250,000 Insects?
On April 20 I wrote about the adverts that are running in bus shelters raising awareness of the seal hunt. Another thought occurred to me yesterday.
We have been driving down to Anaheim. In Santa Nella, California, after pumping gas at about $4 a gallon, I started washing the windshield to remove the carcasses of all the dead flies, wasps, butterflies, grasshoppers and whatever else we killed on our drive down. I noticed the blood on the side mirrors (possibly a well fed mosquito had been obliterated by the 2008 Honda Civic). My thoughts moved on to the millions of cars that fly down the highways of North America everyday. I then thought about the number of insects that likely get killed that way. I imagine we are talking about millions of insects a day. Also hundreds or more of different species as well.
So now we can compare this to the 250,000 seals. Clearly (and understandably) humans have a greater affinity to cute animals. But when you compare one seal hunt a year of 250,000 seals (I imagine of little variety) to the millions of insects and the wide variety of species maybe we should be worrying about them as well? After all insects provide an invaluable service via pollination and honey production.
That's the thought of the day.
We have been driving down to Anaheim. In Santa Nella, California, after pumping gas at about $4 a gallon, I started washing the windshield to remove the carcasses of all the dead flies, wasps, butterflies, grasshoppers and whatever else we killed on our drive down. I noticed the blood on the side mirrors (possibly a well fed mosquito had been obliterated by the 2008 Honda Civic). My thoughts moved on to the millions of cars that fly down the highways of North America everyday. I then thought about the number of insects that likely get killed that way. I imagine we are talking about millions of insects a day. Also hundreds or more of different species as well.
So now we can compare this to the 250,000 seals. Clearly (and understandably) humans have a greater affinity to cute animals. But when you compare one seal hunt a year of 250,000 seals (I imagine of little variety) to the millions of insects and the wide variety of species maybe we should be worrying about them as well? After all insects provide an invaluable service via pollination and honey production.
That's the thought of the day.
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