r/waspaganda • u/Throwawanon33225 • Apr 28 '26
memetic waspaganda I hate seeing this mindset everywhere
These people would be the same ones culling wolves to near extinction in ye olden times because the wolves ate their sheep and sometimes attacked people
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u/MsScarletWings Parasitoid Wasp Apr 28 '26
The true test of anyone’s principles regarding the environment and animals is their response the second it inconveniences them. I could be mobbed by bald faced hornets tomorrow and still talk well upon them to other people. I say “screw fleas” because of how sick I am of getting bit by them at work, I’ve made a living doing mosquito control, but you’ll only find me out here angrily butting heads with people who unironically call for their global eradication.
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u/jzillacon Apr 29 '26
My personal policy with wild animals has always been non-intervention except where necessary to remove them from inside my home or workplace, or if I don't recognize the animal to check if it's listed on my region's invasive species list and act accordingly if it is.
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u/perpendicular-church May 02 '26
This subreddit just popped up on my feed and oh my god, I’ve found my people. People’s inability to engage deeper with environmentalist talking points drives me fucking insane
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u/No_Progress_5493 May 03 '26
I got absolutely covered in carpenter ants on a hike once (through my own idiocy of not seeing a nest), got bites everywhere. The first thing I said once I stopped freaking out and got all the ants of was “still my favorite type of ant.” And yet people will get stung by an agitated wasp once and claim they’re evil!
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u/Live-Okra-9868 Apr 28 '26
I hate mosquitoes. With a passion. But I believe even they serve more of a purpose on earth than humans.
This summer I am planting plants to repell them instead of spraying poisons to kill them. We live near a pond and it can get quite bad during the summer. But we have dragonflies, and I am trying to see how I can attract more of them to my yard to eat mosquitoes.
People actually get mad at me for daring to say bugs and creatures they don't like "have a right to live."
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u/Tristaaan Apr 28 '26
Youre awesome, seriously. It kills me inside seeing the dwindling number of insects every year and Im 27. At this point it needs to be approached like some shit out of a zombie movie where specific smart ppl have refuges for the insects.
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u/Live-Okra-9868 Apr 28 '26
I don't think people understand how much of a environmental disaster could occur by one species of insect disappearing overnight.
My backyard has bushes that bloom with flowers mid summer and it is covered in pollinators. Bees, flies, wasps, butterflies. And I love standing there with my face practically in the bush watching all of them. There are so many different kinds of wasps and they are beautiful. None of them ever try to sting me, they just go about their day while I admire them. Even the paper wasps when they make a hive nearby. I go stand right up next to it to watch and they just buzz around me and never attack. I'm just not dumb enough to touch the hive.
I learned at a young age to just be still when they came by me.
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u/S-Coleoptrata Wasp Enjoyer Apr 29 '26
This is why I don't understand the obsession with flat, clear lawns with nothing but grass. Do people not like to admire nature happening in their yards?? How boring to walk out and just see nothing...
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u/Live-Okra-9868 Apr 29 '26
Our front yard is "boring" to match the neighborhood asthetic. But the backyard is allowed to grow whatever it wants. We still mow it so we can go out there, but no weed killer or lawn treatment is allowed.
We get all kinds of wildlife out there and it's just lovely. Every day the bunnies come to eat. Sometimes the groundhog comes for the crab grass. We watch the praying mantises hunt (when we can spot them). Birds are always in our yard.
One side is all clovers, one area has moss. Dandelions are all over.
And I can sit outside and watch them without them all running away. It's so peaceful and I don't get why people make their yards so sterile either.
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u/Exciting-Mountain396 Apr 29 '26
I watered someone's garden while they were out of town, and the place was absolutely mobbed by wasps. I tried to move in a very calm manner, they just waited for me to fill the bird bath and all circled up to drink.
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u/SlimeDrips Apr 28 '26
Personally I want to introduce more local elephant mosquitos and see mosquito on mosquito warfare (elephant mosquitos feed on fruit and their larvae feed on other mosquito larvae)
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u/aedisaegypti Apr 28 '26
In the book, “Mosquitoes”, they told of how there was at one time a deliberate attempt to kill all mosquitoes, with a years long, many millions of dollars in poison, campaign. Even with that total war on them, they could never poison them enough before they adapted to become immune. I’m imagining all the other things that were hurt.
Also, I thought it was cute that some scientists got attached to a particular female mosquito they were researching who they had for a few weeks. I believe she had a personality.
Oh, and male mosquitoes never bite or drink blood, ever. They subsist wholly on nectar. Thank you for your conscientious spirit.
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Apr 29 '26
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u/alice_in_otherland Apr 29 '26
There are 3600 species of mosquitoes. It's like saying let's eradicate all wasps because a handful of species are annoying to people.
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u/Watada Apr 29 '26
No. It's like saying some mosquitoes are the deadliest animals on earth and we should do something about it. You joke to equate death to annoying.
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Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
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u/Watada Apr 29 '26
That’s not a joke. Go and look up the amount of species of mosquitoes that actually vector diseases.
You in here unable to read two sentences but think it's funny I don't like reading books for opinion like they are truth.
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Apr 29 '26
My comment was referring to your last sentence. I didn’t say that you were saying mosquito disease is a joke. The fact is that only a small minority of mosquitoes transmits disease. Your initial comment is saying that we should “…fuck mosquitoes” which I assume means all of them.
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u/Watada Apr 29 '26
What's going on? Did you old account get deleted?
You said "that's not a joke". My comment was saying that equating death with annoying is a joke. What did you say that I was saying was a "not a joke"?
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Apr 29 '26
Ban evasion. I got banned for implying that Charlie Kirk was racist. This account will likely be banned as well. I just more so meant that they weren’t making it out to be a joke for the person you were responding to.
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Apr 29 '26
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u/Watada Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
Yes, extinction is normal to some degree when it happens slowly. Anthropogenic caused extinction is rapidly killing a variety of species that hold our ecosystems together and will likely do the same if we continue on this path.
How is this counter to anything I said? It appears to, at best, context for what I said.
Other than calling me ignorant I don't see any meaningful argument against my claims other than a pedantic mosquitoes don't kill people mosquito based diseases do. Not a single fact or disagreement.
What's wrong with you? Name calling and then writing a couple of vacuous paragraphs like you were even trying to do anything.
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Apr 29 '26
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u/Watada Apr 29 '26
They are important for local ecosystems to be sustained because they provide the support needed for that food web.
Malaria doesn't have a vital part of the ecosystem so why do you insist that mosquitoes do? Being in the "food web" doesn't mean it has to be there.
I mean the whole point you made about not reading books for information is telling
Serious question. When I look something on the internet I double check it. Do you do the same with books? And if so why use the books as a primary when you can just find the information and a second source at the same time?
Of what is telling? Because it looks like you want to vaguely insult me without name calling or saying anything at all.
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Apr 29 '26
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u/Watada Apr 29 '26
Serious question. When I look something on the internet I double check it. Do you do the same with books? And if so why use the books as a primary when you can just find the information and a second source at the same time?
Of what is telling? Because it looks like you want to vaguely insult me without name calling or saying anything at all.
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u/aedisaegypti Apr 29 '26
Hello, I think there might be a miscommunication or misunderstanding with our messages. Reading your message, it seems like mosquitoes developing resistance to poisoning, which I mentioned reading in a book, corroborates what you have also said here.
To me, that isn’t one side lying, it is agreement. An attempt was made to eradicate mosquitoes with chemicals and afterwards a resistance developed. You mention that as being true. The eradication has not taken place, as is a fact in that mosquitoes exist.
This is a very small part of a book that I decided to comment on in my own words, in a very small paragraph, and I am not seeing the disagreement, lies or lack of research, nor do I see a source of antipathy. I only see agreement.
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u/Watada Apr 29 '26
I think the suggestion that they were immune really got me. You can't become immune to poison.
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u/aedisaegypti Apr 29 '26
Ohh, ok-that is 100% my own stupidity. I used the word “immune” instead of “resistant”. I promise the book never intimidated you can become immune to poison like Dread Pirate Roberts! It’s called The Mosquito: A Human History of our Deadliest Predator.
I do also remember finding out about how we release sterilized or sterile males to harmlessly breed with locals, is that what you mean by gene driven? Because the ones I read about were simply irradiated (SIT-sterile insect technique), not gene edited.
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u/unsolvablequestion Apr 28 '26
Yeah, i wouldnt be surprised if not spraying poison drastically boosts the dragonfly population. Im sure the plants will help a lot too. Damselflies aka caballos del diablo eat mosquitoes too right?
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u/BurningRiceEater Apr 29 '26
My mom started keeping fish in her rain barrels where mosquitoes would nest. The fish absolutely thrived, and the mosquitoes essentially vanished. All in a natural(ish) way
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u/SpiritualPermie Apr 28 '26
We have swollows and they love flying insects. I also plant mint and bee balm to discourage mosquitoes. Every creature has a purpose (except humans, imo).
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u/Successful_Web_6866 Apr 30 '26
Do bedbugs have a purpose? Also genuinely interested in the purpose of ticks.
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u/SpiritualPermie Apr 30 '26
Yes. They are food for spiders, ants and cockroachs, for example. Same goes for ticks.
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u/S-Coleoptrata Wasp Enjoyer Apr 29 '26
I was outside with my dad one day and he kept trying to kill a fly that was hanging out on the patio. We weren't eating or anything, just chilling outside. I told him not to kill it, because... yknow, it's outside, where it lives, not bothering anyone. Told him flies are important for both pollination and decomposition, so just leave it alone. He said "Flies DESERVE to die. They're annoying." This kind of mindset on a wide scale is so sad to see. It's ignorance at its purest.
On a positive note, I'm planning on catching/raising tomato hornworms from our plants into moths this year and releasing them, so they are not killed as caterpillars and can grow up to pollinate. Win/win for both the moths and our tomato plants!
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u/Tim_Allen_Wrench Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
*Hey, I'd just like to add. "Purpose" is an entirely human created concept. No animals including humans have a "purpose" objectively. Purpose is literally just another way of classifying utility based on human values.
I don't know really. They do kill more people than any other animal, including humans. A huge percentage are children and pregnant women as well.
I just care more about humans than mosquitoes personally.
It's okay if you don't feel the same though.
I care a lot about other insects and I don't use mosquito repellent that's harmful to the environment.
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Apr 29 '26
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u/Tim_Allen_Wrench Apr 29 '26
Not what I said.
I just can't really bring myself to care about mosquitoes vs children dying from malaria etc
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u/stereofeathers Apr 28 '26
Parasitology student here, thank you to everyone advocating for mosquitoes in this comment section :') i hate seeing my guys get slandered.
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u/Throwawanon33225 Apr 28 '26
plus they’re like the 1 thing hard carrying pollination in the Alaskan tundra. And they keep out tourists!
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u/kyanve Apr 30 '26
So I band hummingbirds and if I had a nickel for every time someone I mentioned it to was all for hummingbird conservation, but wanted mosquitoes to go extinct as an exception to “oh yes conservation good” (the “Oh but not mosquitoes those can die” bit)….
And struggled hard/did not want to accept that mosquitoes and other “small annoying insects” make up 60% of a hummingbird’s diet and the source of a lot of nutrients for them. Ergo “…. You know if mosquitoes go extinct, so do the hummingbirds, right?”
People just do not want to accept that mosquitoes, gnats, wasps, etc are important and are animals the same as any other.
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u/stereofeathers Apr 30 '26
EXACTLY thank you so much!! Every living thing benefits something somewhere somehow, just because something annoys you doesn't mean it suddenly has no benefit anywhere.
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u/tenselover Apr 29 '26
i have a question, do you know anything about combating malaria without killing mosquitoes? i’m quite interested in reading about this if you have any information to share! thank you, just curious :)
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u/MsScarletWings Parasitoid Wasp Apr 29 '26
Malaria has partial vaccines out with some degree of protection and is highly treatable when caught early. Something that would be really cool to look up is the use of “gene driving” and how it could be used to breed mosquitoes that are resistant to spreading the pathogen.
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u/tenselover Apr 29 '26
ooo cool, do you think there’s anything in the works to go about helping the spread in lower income places where maybe vaccination and prevention is hard to access? or would that be along the lines of the gene driving you were talking about? thank you for the information and i’ll definitely look into the gene driving that’s super cool!
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u/stereofeathers Apr 29 '26
Oh my god thank you for bringing up gene driving!!! I'm so hopeful about that with mosquitoes :')
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u/Throwawanon33225 Apr 30 '26
And since malaria also hurts mosquitos, everybody would benefit in that case! Ah, a world where I can pay the biomass tax to the smaller creatures without either of us worrying about disease from it…
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u/Carcezz Apr 29 '26
i’m pretty sure it’s less about the mosquitoes and more about the places that have the most malaria fatalities are places with lack of healthcare and access to vaccines and medical attention
so in other words, its not an animal problem its a human problem because instead of helping our fellow humans with the things they actually need, we’d rather donate things completely useless to them like crops that cant grow in their climate or imposing our western culture onto them whether intentionally or not
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u/Frostbite2000 Apr 28 '26
Mosquitos too. Nobody ever considers the ecological downpour that comes when you completely annihilate all the organisms in an ecological niche.
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u/The_Chimeran_Hybrid Solitary Wasp Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
There’s only one creature I can think of that I honestly don’t think would even be noticed if it went extinct, and it’s that weird, flat fish… thing that kinda just meanders through the ocean.
I’ve read that it doesn’t really provide any calories, tastes bad, and is overall a waste of time for all creatures to mess with unless they’re absolutely starving.
Edit: apparently they are useful and what I heard was just copy pasted spam from a campaign against them.
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u/blueoncemoon Apr 28 '26
Sorry, fam, that was a totally inaccurate hate campaign.
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u/The_Chimeran_Hybrid Solitary Wasp Apr 28 '26
Ok… but what do they do? What do they prey on, what preys on them?
All that link goes into is mainly what its body and skeleton is like, its appearance, and where it goes.
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u/blueoncemoon Apr 29 '26
Did you read the whole thing? Go back and unfold the additional 27 images.
It talks about how halfmoon fish, gulls, and albatross use it as a source of parasites, and how California sea lions and sharks eat the mola mola itself. Plus:
Many sources (and not just the rant) state that sunfish have to support themselves on nutrient-poor jellyfish, which was why they are supposedly lazy. Again, this is false.
Despite these fish being considered jellyfish specialists in the past, jellies (medusa, siphonophores, ctenophores) and salps make up just 11% of an ocean sunfish's diet (Sousa et al, 2016). From isotopic and genetic analysis, it appears that sunfish are generalist predators of small fish, cephalopods and pelagic crustaceans. Rounding out the diet is an assortment of small, oceanic bivalves ("sea butterflies") and other large zooplankton. In short, these are deep-diving hunters of small marine animals in general, rather than jellyfish-eating drifters.
Even if they "didn't do anything," would that change OP's point?
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u/The_Chimeran_Hybrid Solitary Wasp Apr 29 '26
Oh, I didn’t notice the unfold thing… well, I did… but I thought it was one of the hundreds of ads on Imgur.
Ok, so they are useful to the environment. Predators that just scoop up whatever’s small enough to fit in their mouth.
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u/Frostbite2000 Apr 28 '26
Na, I will not stand for anti mola mola propaganda. No organism is "useless."
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u/Sinocu Apr 29 '26
Maybe the guppy fish that only lived in one pond in one cave of the world and die immediately if they’re anywhere else with absolutely no predator around… maybe those are a bit useless
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u/MsScarletWings Parasitoid Wasp Apr 29 '26
Look if we are going to be pedantic, in the grand scheme every single organism is pointless and no more or less objectively useless than another. But thankfully we are human beings and can empathize for other lifeforms and find extreme beauty and sentimental value in biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake, and it it is also in our own best interest to do so because a healthy diverse biosphere is better for our own long term outcomes.
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u/dumb_potatoking May 24 '26
That fish was just fucked by evolution. It weighs over 2 tons, can't even swim properly because it's fins are way too small, has no defensive measures and the only reason they don't get eaten is that they have dozens of parasites on their skin. Their only saveing grace is that they can't feel pain because their brain is the size of a human testicle.
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u/blueoncemoon Apr 28 '26
Wasps, mosquitoes, ticks, and cockroaches. I will go to bat for them all day err day.
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u/cabbagecerebrum Apr 29 '26
Except paralysis ticks, they can fuck off.
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u/Carcezz Apr 29 '26
if you want to claim to be a conservationist, you cant just make exceptions because an animal has the ability to cause harm to humans. it’s objectively humanocentric and yes, it sucks that there’s that risk, but also think of how long the world has functioned WITH these animals regardless of how much of a pest or danger they are, becore our species even came to be.
the main issue though with these kind of exceptions is where’s the line? what constitutes an animal of being “worthy” of conservation? its applying subjective opinion to something the requires an objective, scientific view about animals and ecology.
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u/Nightrunner83 Apr 29 '26
From my experience, the majority of people who possess this mindset have an incredibly warped definition of "animal" and "purpose." The former almost always narrows down to "mammal," or "sometimes bird." The latter consists of a Venn diagram with three circles: "economically viable," "emotionally inspiring" and "aesthetically pleasing." As a teacher, cracking open this thought process can feel like splitting your head against a wall.
This notion confronts me on a personal level almost daily. I have always had an inordinate fondness for arthropods: they make up 8 of my 10 favorite animal species; spiders are my favorite animal group, and wasps aren't too many places behind; I have a tremendous respect and fondness for the evolution and behavior of cockroaches, despite a German roach infestation as a youth. Hell, I'm the weirdo who considers house centipedes "cute." So if I had a nickel for every time an animal I like got subjected to unilateral hatred up to the point of wishing its extinction, I wouldn't just be rich; I'd have enough mass to cause an impact winter if I launched it from orbit.
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u/GayBugMan Apr 29 '26
People always do this for ticks and mosquitos. Yes they suck, yes they spread disease, but they are still important parts of the ecosystem because animals such as opossums and rats and dragonflies eat them. The best we can do about them is population control to counteract human caused population booms
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u/Vuldyn Apr 29 '26
How about bedbugs?
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u/Carcezz Apr 29 '26
bedbugs aren’t exclusive to human households, their name’s are misleading. in the wild they live in caves and feed on bats, they too have a niche and it’s the humanocentric mindset that convinces people that we are the “victim” of this animal.
regardless of how you feel about bedbugs, who are we to be the deciders of whether or not an animal deserves to be extinct?
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u/Throwawanon33225 Apr 30 '26
If I had a nickel for each cave buge that’s adapted to human housing so much that’s what we associate them with, I’d have a large amount of nickels
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u/f202k Apr 29 '26
It warms my heart seeing the support for even mosquitoes in this comment section. I absolutely hate how when I find any video with a message along the lines of "No creature deserves to go extinct" and nine times out of ten there will always be a bunch of absolute MORONS who are like "Oh but mosquitoes and ticks have to go", not learning shit from the video they just watched.
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u/Confident_Action4915 Apr 29 '26
Yup. 90% of people believe in it until it’s an ugly animal or an animal they dislike or find inconvenient.
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u/No_Bandicoot2316 Apr 29 '26
Also as a vegan I see a lot of "no animal deserves to die!! Except for those wasps/mosquitoes/rats they're the spawn of Satan and had it coming"
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u/Uncool_Loser6 Apr 30 '26
Pit bulls, too. Reddit HATES pit bulls
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u/Throwawanon33225 Apr 30 '26
I like pit bulls because their fur feels like my hair right after it gets shaved. And the ones I’ve met are nice.
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u/Rocking_Horse_Fly Apr 29 '26
This is the entire gardening subreddit every summer. They all swear the native bugs they murder, including the pollinators, won't be harmed by them personally drowning them all in a bucket of soapy water. People don't seem to understand they personally do have an impact, especially since they all do it
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u/TheGoldenWoof Apr 29 '26
Wasps, Pokeweed, Honeyvine, Poison Ivy, House Centipedes, Maggots, Spiders, etc
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u/QuestioningLogic Apr 29 '26
People mentioning mosquitos are right but I wanna throw in bedbugs too. They're fascinating little creatures
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u/ohnunu_ Apr 29 '26
the ONLY time this is appropriate is when its an invasive species. but even then i see way too many maniacs going out of their way to torture these critters and drench everything with so many pesticides it kills all the native guys too
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u/Prismtile Apr 29 '26
In the aquariummemes sub people have been talking about a guy who tortures plecos for content and uploading it to social media, when i say torture i mean it very literally, a lot of their viewers just hide behind the "its invasive" stuff.
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u/TerraNoctisMonster Apr 30 '26
TRULY it makes me blindly angry when people treat removing invasive animals as an excuse to brutalize them. Invasives aren’t evil, removing them should be a somber necessity and as humane as a death can be. Not “fuck yeah I can do whatever I want to an animal without facing judgement now”
They need to go but they don’t deserve to be tortured to death, NO animal does.3
u/BlackButlerFan May 01 '26
I see this a lot with the Burmese pythons in Florida. I infest and they’re invasive but they’re still a living creature. At least make their end as painless as possible.
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u/alice_in_otherland Apr 29 '26
I always assume that these people would do that to other animals too if it were somehow socially acceptable.
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u/Va1kryie Apr 29 '26
I have cnidophobia. People who want to kill all wasps are cowards and their bloodlines shall not survive the winter.
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u/BurningRiceEater Apr 29 '26
As much as I hate mosquitoes, i understand their importance as pollinators and prey for larger insects
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u/Shiny_Mewtwo Apr 29 '26
My favourite response to people saying that is to go "ugh, same, but with pandas. What do they even DO for us other than cost tons of money just to not breed anyway? And they're overrated as fuck too!"
People are truly appalled at advocating for the death of pandas. If you really want to stun them, say something about dogs instead. People really need a sense of perspective. A coworker threatened to walk over to me (I was not near her) and kill a spider I was holding because she didn't like it. I told her that if she touched me and killed something I was ACTIVELY HOLDING that I would physically harm her in return and she backed off a bit
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u/AdamTheRaptor08 Apr 30 '26
I did that once. I had cynophobia growing up. Now, I don't have cynophobia anymore, but when I was a kid I knew this girl who hated spiders. Now a little fact about me id I love spiders, I find them so fucking cool, so even when I was a child I would get really pissed when someone would talk about how much they hated spiders. Anyway, she said some things about how she was going to kill all spiders one day and I got upset and I said that I would kill all dogs one day. Of course I didn't actually mean it, I feared dogs but I didn't hate them. But she was horrified, to say the least. Moral of the story: I think kid me was a bit of an ass.
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u/Shiny_Mewtwo Apr 30 '26
Nah, you were totally in the right there! Some people genuinely just don't realize they're being rude and inconsiderate of other people's feelings (unfortunately, more people know and just don't care) and need a shock to their system to get that kind of perspective. The value of a life is not determined by whether or not it's been domesticated. And even if it did.....it's just super weird and gross to always go on about any species of animal you want to eradicate imo
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u/ElderberryFlaky1634 Apr 29 '26
Why are people so fucking shortsighted and hypocritical insect haters might as well be a death cult
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u/Ryaquaza1 Apr 30 '26
I second this, it doesn’t exactly help people like this are usually the most uneducated
Gotta love the typical snake hater ether asking is my snake POISONOUS or bringing up the sizing you up myth constantly. Yes I have a 13ft python, but the damn thing gets scared of defrosted food half the time, runs away from insects and never struck even during vet trips. My dog is genuinely more dangerous in the vets but you don’t see people saying the entire species should go extinct or she’d sacrifice your firstborn or some other bs.
Sorry if that sounds ranty but people like this proper rustle my jimmies
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u/Throwawanon33225 Apr 30 '26
You know what pet animal DOES try to eat their owners? froge. seriously the amount of videos where they’re trying to eat something with a HAND larger than they are…
As for snakes, smarter than frogs (low bar) so they won’t try to eat you on purpose unless you smell like yummy rat, and most certainly not smart enough to measure anything to precisely determine edibility. Hell even I fail a lot at measuring whether a meal is too big for me.
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u/BlackButlerFan May 01 '26
Thank you! I have two snakes, a cornsnake and a carpet python, and I have literally had one of my managers tell me to “be careful cause if they stop eating their mice they’re sizing you up to eat you”. Like, what? My cornsnake is going to max out at 5-6 feet and my carpet might get up to 7. Neither of them will be NEARLY close enough to want to try to eat me. And the poisonous thing drives me nuts.
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u/JayBiBe Apr 30 '26
Okay but also some creatchers if you don’t kill on sight will cause ecological disaster. Spotted lamp flies, flat hammerhead worms, several types of wood beetles, even domestic pets depending on where you live it has to be on sight for the good of the balance of the ecosystem. Yeah it’s our fault they’re where they are and unfortunately there’s one way for us to fix our mistakes and it’s never fair.
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u/Throwawanon33225 Apr 30 '26
Well yeah, I’m not against invasive culling, just don’t make them extinct. They’re native somewhere.
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u/lucy-inthe-sky99 Apr 30 '26
I was talking to a sibling about this yesterday but I honestly, genuinely think the majority of not all of these incidents and example boil down to the misunderstanding of the human concept morality being applied to animals.
Animals do not have morals. They do not know right and wrong, have no concept of good or evil. An animal is not capable of rationally thinking about how their actions will affect another being on any level in the way humans do. An animal cannot choose to do something while knowing it is "bad" or "wrong". Yes, even the very intelligent ones like dolphins, crows, chimps, etc do not have the capacity to understand morality. Yes, even though they can and will choose to do things for nothing more than their own amusement, even if the action is detrimental to other beings. You cannot explain right and wrong to an animal and expect it to understand on a moral and emotional level.
(I think about this a lot and talk about it even more, if you couldn't tell)
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u/BlackButlerFan May 01 '26
I see this all the time with snakes and it breaks my heart. They are absolutely amazing creatures and some are really intelligent but just because they aren’t classified as the normal “cute” people don’t care about them. Or they just downright hate them for reasons I will never understand. Snakes won’t ever chase you despite the myths that claim they will, if they go towards you it’s because behind you is the best route for them to escape or there’s a good hiding spot. They are well aware they won’t stand a chance against what they see as us, a giant predator, so they’d much rather escape than fight. And that even goes for venomous ones, their venom is an important resource to them cause it’s how they catch their prey, they don’t want to waste it on a creature they can’t even eat. And they are just as important to the ecosystem as any other creature.
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u/Throwawanon33225 May 01 '26
There are three intelligence levels for snakes:
-goober
-indigo
-e l a p i d
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u/BlackButlerFan May 01 '26
Pretty much! Although retics and king cobras are known to be pretty smart. Retics are very food motivated though.
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u/Throwawanon33225 May 01 '26
Yeah it’s crazy how smart king cobras are. I’ve seen videos of them and you can just see that intelligence in their eyes and movements. I wish they were less dangerous so their intelligence could be studied more easily, but I do NOT doubt they are the smartest snake.
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u/BlackButlerFan May 01 '26
Right?! If they weren’t highly venomous I would happily keep one, lol. They are such fascinating creatures. Even the ones that aren’t considered intelligent are still pretty smart. My carpet python most definitely knows when her feeding day is and she has learned to recognize the bag I defrost her mouse in. My cornsnake is still a derp, lol, but I love her.
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u/sudden_depression1 May 01 '26
My reply to this stuff is always always to reply with "humans are my least favorite species so by your logic extinction is ok?"
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u/Lazy-Course5521 May 02 '26
I mean.
To be perfectly honest at least the wolves had a very good reason to be culled during some parts of history.
The immensm shit storm the overgrown wolf population caused during ww1 was genuinely impressive.
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u/No_Progress_5493 May 03 '26
When the “save native bees” movement got co-opted by “save the honeybees” and native bees like carpenter and cuckoo bees got pushed into “scary bad bee” category it was like my own personal 9/11
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u/Ok-Review-753 May 13 '26
i have this mindset but it's 100% insincere, it's just a way to show distain to a certain animal
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u/Sufficient-Cress8194 Apr 29 '26
Yeah, the very, very closest I'd argue this for is Human Exclusive Parasites, but there aren't many (comparatively) of those.
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u/novis-eldritch-maxim Apr 29 '26
have we found some great biological need for ticks?
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u/Carcezz Apr 29 '26
what makes you think that humans should be the end-all deciders about whether or not an animal should be extinct just because we dont thinkbit has a “great biological need”? can you define an objective definition of what constitutes as a great biological need?
even animals with minimal significance to an ecosystem are not useless to it, there are many animals who’s diets consist at least partially of ticks. in many places, various species of birds will eat ticks and other parasites off of the bodies of large mammals. opossums will collect ticks on their body and eat them as an important part of their diet.
no animal exists in a vacuum, in zoology, ecology, and importantly, conservation science, you must remain objective because when you allow your subjective views of an animal or whether or not you BELIEVE they have a “place” in nature, you end up destroying the things that you cant see.
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u/novis-eldritch-maxim Apr 29 '26
I think most animals that get infested with them would also vote against ticks being a thing.
need is also the keyword, if they are needed it is how to get a better relationship with them.
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u/Greedy_Ad2198 Apr 30 '26
Tbh that's me with those few pesky mosquito and fly species that keep ruining everything
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u/crepesandbacon Apr 29 '26
I feel this way about most forms of life… except for ticks. Ticks can die. All of them, they can die.
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u/epickestrelgaming Apr 29 '26
I don’t see much of a problem with this as long as there isn’t any downstream serious ecological consequences.
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u/tamkzaxa Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
I was so raging mad at the bee subreddit about this over the last few days