Very nice and a bit of a surprise to me. I hope they are correct.
But unless some form of full inspections or spraying N/S America wide for containers coming from overseas, we will probably have more of these.
With the direction/trend of the "US Gov." being run as a business for the past 40 years, I believe we could very well see these hornets arrive in other areas.
IIRC, there is a insect in the East that is killing millions of trees which arrived 10 or 20 years ago. I forgot the details but eradicating them is now impossible.
Is it really worse than the members of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_beetle subfamily? They are able to destroy whole forests if the trees are under stress (drought, pollution, acid rain) already. But they should be nothing new.
> With the direction/trend of the "US Gov." being run as a business for the past 40 years, ...
Businesses that do get $37 trillion in debt go bankrupt. That government lovers managed to make believe it's normal for governments to go ever more into debt to then tax everybody through the inflation "hidden" tax is one of the biggest travesty of our time.
The richer oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere in a previous geological era favoured the development of very large insects. Some wingspans attained 70cm! But the evolution of insectivorous birds likely favoured the smaller, nimbler insect variants.[1]
And then there is historical climate change as factor, not to mention K-Pg Extinction. [2,3]
>The richer oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere in a previous geological era favoured the development of very large insects. Some wingspans attained 70cm!
This makes me wonder: what did these insects taste like?
Notice that humans already eat several animals that are basically very large insects: shrimp/prawns, crabs, and lobsters. According to a quick google search, these crustaceans are basically a sister group to insects, and interestingly are more closely related to insects than spiders are.
However, humans generally don't think of insects as appetizing meals, to put it mildly, while lobsters are considered a delicacy, and shrimp, crabs, and other crustaceans are not only commonly eaten, but are somewhat expensive food items.
Of course, one of the big differences between insects and these crustaceans is the size: even small shrimp are very large compared to just about any insect, so most people generally don't eat the shell, but only the fleshy insides. This is even more true with lobsters, where the shell is very thick and hard and inedible. Doing this with a beetle or grasshopper isn't so easy.
So if prehistoric insects could be so large, did they resemble sea crustaceans more (as far as having thicker shells, and more easily-separated meat)? And would humans find them tasty if we could somehow resurrect these giant insects today?
There are plenty of places in the world where people do think of insects as tasty meals.
I’ve eaten a variety of land arthropods, and many were quite good.
While it took
some mental fortitude to eat a deep fried scorpion, the flavor was really good. I’d describe it as smoky, nutty bean jerky paste inside crunchy fried chicken skin.
I’d describe silk worm pupae fried with butter as having a flavor akin to nutty cheese.
Grilled giant water bugs have a floral camphor note, but i find the wings a bit papery.
There were these grubs/pupae that i had deep fried somewhere in rural thailand that were extraordinary. They had a nutty flavor and popped in your mouth. I have no idea what they were, but I could easily see having them instead of popcorn while watching a movie.
Crickets grilled with in corn husks with basil and garlic are divine. The taste is subtle and nutty.
These topic-adjacent expert responses just reek of point harvesting by an LLM, I didn't do any such downvoting, but in the last year I've changed to this viewpoint.
It's generally just barely on topic, generic fluff. Anything similar could have been posted, topic adjacent, without really contributing to the discussion. Remember we are on a discussion forum, not a place to dump data.
Good y'all, however much I (born human and have all my shots) may have the misfortune to attract downvotes, I'm not a fershlugginer LLM. (Not sure what this says about my social skills, no wonder my dance card is M.T.) I do think that it was an interesting addition to the discussion of giant buglies. I personally had never thought about how predation by birds would have pressured prehistoric insects... and made our feathered friends so specialised and good at what they do.
I don't think you are! I was only moved to comment by the implication upthread that an informative LLM-generated comment might be welcome here. But yes, another HN norm is not making insinuations about commenters on threads (if people have concerns, they're meant to email hn@yc about it). And yet another norm is not to drive threads into their own navels with metacommentary, so here's where I should shut up.
There's the leaderboard. Though the one time I noticed I'd showed up on it (others have long since overtaken me), it felt more like a warning I was spending too much time here.
I didn't know there was a leader board but now that I've looked at it I'm kind of disgusted by the fact that 20-ish percent of it is made up of names that are recognizable in an "oh, it's that guy who's always posting low effort links or riding the coat tails of a popular comment" way.
In about 20 years there will be a large movement to bring the hornet back because a subsection of society thinks their eradication caused some uptick of reported birth defects.
doctors want to put needles in your arm bigger than the needles of the hornet, but they want the hornet gone! Afraid of a little honest competition says I!
The headline conjures up an image of one giant hornet, rampaging through US cities like Godzilla, carrying a hockey stick to underline its northern/Canadian affiliation.
The visit was a few months afterwards, and he changed the air filters without comment. If it was still alive, or mutated into something ungodly, I would've known. Unless the mechanic is now host to something worse, and that's the reason he didn't speak... I think I'll change mechanic for good measure.
Not the same Asian hornet, in Europe we have Vespa velutina vs mandarinia in the PNW.
Our invasion was traced back to 2004 when a queen was supposedly brought from China to France through the port of Bordeaux. The spread is very much not controlled in Mediterranean countries, but I believe beekeepers have adapted.
Why can agricultural interests get their shit together on eradicating a harmful species while when it comes to human health, eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes leads to endless hand wringing about playing god and whatnot?
What ever happened to that project to build automated mosquito laser zappers? Didn't Bill Gates's foundation have a project to do this, by tracking them based on their wing-flapping frequency (which apparently is very particular to that species of mosquito) and then burning their wings off with a precisely targeted laser? This seems like a nice, pesticide-free way of eliminating these awful things.
> Didn't Bill Gates's foundation have a project to do this, by tracking them based on their wing-flapping frequency (which apparently is very particular to that species of mosquito) and then burning their wings off with a precisely targeted laser
Eradicating mosquitoes is nearly that easy. At very least, significantly curtailing their population is something that's not terribly hard to do.
Mosquitoes need standing water for their eggs to hatch. That significantly limits where the things can breed. There are more than a few water additives that will kill off a population of mosquitos. However, there's always at least some resistance to wide deployment of those programs because of "playing god".
If you area suffers from mosquitos it's almost certainly because a group of anti-mosquito abatement folk got together to lobby against those programs being implemented.
> Mosquitoes need standing water for their eggs to hatch. That significantly limits where the things can breed
If you've spent any time in the eastern or northern United States, you'd realize that standing water is more or less ubiquitous.
Mosquitos need very little water to breed.
> If you area suffers from mosquitos it's almost certainly because a group of anti-mosquito abatement folk got together to lobby against those programs being implemented.
I've seen first hand what happens when cities/counties put more funding and effort into mosquito abatement programs.
The larvicide and pesticide treatments are highly effective and can be highly targeted either by airplane delivery or on foot treatments. It takes very little at the right time to have a huge impact on the mosquito population.
We could also encourage more healthier ecosystems with larger bird and fish populations. I've often noticed that areas with huge amounts of mosquitos have very few fish and few birds. Fish predate on the larvae and birds predate on the adults.
I think climate change plays a role in my area as well by increasing the length of the breeding season.
That's a completely uncharitably reading of my comment.
Mosquito abatement programs generally involve treating large swaths of area with larvicide at the right time, often by plane.
The reason counties in state like Louisiana doesn't do that more frequently is the cost of the larvicide and plane charter along with the area that needs to be sprayed. That is a budget issue that ultimately also faces uphill battles because people will accuse the abatement program of wanting to just drain all the swamps (just like you did).
These aren't impractical programs, they do cost money.
Oh, and not for nothing, cholera is a problem when you leave water management up to people putting their septic tanks next to their well water. It's a problem of the lack of investment in water infrastructure. Much like mosquito management is something addressable with pubic investment.
is there any proposition whatosever that would meet zero opposition globally? It's hard enough getting provinces to agree on stuff. I can't imagine getting hundreds of countries to all unanimously agree on anything.
We'd need some hostile alien species to even consider that.
> I can't imagine getting hundreds of countries to all unanimously agree on anything.
There are many, many international agreements that >100 countries agree to. The EU requires consensus for many things (what does that mean exactly? zero 'no votes?) as does NATO, which requires unanimity for some things. US Congress passes bills 'without objection' as a normal thing.
Maybe you are reading too many inflammatory stories? Humans are social creatures who are hard-wired to cooperate.
I mean even polio has its defenders, who seem to be winning (in the sense that you only need to convince 5% of the population to avoid vaccination to break herd immunity for the rest of us).
It's only been done a twice? in America in Florida and California and both had protests from environmental groups worried about bird/bat populations. Similar to any time a construction project is being done.
Probably because eradicating hornets can be done by finding and destroying nests. Mosquitoes on the other hand are far harder to get rid of. The most successful mosquito eradication campaign in history was the use of DDT in the 50s. We could always just use DDT again right?
DDT is still approved for mosquito control. It is problematic, but is very effective... The big deal was banning it for agricultural use. Targetted use to control malaria is probably justified, given the negatives of malaria.
Releasing artificially sterilized singe-sex pests at scale is pretty effective. [0]
Tl;dr: Some species only mate once in individuals' lifetimes. Consequently, if that mating is with a sterile partner, no offspring will be produced. Thus severely limiting the size of the next generation.
Eradication of mosquitoes was a very popular cause in the 20th century, but the means by which that was being done caused a lot of incidental environmental damage (draining wetlands, thinning bird shells, gassing other bugs, etc) so the brakes were pulled. Since then new techniques have been developed but they need to overcome the caution people now have for the whole idea.
They weren't eradicated through biotechnology use that could get out of control (people don't complain when there are mosquitoes eradication campaign based on suppression of stagnant water either, but some people are legitimately scared by the prospect of using gene drive at scale).
Netflix documentary series "The G Word", produced by Barack Obama and featuring Adam Conover as host, does an outstanding job of highlighting these thankless civil servant positions.
Memorably, they interviewed NOAA scientists and pilots who fly into hurricanes to make critical measurements for meteorological predictions. I had no idea we did that!
This is the Asian giant hornet. Apparently they had to make a euphemism that would obfuscate the continent of origin, when being from the wrong continent is precisely the reason it needed to be eradicated.
The only Asian country that is distinctly ‘northern’ is North Korea, and the media wouldn’t have shied away from using it in fear of people making the connection.
At the end of the day, the whole argument is stupid.
I think they meant in terms of American cultural understanding, not latitude. I suspect most Americans don’t think of Russia as in Asia (despite the fact that it is) or Japan as being as far north as it actually is.
Same for Europe. I'd guess that most Americans would be surprised to find out that Paris, France is farther north than Seattle. If you slide Paris over to Washington it would be somewhere just south of the border with Canada.
If you slide it over to the east side of North America it would, appropriately, be in the Canadian province of Quebec.
Madrid, Spain is farther north than San Francisco or Denver. It's just half a degree south of New York.
It really shows how there is much more to climate than latitude. Most of Germany and all of the UK and Ireland are at latitudes that in North America put you well into "it is way too freaking cold here way too many days of the year!" territory, but thanks largely to the effects of currents in the Atlantic ocean they have much milder climates.
Yes, we learn this at geography at school here. The USA does not have barriers like mountains protecting it from North-South (since Rocky Mountains for example go North-South), whereas in Europe this is quite different in countries like the ones near the Mediterranean Sea. Also, the USA is of course simply quite large.
The premise that the USDA avoided calling this the Northern Asian Giant Hornet to avoid the implication that this came from North Korea seems quite absurd to me.
Huh? The North Korea confusion angle was raised to explain why they might not have called it the Northern Asian Giant Hornet to distinguish it from the Southern Asian variety. That's what I'm responding to, nested in the thread.
But that "ridiculous theory" was part of the stated motivation of the person who authored the submission for the new name.
"""
Furthermore, anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes have risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, Looney notes, and labeling an invasive species perceived negatively as “Asian” can be harmful all around.
"""
In a better world, it would be absurd. But America has quite a few no-excuse-is-too-weak xenophobes, who have a documented history of violence against random strangers, for the "crime" of looking "Asian".
That could explain why they don't want to call it Asian, but not why they would want to avoid an implication that it came from North Korea specifically.
I'm not paying close attention here, but the "because North Korea..." seems like a useful diversion, if your goals look like:
1 - Announce the seeming eradication of a dangerous invasive species
2 - While minimizing "any excuse" xenophobic human nastiness related to saying "Asian"
3 - And disguise your second goal, to minimize accusations of "pro-Asian Wokery" (or whatever phrase the nut jobs on that side of the culture wars are currently using) from your #2
4 - Also minimize left-wing backlash (I've no clue what phrases they'd use) to your #3 scheme
Japan isn't any farther north than the US. The northernmost island, Hokkaido, is indeed pretty far north (I think roughly the same latitude as Oregon, and also southern France), but most of the rest is quite a bit farther south. Tokyo (where most travelers visit, and 1/4-1/3 of the population lives) is I think roughly the same latitude as North Carolina, and is quite warm. Japan is nowhere near as far north as Alaska, if that's what you're thinking, and not even nearly as far north as much of Europe.
If anyone is wondering, the infamous “they” in this case is The Entomological Society of America, not the USDA or WSDA. You can read the press release here:
Water under the bridge. Nobody serious proposes the eradication of European honey bees in North America, nor cites them as a reason to not manage other invasive species.
The eradication of honey bees would create a crisis on the level of climate change. The amount of tech and labor needed to sustain such an eco system that bees simply do as a built-in part of life would unironically cost into the trillions of dollars.
There are hundreds of kinds of native solitary bees that pollinate in the wild. They would do better without competition from honey bees. More important is to have native plants and wild places for them.
Honey bees are livestock. They are important for pollinating crops and producing honey. But we shouldn't consider them important part of ecosystem.
In my yard, I planted native plants and got more bumblebees and other native bees which are hard to tell from flies.
>Honey bees are livestock. They are important for pollinating crops and producing honey. But we shouldn't consider them important part of ecosystem.
Europeans brought them over centuries ago. Just becsuse they weren't a natural part back then doesn't mean that closing the bottle won't have devastating after effects similar to what they did in the first place.
There's a point where an invasive species simply becomes the "natural" and I believe we crossed that line quite a whole ago. I'm not entirely sure that modern nature could sustain only on those solitary bees in the 21st century just becsuse it worked in the 14th century (you know, assuming we don't devastate nature anymore so than we've done the past century).
First, nobody is seriously proposing to outlaw or eliminate livestock honey bees. They're too valuable for agricultural service. Of course, thinking about what is good or not good for commercial bee colonies is a lot like thinking about what's good or not good for battery-farmed pigs; in fact: what's "good" in our natural ecology for livestock pigs has turned out to be a calamity across North America as feral pigs multiply uncontrollably. Either way: the bees aren't going anywhere. New stressors of bee colonies will simply raise costs for beekeepers.
Second, the idea that the extinction of feral honey bees would be "devastating" is directly falsifiable, because they have been eradicated from North America, in the recent past. The world did not end; in fact: you didn't even notice.
What you want to be paying attention to are our diverse native pollinators, including a variety of native bees. If you want to help our insect ecology, get some mason bee tubes. Unless you really like fresh honey, don't bother with the honey bees.
1. I'm aware. We'll see how they adjust to climate change, but all this was mostly a theoretical to emphasize how important their duties are. Despite the name they aren't just there to make sure our foods are sweet so I wanted to point that out. We'd have better luck going back to trying to eliminate mosquitoes over trying to eradicate honeybees.
I didn't "notice" because people who are experienced in this field went out of their way to correct this. I'll just say that I'm not a huge fan of this narrative "it isn't affecting my everyday so it clearly doesn't matter". That's how so many things slip down to a slope of "we'll fix it when it's too late".
>What you want to be paying attention to are our diverse native pollinators, including a variety of native bees
And you don't think a massive reduction of any one pollinator would have drastic effects just because you care about this "native" aspect? Again, these bees have been here for over 400 years. Where's the line?
I'll be honest and just say you're making a mountain out of a molehill here. I just wanted to pitch in that honeybees are important to the ecosystem and you're reacting as if I'm saying only honeybees matter. You as someone who understands the basics of such pollinators weren't necessarily my audience here. Those who think that bees just make honey and are a "luxury species because we don't need honey" were. And I hope that point got across to that audience.
I don't think it's true that you didn't notice because of a huge effort to fix the problem, because I don't think that effort happened. Again: honey bees are invasive in North America. Where there are feral honey bee colonies today, they trace to escapes from husbanded colonies. From the late 1980s until probably the 2010s, there were very few feral honey bees at all (and for some stretch of that, there were none).
I think you're thinking I'm calling back to the "colony collapse" scare of roughly ten years ago; I'm not. Here's a paper:
Also worth noting: that paper establishes a history of honey bee introduction into America, and they have not in fact been here for 400 years (at least, according to that paper; I don't have a dog in this hunt, it wouldn't matter to me if they'd been here for longer).
Here's a fun paper from back in the day where they found honey bees in the Channel Islands off California, and immediately set to work eradicating them:
Uh, not as I understand it. Feral honey bees have been functionally extinct in North America since the Varroa Destructor mite wiped them out in the 1980s and 1990s. The honey bees we see today are livestock, not wildlife.
(Extensive husbandry has probably [unfortunately, unintentionally] reestablished feral colonies in some states, but a few years ago it was apparently the case that any honey bee you saw in your yard probably had an owner, which is wild to think about.)
For everyone else confused (I didn't hear of the Northern Giant Hornet before and thought of a new species):
"July 2022, the Entomological Society of America stated that they will adopt the common name northern giant hornet for the species to avoid potentially discriminatory language" -Wikipedia
> It is native to temperate and tropical East Asia, South Asia, Mainland Southeast Asia, and parts of the Russian Far East. It was also found in the Pacific Northwest of North America
... in what sense is this hornet "northern"?
And in what sense is it "discriminatory" to point out the regional origin of a phenomenon?
All hornets are native or common to Asia (the North American native insects commonly referred to as hornets are actually yellowjackets), so calling something an "Asian hornet" or even "Asian giant hornet" doesn't really tell you much. It thus makes sense when coming up with a common name for a hornet species to pick something that distinguishes it from the other hornets, such as where its range is relative to others.
As to why they avoid regional origins in common names, the the Entomological Society of America says [1]:
> "Common names are an important tool for entomologists to communicate with the public about insects and insect science," says ESA President Jessica Ware, Ph.D. "Northern giant hornet is both scientifically accurate and easy to understand, and it avoids evoking fear or discrimination."
[...]
> In 2021, ESA adopted new guidelines for acceptable insect common names, which bar names referring to ethnic or racial groups and names that might stoke fear; the policies also discourage geographic references, particularly for invasive species. The Society also launched the Better Common Names Project, an effort to review and replace insect common names that may be inappropriate or offensive. No common name for Vespa mandarinia has been previously adopted by ESA, and neither name used in popular discourse meets ESA's guidelines.
[...]
> Amid a rise in hate crimes and discrimination against people of Asian descent, usage of "Asian" in the name of a pest insect can unintentionally bolster anti-Asian sentiment. And, from a taxonomic perspective, all hornets—22 species of wasps in the genus Vespa—are native or common to Asia, meaning "Asian giant hornet" does not convey unique information about the biology or behavior of the species Vespa mandarinia.
They cite a news report on the rise in anti-Asian violence in the US.
They probably want to avoid things like this, one of the examples from that news report:
> In March 2020, Bawi Cung and his 6-year-old son were attacked by a man armed with a knife at a Sam’s Club in Midland, Texas. The man, who later pleaded guilty to hate-crime charges, thought the Burmese American family was Chinese and blamed them for COVID-19.
There are a lot of complete morons who if something bad in the news is labeled as the "X something" where X is a country, region, religion, or probably anything else that is associated with an identifiable group will think any random individual they encounter from that group personally bears significant responsibility for that bad thing.
Wikipedia's got a long article of examples where the something was COVID [2].
> In March 2020, Bawi Cung and his 6-year-old son were attacked by a man armed with a knife at a Sam’s Club in Midland, Texas. The man, who later pleaded guilty to hate-crime charges, thought the Burmese American family was Chinese and blamed them for COVID-19.
The supposed causal link here seems incredibly strained, and I don't see a good reason to believe that they could actually avoid these things by changing the name.
Especially since these kinds of name changes just lead to curiousity, which leads to people forming conspiracy theories about them.
> Wikipedia's got a long article of examples
Wikipedia is the absolute last place anyone should check for anything remotely politically or "culture war" charged, especially if it involves discerning the thought processes of anyone in a political group not well represented among the most powerful (in the sense of internal Wikipedia politics) Wikipedia editors.
I live about a mile north of the border and I saw one of these on my deck last summer. They are massive. I do not buy the official timeline.
Not “confirmed” of course. Just like the report from 100 miles south of here 2 months ago. “Not confirmed”.
They do not believe the “eradication” announcement either clearly as they plan to continue search and trapping efforts throughout 2025 ( from the article ).
Dang, that is unfortunate. I come here to comment that I'm really happy this happened. It is something that legit worries me. Bee populations are already suffering enough!
I hope the government is able to continue keeping the population from "stabilizing" to eventually get it eradicated. Crazy that you actually saw one!
We have huge-ass hornets here in the PNW. I've seen lots of them myself. They definitely weren't the northern giants. But they're pretty close in size. I can see though people taking more notice of the existing ones after all the media coverage of the invasive ones.
>Although unable to obtain the specimen, WSDA did place traps in the area and conduct outreach to encourage reports of additional suspected sightings. Neither trapping nor outreach yielded additional evidence of hornets in the area. WSDA will conduct trapping in the area in 2025 as a precautionary measure.
That's just responsible book keeping. No different from making a proper test suite even though there is no unexpected behavior in the software product.
But if you really did find one of these in Canada, I'd definitely report that. You may unironically save Canada months of labor searching for a potential hive of migrated hornets.
>Not “confirmed” of course. Just like the report from 100 miles south of here 2 months ago. “Not confirmed”.
who's doing the confirming, or lack thereof? There may be difficulties with investigations if they crossed country lines. the WSDA, if reported to, may not have the authority to properly search in Canada. I'm not sure what the equivalent organization in Canada would be.
Very nice and a bit of a surprise to me. I hope they are correct.
But unless some form of full inspections or spraying N/S America wide for containers coming from overseas, we will probably have more of these.
With the direction/trend of the "US Gov." being run as a business for the past 40 years, I believe we could very well see these hornets arrive in other areas.
IIRC, there is a insect in the East that is killing millions of trees which arrived 10 or 20 years ago. I forgot the details but eradicating them is now impossible.
You're probably thinking of the Spotted Lanternfly, which people of all ages take great satisfaction in trying to stomp whenever we see them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_lanternfly
More likely the Emerald ash borer, extremely destructive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_ash_borer
Or https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_long-horned_beetle
Is it really worse than the members of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_beetle subfamily? They are able to destroy whole forests if the trees are under stress (drought, pollution, acid rain) already. But they should be nothing new.
> With the direction/trend of the "US Gov." being run as a business for the past 40 years, ...
Businesses that do get $37 trillion in debt go bankrupt. That government lovers managed to make believe it's normal for governments to go ever more into debt to then tax everybody through the inflation "hidden" tax is one of the biggest travesty of our time.
Invasive species (native to Asia) and 1.5-2” (40-50mm) long. I’m glad they are gone!
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plantsplant-healthplant-pests-and...
The richer oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere in a previous geological era favoured the development of very large insects. Some wingspans attained 70cm! But the evolution of insectivorous birds likely favoured the smaller, nimbler insect variants.[1]
And then there is historical climate change as factor, not to mention K-Pg Extinction. [2,3]
[1] https://news.ucsc.edu/2012/06/giant-insects.html
[2] https://www.sci.news/paleontology/ypresiosirex-orthosemos-gi...
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene...
>The richer oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere in a previous geological era favoured the development of very large insects. Some wingspans attained 70cm!
This makes me wonder: what did these insects taste like?
Notice that humans already eat several animals that are basically very large insects: shrimp/prawns, crabs, and lobsters. According to a quick google search, these crustaceans are basically a sister group to insects, and interestingly are more closely related to insects than spiders are.
However, humans generally don't think of insects as appetizing meals, to put it mildly, while lobsters are considered a delicacy, and shrimp, crabs, and other crustaceans are not only commonly eaten, but are somewhat expensive food items.
Of course, one of the big differences between insects and these crustaceans is the size: even small shrimp are very large compared to just about any insect, so most people generally don't eat the shell, but only the fleshy insides. This is even more true with lobsters, where the shell is very thick and hard and inedible. Doing this with a beetle or grasshopper isn't so easy.
So if prehistoric insects could be so large, did they resemble sea crustaceans more (as far as having thicker shells, and more easily-separated meat)? And would humans find them tasty if we could somehow resurrect these giant insects today?
There are plenty of places in the world where people do think of insects as tasty meals.
I’ve eaten a variety of land arthropods, and many were quite good.
While it took some mental fortitude to eat a deep fried scorpion, the flavor was really good. I’d describe it as smoky, nutty bean jerky paste inside crunchy fried chicken skin.
I’d describe silk worm pupae fried with butter as having a flavor akin to nutty cheese.
Grilled giant water bugs have a floral camphor note, but i find the wings a bit papery.
There were these grubs/pupae that i had deep fried somewhere in rural thailand that were extraordinary. They had a nutty flavor and popped in your mouth. I have no idea what they were, but I could easily see having them instead of popcorn while watching a movie.
Crickets grilled with in corn husks with basil and garlic are divine. The taste is subtle and nutty.
I suspect that nutty would be a common adjective.
[flagged]
These topic-adjacent expert responses just reek of point harvesting by an LLM, I didn't do any such downvoting, but in the last year I've changed to this viewpoint.
Wait, so if it’s accurate, interesting, new to most of us, and adjacent to the topic… that’s a bad thing?
It's generally just barely on topic, generic fluff. Anything similar could have been posted, topic adjacent, without really contributing to the discussion. Remember we are on a discussion forum, not a place to dump data.
It is if it's LLM-generated; strictly verboten on HN. This doesn't look like that to me though.
Good y'all, however much I (born human and have all my shots) may have the misfortune to attract downvotes, I'm not a fershlugginer LLM. (Not sure what this says about my social skills, no wonder my dance card is M.T.) I do think that it was an interesting addition to the discussion of giant buglies. I personally had never thought about how predation by birds would have pressured prehistoric insects... and made our feathered friends so specialised and good at what they do.
Best human wishes!
I don't think you are! I was only moved to comment by the implication upthread that an informative LLM-generated comment might be welcome here. But yes, another HN norm is not making insinuations about commenters on threads (if people have concerns, they're meant to email hn@yc about it). And yet another norm is not to drive threads into their own navels with metacommentary, so here's where I should shut up.
Props to thee, my friend. Maybe I'm the one who should refrain, it's a haywire timeline.
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords
What's the point (pun intended) though? HN points don't net you anything. Except the first 500 maybe.
I often roll a fresh account for privacy and the amount of points really don't bother me.
But my point (sorry) is, why would someone even bother?
There's the leaderboard. Though the one time I noticed I'd showed up on it (others have long since overtaken me), it felt more like a warning I was spending too much time here.
I didn't know there was a leader board but now that I've looked at it I'm kind of disgusted by the fact that 20-ish percent of it is made up of names that are recognizable in an "oh, it's that guy who's always posting low effort links or riding the coat tails of a popular comment" way.
> HN points don't net you anything.
Dang! I thought i was at least earning dang's respect. ^_^
Sounds like predation of HN by LLM is a bigger concern.
One wonders when posts complaining about LLMs will be posted by a LLM.
I’m just trying to imagine a LLM flame war.
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In about 20 years there will be a large movement to bring the hornet back because a subsection of society thinks their eradication caused some uptick of reported birth defects.
Why wait 20 years, when we can start today?
Expects tell us the hornet needs to be eradicated, but we all know that experts have been wrong before.
doctors want to put needles in your arm bigger than the needles of the hornet, but they want the hornet gone! Afraid of a little honest competition says I!
The headline conjures up an image of one giant hornet, rampaging through US cities like Godzilla, carrying a hockey stick to underline its northern/Canadian affiliation.
Can we do the emerald ash borer next :(
right after the spotted lanternfly (i.e., likely never)
Too far gone …
Too late, pretty much invisible unless we use some kind of genetic agent.
Some insects can be eradicated by release of sterilized males, but I doubt the EAB is one of them.
Great, pesticides next.
Apparently they are being controlled quite well in the UK at the moment.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/13/rapid-sp...
I did my part.
Five years ago, while I was driving one of the blighters landed on my windscreen. I pushed the wiper lever to rinse, expecting it to swipe him away.
Instead it beat him down to my air intake vent, and he was sucked into the AC system.
I made sure to warn the mechanic of what lurked down there when I brought the car for her annual service.
Did your mechanic visit happen soon thereafter? Was it alive?
The visit was a few months afterwards, and he changed the air filters without comment. If it was still alive, or mutated into something ungodly, I would've known. Unless the mechanic is now host to something worse, and that's the reason he didn't speak... I think I'll change mechanic for good measure.
Not the same Asian hornet, in Europe we have Vespa velutina vs mandarinia in the PNW.
Our invasion was traced back to 2004 when a queen was supposedly brought from China to France through the port of Bordeaux. The spread is very much not controlled in Mediterranean countries, but I believe beekeepers have adapted.
I had these around my house earlier this year. Hopefully they really are gone...
What's the expected longevity of the solutions put in place? I mean, doesn't just take a swarm migration outside state border to reverse the trend?
Why can agricultural interests get their shit together on eradicating a harmful species while when it comes to human health, eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes leads to endless hand wringing about playing god and whatnot?
By attaching trackers to a few captured hornets they were able to find all of the nests. If only eradicating mosquitoes was that easy.
What ever happened to that project to build automated mosquito laser zappers? Didn't Bill Gates's foundation have a project to do this, by tracking them based on their wing-flapping frequency (which apparently is very particular to that species of mosquito) and then burning their wings off with a precisely targeted laser? This seems like a nice, pesticide-free way of eliminating these awful things.
> Didn't Bill Gates's foundation have a project to do this, by tracking them based on their wing-flapping frequency (which apparently is very particular to that species of mosquito) and then burning their wings off with a precisely targeted laser
This was never a serious proposal.
Eradicating mosquitoes is nearly that easy. At very least, significantly curtailing their population is something that's not terribly hard to do.
Mosquitoes need standing water for their eggs to hatch. That significantly limits where the things can breed. There are more than a few water additives that will kill off a population of mosquitos. However, there's always at least some resistance to wide deployment of those programs because of "playing god".
If you area suffers from mosquitos it's almost certainly because a group of anti-mosquito abatement folk got together to lobby against those programs being implemented.
> Mosquitoes need standing water for their eggs to hatch. That significantly limits where the things can breed
If you've spent any time in the eastern or northern United States, you'd realize that standing water is more or less ubiquitous.
Mosquitos need very little water to breed.
> If you area suffers from mosquitos it's almost certainly because a group of anti-mosquito abatement folk got together to lobby against those programs being implemented.
Strong opinion, poorly informed.
I've seen first hand what happens when cities/counties put more funding and effort into mosquito abatement programs.
The larvicide and pesticide treatments are highly effective and can be highly targeted either by airplane delivery or on foot treatments. It takes very little at the right time to have a huge impact on the mosquito population.
We could also encourage more healthier ecosystems with larger bird and fish populations. I've often noticed that areas with huge amounts of mosquitos have very few fish and few birds. Fish predate on the larvae and birds predate on the adults.
I think climate change plays a role in my area as well by increasing the length of the breeding season.
> areas with huge amounts of mosquitos have very few fish and few birds
This is contradicted by my entire lived experience.
Where have you seen mosquitos without birds and other wildlife?
So, like, why doesn’t Louisiana just, you know, get rid of the standing water?
I’m reminded of the old “I don’t see why cholera is such a problem when everyone has chlorinated tap water” geniuses.
That's a completely uncharitably reading of my comment.
Mosquito abatement programs generally involve treating large swaths of area with larvicide at the right time, often by plane.
The reason counties in state like Louisiana doesn't do that more frequently is the cost of the larvicide and plane charter along with the area that needs to be sprayed. That is a budget issue that ultimately also faces uphill battles because people will accuse the abatement program of wanting to just drain all the swamps (just like you did).
These aren't impractical programs, they do cost money.
Oh, and not for nothing, cholera is a problem when you leave water management up to people putting their septic tanks next to their well water. It's a problem of the lack of investment in water infrastructure. Much like mosquito management is something addressable with pubic investment.
I apologize for not being clear that I was agreeing with you in a somewhat facetious way.
They only eradicated it in the US, where it is an invasive species.
Countless local and regional efforts to eradicate mosquitoes exist. Opposition seems rare until you propose exterminating a species globally
is there any proposition whatosever that would meet zero opposition globally? It's hard enough getting provinces to agree on stuff. I can't imagine getting hundreds of countries to all unanimously agree on anything.
We'd need some hostile alien species to even consider that.
> I can't imagine getting hundreds of countries to all unanimously agree on anything.
There are many, many international agreements that >100 countries agree to. The EU requires consensus for many things (what does that mean exactly? zero 'no votes?) as does NATO, which requires unanimity for some things. US Congress passes bills 'without objection' as a normal thing.
Maybe you are reading too many inflammatory stories? Humans are social creatures who are hard-wired to cooperate.
I mean even polio has its defenders, who seem to be winning (in the sense that you only need to convince 5% of the population to avoid vaccination to break herd immunity for the rest of us).
> until you propose exterminating a species globally
The proposals are all very local. Sterile mates, for example. Even e.g. gene drives work regionally.
With gene drive you can only hope it works locally only, that's the thing.
>They only eradicated it in the US, where it is an invasive species.
Last I heard, the type of mosquito that attacks humans is also an invasive species in most places outside Africa.
To clarify: I don't believe that such hand-wringing actually occurs to any significant extent. Please indicate why you believe it does.
It's only been done a twice? in America in Florida and California and both had protests from environmental groups worried about bird/bat populations. Similar to any time a construction project is being done.
https://foe.org/news/ge-mosquito-experiment-halted/
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/florida-key...
> Similar to any time a construction project is being done.
Certainly false; there is a lot of construction in those places and currently most other places.
Probably because eradicating hornets can be done by finding and destroying nests. Mosquitoes on the other hand are far harder to get rid of. The most successful mosquito eradication campaign in history was the use of DDT in the 50s. We could always just use DDT again right?
DDT is still approved for mosquito control. It is problematic, but is very effective... The big deal was banning it for agricultural use. Targetted use to control malaria is probably justified, given the negatives of malaria.
> Targetted use to control malaria is probably justified, given the negatives of malaria.
Do we have evidence about whic his worse? Anyway, that sort of argument assumes there are no other solutions.
Releasing artificially sterilized singe-sex pests at scale is pretty effective. [0]
Tl;dr: Some species only mate once in individuals' lifetimes. Consequently, if that mating is with a sterile partner, no offspring will be produced. Thus severely limiting the size of the next generation.
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2946175/
Related paper on automating the process:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340467372_Efficient...
Eradication of mosquitoes was a very popular cause in the 20th century, but the means by which that was being done caused a lot of incidental environmental damage (draining wetlands, thinning bird shells, gassing other bugs, etc) so the brakes were pulled. Since then new techniques have been developed but they need to overcome the caution people now have for the whole idea.
They weren't eradicated through biotechnology use that could get out of control (people don't complain when there are mosquitoes eradication campaign based on suppression of stagnant water either, but some people are legitimately scared by the prospect of using gene drive at scale).
I have heard serious concerns about letting genetically modified organisms loose in the wild, but not about killing mosquitos.
YAALS (yet another anti-liberal strawperson)? The term 'hand-wringing' seems to signal it, but I can't read anyone's mind.
> eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes leads to endless hand wringing about playing god and whatnot?
The burden of proof is on you.
yet another example of thankless work done by regular everyday government employees. Good job USDA/WSDA.
Netflix documentary series "The G Word", produced by Barack Obama and featuring Adam Conover as host, does an outstanding job of highlighting these thankless civil servant positions.
Memorably, they interviewed NOAA scientists and pilots who fly into hurricanes to make critical measurements for meteorological predictions. I had no idea we did that!
The Washington Post did/does have a similar series.
I live about a mile north of the border and I saw one of these on my deck last summer. I am not sure I believe their timeline.
You saw one of these? Did you report it? https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/1870579/asian-giant-hornet-si...
This is the Asian giant hornet. Apparently they had to make a euphemism that would obfuscate the continent of origin, when being from the wrong continent is precisely the reason it needed to be eradicated.
It’s in contrast to vespa soror, the southern giant hornet, which inhabits more southern climates in Asia.
Both of them are giant hornet species from Asia so “Asian giant hornet” isn’t a unique descriptor.
It seems that the adoption of the southern/northern names was in part related to what GP is referring to.
https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/northern-giant-hornet...
They could have gone with northern asian hornet, to follow proper taxonomy of including general and specific.
The only Asian country that is distinctly ‘northern’ is North Korea, and the media wouldn’t have shied away from using it in fear of people making the connection.
At the end of the day, the whole argument is stupid.
It’s like saying “Asian panda” or “South American giant anteater.” There’s no other place with giant hornets, so why would the name include it?
What? Japan, China, Russia, Mongolia?
I think they meant in terms of American cultural understanding, not latitude. I suspect most Americans don’t think of Russia as in Asia (despite the fact that it is) or Japan as being as far north as it actually is.
Same for Europe. I'd guess that most Americans would be surprised to find out that Paris, France is farther north than Seattle. If you slide Paris over to Washington it would be somewhere just south of the border with Canada.
If you slide it over to the east side of North America it would, appropriately, be in the Canadian province of Quebec.
Madrid, Spain is farther north than San Francisco or Denver. It's just half a degree south of New York.
It really shows how there is much more to climate than latitude. Most of Germany and all of the UK and Ireland are at latitudes that in North America put you well into "it is way too freaking cold here way too many days of the year!" territory, but thanks largely to the effects of currents in the Atlantic ocean they have much milder climates.
Yes, we learn this at geography at school here. The USA does not have barriers like mountains protecting it from North-South (since Rocky Mountains for example go North-South), whereas in Europe this is quite different in countries like the ones near the Mediterranean Sea. Also, the USA is of course simply quite large.
The premise that the USDA avoided calling this the Northern Asian Giant Hornet to avoid the implication that this came from North Korea seems quite absurd to me.
The premise was “Asian,” not “Northern Asian.” The latter appears to be speculation in this thread.
Huh? The North Korea confusion angle was raised to explain why they might not have called it the Northern Asian Giant Hornet to distinguish it from the Southern Asian variety. That's what I'm responding to, nested in the thread.
That’s not what I meant.
I’m poking holes in the ridiculous theory that they were holding back on using the word ‘Asian’.
But that "ridiculous theory" was part of the stated motivation of the person who authored the submission for the new name.
""" Furthermore, anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes have risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, Looney notes, and labeling an invasive species perceived negatively as “Asian” can be harmful all around. """
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/murder-ho...
In a better world, it would be absurd. But America has quite a few no-excuse-is-too-weak xenophobes, who have a documented history of violence against random strangers, for the "crime" of looking "Asian".
That could explain why they don't want to call it Asian, but not why they would want to avoid an implication that it came from North Korea specifically.
I'm not paying close attention here, but the "because North Korea..." seems like a useful diversion, if your goals look like:
1 - Announce the seeming eradication of a dangerous invasive species
2 - While minimizing "any excuse" xenophobic human nastiness related to saying "Asian"
3 - And disguise your second goal, to minimize accusations of "pro-Asian Wokery" (or whatever phrase the nut jobs on that side of the culture wars are currently using) from your #2
4 - Also minimize left-wing backlash (I've no clue what phrases they'd use) to your #3 scheme
5 - ...
Japan isn't any farther north than the US. The northernmost island, Hokkaido, is indeed pretty far north (I think roughly the same latitude as Oregon, and also southern France), but most of the rest is quite a bit farther south. Tokyo (where most travelers visit, and 1/4-1/3 of the population lives) is I think roughly the same latitude as North Carolina, and is quite warm. Japan is nowhere near as far north as Alaska, if that's what you're thinking, and not even nearly as far north as much of Europe.
If anyone is wondering, the infamous “they” in this case is The Entomological Society of America, not the USDA or WSDA. You can read the press release here:
https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/northern-giant-hornet...
Their guide to creating common names for insects is here: https://entsoc.org/publications/common-names/use-submission
They are absolutely devastating to bee hives.
Honey bee hives, meanwhile, are destructive to native pollinators.
Water under the bridge. Nobody serious proposes the eradication of European honey bees in North America, nor cites them as a reason to not manage other invasive species.
The eradication of honey bees would create a crisis on the level of climate change. The amount of tech and labor needed to sustain such an eco system that bees simply do as a built-in part of life would unironically cost into the trillions of dollars.
There are hundreds of kinds of native solitary bees that pollinate in the wild. They would do better without competition from honey bees. More important is to have native plants and wild places for them.
Honey bees are livestock. They are important for pollinating crops and producing honey. But we shouldn't consider them important part of ecosystem.
In my yard, I planted native plants and got more bumblebees and other native bees which are hard to tell from flies.
>Honey bees are livestock. They are important for pollinating crops and producing honey. But we shouldn't consider them important part of ecosystem.
Europeans brought them over centuries ago. Just becsuse they weren't a natural part back then doesn't mean that closing the bottle won't have devastating after effects similar to what they did in the first place.
There's a point where an invasive species simply becomes the "natural" and I believe we crossed that line quite a whole ago. I'm not entirely sure that modern nature could sustain only on those solitary bees in the 21st century just becsuse it worked in the 14th century (you know, assuming we don't devastate nature anymore so than we've done the past century).
So, two things.
First, nobody is seriously proposing to outlaw or eliminate livestock honey bees. They're too valuable for agricultural service. Of course, thinking about what is good or not good for commercial bee colonies is a lot like thinking about what's good or not good for battery-farmed pigs; in fact: what's "good" in our natural ecology for livestock pigs has turned out to be a calamity across North America as feral pigs multiply uncontrollably. Either way: the bees aren't going anywhere. New stressors of bee colonies will simply raise costs for beekeepers.
Second, the idea that the extinction of feral honey bees would be "devastating" is directly falsifiable, because they have been eradicated from North America, in the recent past. The world did not end; in fact: you didn't even notice.
What you want to be paying attention to are our diverse native pollinators, including a variety of native bees. If you want to help our insect ecology, get some mason bee tubes. Unless you really like fresh honey, don't bother with the honey bees.
1. I'm aware. We'll see how they adjust to climate change, but all this was mostly a theoretical to emphasize how important their duties are. Despite the name they aren't just there to make sure our foods are sweet so I wanted to point that out. We'd have better luck going back to trying to eliminate mosquitoes over trying to eradicate honeybees.
2. www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/economy/struggling-beekeepers-stabilize-u-s-honeybee-population-after-nearly-half-of-colonies-died-last-year
I didn't "notice" because people who are experienced in this field went out of their way to correct this. I'll just say that I'm not a huge fan of this narrative "it isn't affecting my everyday so it clearly doesn't matter". That's how so many things slip down to a slope of "we'll fix it when it's too late".
>What you want to be paying attention to are our diverse native pollinators, including a variety of native bees
And you don't think a massive reduction of any one pollinator would have drastic effects just because you care about this "native" aspect? Again, these bees have been here for over 400 years. Where's the line?
I'll be honest and just say you're making a mountain out of a molehill here. I just wanted to pitch in that honeybees are important to the ecosystem and you're reacting as if I'm saying only honeybees matter. You as someone who understands the basics of such pollinators weren't necessarily my audience here. Those who think that bees just make honey and are a "luxury species because we don't need honey" were. And I hope that point got across to that audience.
I don't think it's true that you didn't notice because of a huge effort to fix the problem, because I don't think that effort happened. Again: honey bees are invasive in North America. Where there are feral honey bee colonies today, they trace to escapes from husbanded colonies. From the late 1980s until probably the 2010s, there were very few feral honey bees at all (and for some stretch of that, there were none).
I think you're thinking I'm calling back to the "colony collapse" scare of roughly ten years ago; I'm not. Here's a paper:
https://www.wellesu.com/https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/24.6.1473
Also worth noting: that paper establishes a history of honey bee introduction into America, and they have not in fact been here for 400 years (at least, according to that paper; I don't have a dog in this hunt, it wouldn't matter to me if they'd been here for longer).
Here's a fun paper from back in the day where they found honey bees in the Channel Islands off California, and immediately set to work eradicating them:
https://sbbotanicgarden.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Wenne...
If we really cared about this at all
We'd look at one map of the deforestation of the North America / United States since the arrival of the European colonization.
I think there'd be plenty of plants for all types of pollinators if we went back to such a a map.
We're not going back to that map, and meanwhile invasive livestock honey bees are in fact outcompeting our native pollinators.
Uh, not as I understand it. Feral honey bees have been functionally extinct in North America since the Varroa Destructor mite wiped them out in the 1980s and 1990s. The honey bees we see today are livestock, not wildlife.
(Extensive husbandry has probably [unfortunately, unintentionally] reestablished feral colonies in some states, but a few years ago it was apparently the case that any honey bee you saw in your yard probably had an owner, which is wild to think about.)
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/1/19/23552518/honey-b...
There wasn't a common name for the multiple species before. The name change to distinguish the two species was done in 2020 to:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/murder-ho...For everyone else confused (I didn't hear of the Northern Giant Hornet before and thought of a new species):
"July 2022, the Entomological Society of America stated that they will adopt the common name northern giant hornet for the species to avoid potentially discriminatory language" -Wikipedia
[Edit] This is not meant judgemental
I always just referred to them as “murder hornets” anyway (see the bee massacre video below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_8B4bcrSs8
> It is native to temperate and tropical East Asia, South Asia, Mainland Southeast Asia, and parts of the Russian Far East. It was also found in the Pacific Northwest of North America
... in what sense is this hornet "northern"?
And in what sense is it "discriminatory" to point out the regional origin of a phenomenon?
It's "northern" when you compare its range with the other giant hornet, vespa soror or the "southern giant hornet".
You can compare the ranges here: https://entsoc.org/sites/default/files/2022-07/vespa-mandari...
Which I now learned, is "invading" Europe (The southern giant hornet), thanks.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11549532/
> ... in what sense is this hornet "northern"?
All hornets are native or common to Asia (the North American native insects commonly referred to as hornets are actually yellowjackets), so calling something an "Asian hornet" or even "Asian giant hornet" doesn't really tell you much. It thus makes sense when coming up with a common name for a hornet species to pick something that distinguishes it from the other hornets, such as where its range is relative to others.
As to why they avoid regional origins in common names, the the Entomological Society of America says [1]:
> "Common names are an important tool for entomologists to communicate with the public about insects and insect science," says ESA President Jessica Ware, Ph.D. "Northern giant hornet is both scientifically accurate and easy to understand, and it avoids evoking fear or discrimination."
[...]
> In 2021, ESA adopted new guidelines for acceptable insect common names, which bar names referring to ethnic or racial groups and names that might stoke fear; the policies also discourage geographic references, particularly for invasive species. The Society also launched the Better Common Names Project, an effort to review and replace insect common names that may be inappropriate or offensive. No common name for Vespa mandarinia has been previously adopted by ESA, and neither name used in popular discourse meets ESA's guidelines.
[...]
> Amid a rise in hate crimes and discrimination against people of Asian descent, usage of "Asian" in the name of a pest insect can unintentionally bolster anti-Asian sentiment. And, from a taxonomic perspective, all hornets—22 species of wasps in the genus Vespa—are native or common to Asia, meaning "Asian giant hornet" does not convey unique information about the biology or behavior of the species Vespa mandarinia.
They cite a news report on the rise in anti-Asian violence in the US.
They probably want to avoid things like this, one of the examples from that news report:
> In March 2020, Bawi Cung and his 6-year-old son were attacked by a man armed with a knife at a Sam’s Club in Midland, Texas. The man, who later pleaded guilty to hate-crime charges, thought the Burmese American family was Chinese and blamed them for COVID-19.
There are a lot of complete morons who if something bad in the news is labeled as the "X something" where X is a country, region, religion, or probably anything else that is associated with an identifiable group will think any random individual they encounter from that group personally bears significant responsibility for that bad thing.
Wikipedia's got a long article of examples where the something was COVID [2].
[1] https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/northern-giant-hornet...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia_and_racism_related_...
> In March 2020, Bawi Cung and his 6-year-old son were attacked by a man armed with a knife at a Sam’s Club in Midland, Texas. The man, who later pleaded guilty to hate-crime charges, thought the Burmese American family was Chinese and blamed them for COVID-19.
The supposed causal link here seems incredibly strained, and I don't see a good reason to believe that they could actually avoid these things by changing the name.
Especially since these kinds of name changes just lead to curiousity, which leads to people forming conspiracy theories about them.
> Wikipedia's got a long article of examples
Wikipedia is the absolute last place anyone should check for anything remotely politically or "culture war" charged, especially if it involves discerning the thought processes of anyone in a political group not well represented among the most powerful (in the sense of internal Wikipedia politics) Wikipedia editors.
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I live about a mile north of the border and I saw one of these on my deck last summer. They are massive. I do not buy the official timeline.
Not “confirmed” of course. Just like the report from 100 miles south of here 2 months ago. “Not confirmed”.
They do not believe the “eradication” announcement either clearly as they plan to continue search and trapping efforts throughout 2025 ( from the article ).
How did you ID it? Cicada killers are commonly mistaken for Asian giant hornets: https://www.njbeekeepers.org/images/Vespa%20mandarinia%20and...
Dang, that is unfortunate. I come here to comment that I'm really happy this happened. It is something that legit worries me. Bee populations are already suffering enough!
I hope the government is able to continue keeping the population from "stabilizing" to eventually get it eradicated. Crazy that you actually saw one!
We have huge-ass hornets here in the PNW. I've seen lots of them myself. They definitely weren't the northern giants. But they're pretty close in size. I can see though people taking more notice of the existing ones after all the media coverage of the invasive ones.
Likely cicada killers. I’ll never forget the first time I saw one as a child: https://www.njbeekeepers.org/images/Vespa%20mandarinia%20and...
you seem to be embellishing that line a bit:
>Although unable to obtain the specimen, WSDA did place traps in the area and conduct outreach to encourage reports of additional suspected sightings. Neither trapping nor outreach yielded additional evidence of hornets in the area. WSDA will conduct trapping in the area in 2025 as a precautionary measure.
That's just responsible book keeping. No different from making a proper test suite even though there is no unexpected behavior in the software product.
But if you really did find one of these in Canada, I'd definitely report that. You may unironically save Canada months of labor searching for a potential hive of migrated hornets.
>Not “confirmed” of course. Just like the report from 100 miles south of here 2 months ago. “Not confirmed”.
who's doing the confirming, or lack thereof? There may be difficulties with investigations if they crossed country lines. the WSDA, if reported to, may not have the authority to properly search in Canada. I'm not sure what the equivalent organization in Canada would be.
I think I seen one of these last summer as well? It was a big sucker, we were trying to figure out what it was. I'm in Southern Alberta.
Which border would that be?
USA-Canada / Washington-British Columbia
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Giant hornets all got diabetes on the Standard American Diet and died... is my working theory.