Of course it had to be Japan

Not to say that there aren’t other countries that have no problem feeding poison to kids. Well, at lest the people giving it to the kids eat it to so at least they’re not hypocrite in that area.

*60 year old Oden anyone?*

The sad thing is, even though we say that we support the individual (and Japan supports the group), it doesn’t matter if we’re miss informed or not informed at all.

I’m glad that this vid was made (though the makers seemed more interested in a adrenaline rush), and we learn about the monstrosities that humanity has inflicted on the earth. Eating fish so fast that we’ll wipe it out? Geez.

yet, the people that should hear won’t hear it. I don’t know how it is now with all that has happened to Japan since the make of the vid. I’m still irked about captured dolphins for sea world. Unless its for preservation reasons and its on open large areas, I see no reason why we still hold animals in capture. I love animals, but I’d rather see them in the natural then behind walls.

-Laurie Thomas

Ovefishing much? Why not bugs?

Today I would like to point out topics from last weeks blog and combine them with this one. Since both blogs will discuss overfishing, I would like to bring up a happy possibility on how overfishing and other excessive farming operations can be put to a slow down.

In my last blog I mentioned how, because of overfishing, places in the ocean, such as Japan, were becoming dead zones. The only animals that find these zones hospital are lower-classed animals such as jellyfish (which are still editable to humans). Upon further research, I found out that this isn’t just a growing concern, but has already happened. In 1992, the Northern Cod Fishery in Newfoundland, Canada, collapsed and became a dead zone. 40,00 people lost their job because the cod never returned. (http://overfishing.org/pages/Overfishing_in_one_minute.php?w=pages )
It was a relief in class to see that fishermen using nets were trying their best to avoid hooking birds by using foil(?). It is still a concern, however, for other animals within the deep that are being caught, like turtles and fish that aren’t usually eaten (I can’t think of any, except for the Blob fish, maybe).
I think there is a wiser alternative than overfishing and our country’s problem with destructive farming. Bugs.

After some light researching, I found that bugs are an excellent alternative to red meats, and may be on our plates soon regardless of how “icky” our culture finds them.

Referred to ask a “mini-livestock”.  Insects and other bugs  are more efficient with their food, needing far less of it than the cow or pig, and, when you compare the same amount of insect meat to domesticated meat, the amount of protein will either be the same or more with significantly less fat. If eating bugs is encouraged, like grasshoppers, a common delicacy in other cultures, pesticides could be used less. Domesticated bugs would require less land than farm animals, and emit less greenhouse gas. (http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2011-08-15#folio=038)

There appear to be no negative effects from an insect diet.What’s the problem then? Why isn’t this being done?

Culture.

American culture, to be specific, has been brained washed into thinking that bugs are gross, monstrous, and killed on the spot. But, culture can be persuaded to change under certain circumstances. Language is a good step to start with if we want make people more comfortable with eating bugs for the greater good of the world. As suggested in this article: http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2011-08-15#folio=038 simply calling bugs by their latin names will make people unaware that they’re eating a “gross” cricket, but the fancy and exotic Gryllus assimilis. As artists we can create images of people nonchalantly eating bugs (or food made up of ground up bugs) and picture it as the norm and good thing to do for the planet. Presentation of the meal is also of great importance. I showed some of my classmates the picture above, and, although it was presented in a fine manner, they would prefer not to eat the bugs, or at least have them hidden within the rice.

Come on. A shrimp has more legs than a grass hopper and people eat that shit like candy.

And you’re eating bugs already.

Your peanut butter has bug legs in it. Same thing with your bread. You might as well eat insects and claim that you were doing it before it became mainstream.

Under the Sea

It boggles my mind that we still put so much emphasis on space exploration when there is so much unexplored ocean left on earth. There is so much we could be learning about evolution from the variety of extreme life forms miles underwater, and studying extremophile bacteria and other simple microorganisms that exist in insane conditions on our own planet makes a lot more sense than spending billions to reach fruitless planets. And deep-sea creatures are already alien enough to be rich subjects of study. It’s incredible that they survive effortlessly in conditions found nowhere on land, and I wonder if it’s the water that enables them to do that.

Studying how they came to live in such extremes would be very interesting. Were they pushed further and further into a niche to avoid competition for food and resources? Did they simply evolve parallel to creatures in less harsh conditions from scratch? Especially in the case of crabs, shrimp, and other crustaceans, which look exactly like their shallow-water counterparts but could probably not survive in such an easy environment.

The deep sea also holds great potential for humanity. Who knows what kind of beneficial bacteria is found down there, or what we can learn about diseases or evolution or biology from the unstudied creatures that live there that may come to help us as a species. We could carefully be expanding into deep-sea pods or other underwater environments made to coexist with the huge, very empty reaches of underwater space, rather than look into colonizing the moon or something much more ambitious. It simply blows my mind that a single year of NASA’s space budget could be used to find deep-sea study for hundreds of years, and to me, it feels like a tremendous waste of opportunity for this generation and generations to come.

Mimicry

After viewing the video today I looked up some of the other camouflaging animals that I heard of .

Some are the pygmy seahorse, common baron caterpillar, mossy leaf-tailed gecko, jaguar, tawny frogmouth, stone fish, katydid, Egyptian nightjar, stick insect, arctic fox, arctic hare, and chameleon.

However the are the animals that uses the odd sort of camouflage the video described as “mimicry”.  One such animal that strives toward safety by using mimicry is the dresser crab, which uses the Velcro like fuzz on its exoskeleton to stick virtually any form of small debris or foliage to camouflage itself. This small crab belongs to the Majidae family, and makes its home in the subtidal/interdial areas around the coast of Australia. When studied in a captive environment, the scientists decided to test out their camouflage by surrounding them with multiple materials. Such as organic materials like seaweed and pebbles and inorganic materials like denim and legos. Each time the crabs would discard their camouflage to nibble on the new material and place them on their velcro backs.

And yet another animal, that’s actually very well known, has the same attributes of the octopus and cuttlefish and has been the subject of some studies have been focused on how well the crab can mimic its surroundings by putting it in a man made environment as oppose to a natural one.

The flounder, a species of flatfish (no duh) are found at the bottoms of coastal lagoons and estuaries of the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There are several different species of flounder including the Gulf Flounder and the Olive Flouder.

Flounders are actually born looking like a normal fish, but as their life progresses into adulthood they begin to favor one side of their body, causing their eyes to actually migrate to the upper side of the body.

As you can see the flounder can’t comprehend man-made shapes.