if it is directly the result of our actions in the first place?
See, i would say that mosquitoes detract from the 'beauty' of the biotic community.  A mosquito entomologist may disagree, as may bats, though.
what is stability in the arena of life?  isn't life dynamically unstable at all times?  don't prolonged periods of environmental stability lead to speciation and specialization that then makes the creatures (usually rendered more interesting and beautiful for it) to be more susceptible to destruction by smaller changes in said environment?
I guess i'm saying that his quote sounds nice, but delineates nothing.  But i guess i don't get it.

mosquitoes and roaches and ticks all.  fukem.

[Reginald Ret]

why destroy when you can control? http://www.mosquito-netting.com/predators.html

[Vene]

Leopold was less appealing to what you are talking about Vene and more appealing to ecological health, because who knows really how ecology works, or what hinges on what? Considering how often we fuck ecology up, and how arrogant we are as a species, its a good perspective to have.

Yeah, I caught that (and fully agree).  Messing with things we don't fully understand is just dangerous.  We've caused more than enough harm to our planet and its ecology, I see no reason to seek out ways of causing damage.  I just think that there are other reasons that show how something we see as intrinsically harmful to us can be beneficial.

[Kai]

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

Both quotes were from Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. He was a far greater person than you or I, and he got it.

So, should a thing run afoul of this criteria and be 'wrong' due the course of natural events, should we work to change or eliminate it?  Or does that only apply if it is directly the result of our actions in the first place?
See, i would say that mosquitoes detract from the 'beauty' of the biotic community.  A mosquito entomologist may disagree, as may bats, though.
what is stability in the arena of life?  isn't life dynamically unstable at all times?  don't prolonged periods of environmental stability lead to speciation and specialization that then makes the creatures (usually rendered more interesting and beautiful for it) to be more susceptible to destruction by smaller changes in said environment?
I guess i'm saying that his quote sounds nice, but delineates nothing.  But i guess i don't get it.

mosquitoes and roaches and ticks all.  fukem.

Yeah, lets get rid of all mosquitoes, never mind that they are important filter feeders in lentic habitats as larvae and a food source for all kinds of things, vertebrate and invertebrate. Lets get rid of all roaches, never mind that only a very small number of species are associated with people, the rest being nondamaging and beneficial, but lets get rid of a whole order of organisms anyway. And ticks? I honestly don't know much about them, besides what you hear about vectors of disease and the synapomorphy of them all being ectoparasites. However, I don't dismiss them. Keeping all the cogs and wheels is important, cause you don't really know how it works. You start taking things out here with pesticides (which incidentally, pesticides seldom if ever target single groups; a -cide is usually broad spectrum that fucks up everything) and you don't know what will happen. Not that you could. I think you'd quickly find that even if it was a good idea to destroy a "pest" species or group, it wouldn't work out, and at the end you'd have super pests and lots of collateral damage.

Humans, all. fukem.


See, I can do it too.

[Kai]

The role of ectoparasites ecologically is often to weaken prey items to predation and disease. I say role, but of course ecology is all incidental (which doesn't mean it doesn't WORK). It works against overpopulation, as parasites and disease congregate where host densities are the highest. Otherwise we'd all over run with deer. All organisms except the autotrophs are predators (or parasites) of another organism. herbivores are plant predators, carnivores are predators of animals, parasites are predators that don't immediately kill their hosts, if at all. Who am I to judge which is better, or right, or more important? The termites rend cellulose into detritus but also cause ruin to houses. The dung beetles expertly clean up the droppings of large mammals (and if you don't think thats important, read something about this problem in Australia before dung beetles were imported), yet they also damage turfgrass. Ants aerate the soil but also invade our houses and cover our lawns with mounds of stinging. Fungi cause the rot thats necessary for all things, yet they also cause disease and damage.

Humans have an amazing intellect and capacity for creative construction, yet we tend to fuck up ecology to where our soils are barren, our waters on fire and our air caustic. Its not just the direct effects of polution either, its that and the ecological fuckup.

So, I'm more than content to keep the cogs and wheels and opt for preventative control rather than wholesale destruction.

[Triple Zero]

Messing with things we don't fully understand is just dangerous one of the things that makes Science FUN.

fixed.

cause really. that's humans. we mess with things we don't fully understand. it's what we do. it's what got us where we are now. which doesn't mean it's always right, but it does seem to WORK.