• sycamore
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    678 months ago

    When I see a deer vs when I see a donkey

    • @CryptidBestiaryOP
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      348 months ago

      Yup, while they don’t collect pollen, they do visit flowers to find nectar for themselves. They inadvertently transfer pollen from plant to plant.

    • Nightwatch Admin
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      208 months ago

      No, the idea is that bees are useful because pollinators, and honey.
      However, wasps may not be the friendliest creatures around, but they are certainly useful too - like cleaning up corpses, leftovers, and last but not least they eat insects that we think of as plagues

      • @HolyDiver
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        208 months ago

        can’t live with em, can’t live without em 😔

        • @wreckedcarzz
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          78 months ago

          but have you tried to find out if we really can’t live without them? because I would definitely support the anti-wasp movement

          • @MintyAnt
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            88 months ago

            As they are insect hunters, yes their absence would fuck up our already damaged ecosystem. I would guess it would lead to a different insect getting out of control and causing tons of problems - like a non native leaf miner who then proceeds to multiply like crazy and obliterate all leaves off trees kind of deal.

          • @[email protected]
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            18 months ago

            Anti-mosquitoes first please. I have yet to hear a single good point in defense of mosquitoes (unless they just went down the memory hole.)

    • @benignintervention
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      8 months ago

      Check out the book (or audiobook) Endless Forms by Seirian Sumner! It’s a fascinating exploration of the different kinds of wasps and their role in their environments. For example, some figs can only be polite (typo: pollinated) but a certain species of wasp and some wasps use antibacterial compounds to coat their nests.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        That depends. How indepth is it? Are there pictures? I ask because I generally don’t like bugs. They give me the heebie-jeeies. Especially big insects or swarms of insects. Which is a shame because they are fascinating creatures regardless.

        • @benignintervention
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          28 months ago

          I honestly have no idea if there are pictures because I listened to it, but it does have a pretty accessible breakdown of their anatomy, physiology, and evolutionary biology. Like David Attenborough, but with more words instead of video, and more of the author’s story.

      • @Daft_ish
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        28 months ago

        Hard to tell if honest typos or just an AI

        • @benignintervention
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          38 months ago

          Honest typo. I keep using the swipe keyboard even though it sucks

    • @shalafi
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      28 months ago

      I figured 'em out. Seems that, despite their microscopic excuse for a brain, they have excellent pattern matching abilities. That’s important, because they’ll remember your face if you fuck with them.

      tl;dr Ignore them. And by ignore, I mean completely ignore. No swatting, staring, etc.

      My pet pig has no idea he’s “supposed” to be afraid of wasps, they’re not on his radar. And they don’t hassle him. I watched a nest grow on my porch, right over the door, didn’t bother me a bit.

      (And no, that doesn’t go for every species on planet Earth. Some are wildly aggressive, but I find the evil fuckers to mainly be hornets.)

  • Xero
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    8 months ago

    me when I see either: grabs flamethrower

  • uphillbothways
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    8 months ago

    Meanwhile, mosquitoes… pollinating, cleaning waterways as nymphs, females just needing the slightest amount of blood to lay a couple hundred eggs. Forgotten, maligned, made the focus of actual efforts to purposefully cause species extinction. ._.

    • Alto
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      308 months ago

      Probably because of just how much death they directly cause

      • uphillbothways
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        8 months ago

        Mosquitoes don’t directly cause death, though.
        They are susceptible to diseases. They pass those diseases on. Those diseases cause death.
        Bees cause more direct deaths due to anaphylactic shock from allergies to apitoxin.

        Mosquitoes just catch all the blame.

    • @[email protected]
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      108 months ago

      Not all mosquitoes bite humans. So, you could eradicate the biting variety, and a non-biting variety would step in to fill that ecological niche. I don’t see a downside.