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professionaljaywlkerA short essay about being bug-hearted, and killing bugs.
I think one of the most cruel thing to love might be invertebrates. Insects. Arachnid. Worms. Pest.
With any other animal, it is seen as unreasonable to want to eradicate. Some insects do manage to earn human's favors, bees (but only the useful ones), moths and butterflies (but only the cute ones), and if you're facing a true bug lover, beetles and dragonflies and perhaps even spiders and centipedes and scorpions. But not all, and it's still simply reasonable, to hate even seeing them.
I've loved bugs since I was a kid. I think it felt wrong not to, because people didn't like them, and people didn't like me. I don't think I've ever understood what in how they move felt less alive for people than a puppy. Still now I love bugs. I love mosquitos and I love botflies and I love hornets and tiny annoying ants that crawl through the windows and cockroaches and the wasp that stung me on the thumb when I accidentally grabbed a stick she was resting on when I was 9.
You cannot possibly live a human life without killing countless things. It's impossible. The most vegan, most peaceful human, refusing to walk on grass to not harm the grasshopper that didn't jump fast enough, will not be able to live a life without killing an insect even accidentally. It's something I have thought about a lot overall. I'm not vegan. I've thought about it. It would make sense, I don't see a lot of difference between my own flesh and the flesh I eat. But somehow it feels even more insulting, to be something that kills, and to pretend I don't. I eat insects, too. I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly how I feel about it all.
Maybe it makes me an hypocrite, to be so perturbed about the way people treat insects when I still eat meat. But it's, I think, in the end, the fracture between someone seeing a dead cow, and a dead fly. Most people wouldn't have the courage to kill a cow. They would feel guilt. In fact, a lot of people already hide the fact that meat is flesh and is, strictly speaking, part of a cadaver. People who refuse to eat a fish with the head. Pork, not pig. Beef, not cow. I hate that too. But insects ? People kill a fly without even thinking about it. It's annoying, then it's dead. A dead fly doesn't elicit guilt.
People expect me to be the same. Even knowing I love insects, it's seen as amusing that I acknowledge them as more than a mindless automaton, and, if I can, if it costs me nothing, avoid killing them. I have killed countless insects. I've had to, purposefully, many many many times. But it is, in fact, killing. I just want to be allowed to recognize that.
I work in a lab, on ants. We dissected more than a hundred, ovaries, poison gland, brains, understanding how they work, how differentiation happens and how they communicate it. Reconstructing brains to evaluate changes in different structures, measuring how many proto-egg each individual has post-dissection and correlation to dominance, reading articles and articles about theory.
These specific ants like shallow humid grooves for their nest. Today we tested a large foraging arena, brightly lit for the cameras, dry, wide, open, empty. Ants panic after being picked up even with the least harmful tools we have. When in an unfamiliar space, we've had them in the past run until they died of exhaustion, unable to find the entry of the nest to hide. Two of them were placed in the foraging arena to test the cameras, test if we could read the tags they have on their back. Again and again, they like to follow the walls, possibly because it feels less exposed. And again and again, they stop, groom each other, and calm down if they meet, huddled into each other.
I can't claim to know what's going on in ants brain, whether they feel things similarly to us. But it's hard not to project.
Ant tagged 16, and ant tagged 12, close, unmoving.
I think one of the most cruel thing to love might be invertebrates. Insects. Arachnid. Worms. Pest.
With any other animal, it is seen as unreasonable to want to eradicate. Some insects do manage to earn human's favors, bees (but only the useful ones), moths and butterflies (but only the cute ones), and if you're facing a true bug lover, beetles and dragonflies and perhaps even spiders and centipedes and scorpions. But not all, and it's still simply reasonable, to hate even seeing them.
I've loved bugs since I was a kid. I think it felt wrong not to, because people didn't like them, and people didn't like me. I don't think I've ever understood what in how they move felt less alive for people than a puppy. Still now I love bugs. I love mosquitos and I love botflies and I love hornets and tiny annoying ants that crawl through the windows and cockroaches and the wasp that stung me on the thumb when I accidentally grabbed a stick she was resting on when I was 9.
You cannot possibly live a human life without killing countless things. It's impossible. The most vegan, most peaceful human, refusing to walk on grass to not harm the grasshopper that didn't jump fast enough, will not be able to live a life without killing an insect even accidentally. It's something I have thought about a lot overall. I'm not vegan. I've thought about it. It would make sense, I don't see a lot of difference between my own flesh and the flesh I eat. But somehow it feels even more insulting, to be something that kills, and to pretend I don't. I eat insects, too. I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly how I feel about it all.
Maybe it makes me an hypocrite, to be so perturbed about the way people treat insects when I still eat meat. But it's, I think, in the end, the fracture between someone seeing a dead cow, and a dead fly. Most people wouldn't have the courage to kill a cow. They would feel guilt. In fact, a lot of people already hide the fact that meat is flesh and is, strictly speaking, part of a cadaver. People who refuse to eat a fish with the head. Pork, not pig. Beef, not cow. I hate that too. But insects ? People kill a fly without even thinking about it. It's annoying, then it's dead. A dead fly doesn't elicit guilt.
People expect me to be the same. Even knowing I love insects, it's seen as amusing that I acknowledge them as more than a mindless automaton, and, if I can, if it costs me nothing, avoid killing them. I have killed countless insects. I've had to, purposefully, many many many times. But it is, in fact, killing. I just want to be allowed to recognize that.
I work in a lab, on ants. We dissected more than a hundred, ovaries, poison gland, brains, understanding how they work, how differentiation happens and how they communicate it. Reconstructing brains to evaluate changes in different structures, measuring how many proto-egg each individual has post-dissection and correlation to dominance, reading articles and articles about theory.
These specific ants like shallow humid grooves for their nest. Today we tested a large foraging arena, brightly lit for the cameras, dry, wide, open, empty. Ants panic after being picked up even with the least harmful tools we have. When in an unfamiliar space, we've had them in the past run until they died of exhaustion, unable to find the entry of the nest to hide. Two of them were placed in the foraging arena to test the cameras, test if we could read the tags they have on their back. Again and again, they like to follow the walls, possibly because it feels less exposed. And again and again, they stop, groom each other, and calm down if they meet, huddled into each other.
I can't claim to know what's going on in ants brain, whether they feel things similarly to us. But it's hard not to project.
Ant tagged 16, and ant tagged 12, close, unmoving.
