What's your take on insects?

[vesper818]

I'm a small-building apartment manager.
We do our best to exclude pests, but sometimes must resort to traps or bait to dispatch intruders. I do not like killing, but must provide a safe and healthy living space for my residents.
I don't know if roaches are sentient, but they are certainly persistent. At first sign of them, we must use bait that they carry back to the nest and kills them.
Storing foods in jars and airtight containers, eliminating paper and especially cardboard packaging helps a great deal.
I put spiders outside, and don't much bother the few pests in my tiny garden.
It all boils down to avoiding harm as much as possible. That includes harm to my neighbors.

 

[Lou]

I always thought lobsters would experience excruciating pain as a result of people eating them considering restaurants boil them alive. Why would eating lobsters possibly be considered acceptable to someone concerned with animal suffering?

Not that I subscribe to the notion. but the argument that says lobsters and bivalves are ok to eat has to do with the fact they have no brains. What or how they feel is debatable.

These animals do interact with their environment so they must experience something. And since we don't know what - I figure I'll err on the side of caution.

But still I recognize it as a gray area and give people slack. I don't eat honey but I do eat avocados, almonds and dozens of other crops that rely on the exploitation of bees. It is hard to know where to draw the line.

 

[vegan89]

Not that I subscribe to the notion. but the argument that says lobsters and bivalves are ok to eat has to do with the fact they have no brains. What or how they feel is debatable.

These animals do interact with their environment so they must experience something. And since we don't know what - I figure I'll err on the side of caution.

But still I recognize it as a gray area and give people slack. I don't eat honey but I do eat avocados, almonds and dozens of other crops that rely on the exploitation of bees. It is hard to know where to draw the line.

It seems like a big assumption to say "they have no brains, therefore they can't experience pain" ... doesn't it?

And considering the pain from being boiled to death would be horrific, you would think a person concerned with avoiding animal suffering should err on the side of caution, as you say.

 

[Lou]

It seems like a big assumption to say "they have no brains, therefore they can't experience pain" ... doesn't it?

yes. That should be rephrased. How about something like it's unlikely they can experience pain in the same way an animal with a brain does.

 

[Tom L.]

Decoding the neuroscience of consciousness

A growing understanding of consciousness could lead to fresh treatments for brain injuries and phobias.

www.nature.com

This is a link to an article about consciousness and brain structure. Back on the first page of this thread, we started debating whether neurologically-simpler animals could feel pain. For quite some time now, I've been unable to imagine how fishes and even insects could behave the way they do without being aware of anything on some level. I had come across numerous statements that a cerebral cortex was necessary for consciousness (and, I would assume, awareness- which in turn would be necesssary to feel pain or pleasure). I think this article might indicate we don't know as much about this as we thought we did.

From the above link:

Location, location, location​

As scientists have become more adept at detecting consciousness, they have begun to determine which brain regions and circuits are most important. But there is still much debate about what constitutes consciousness in neural terms, with particular disagreement over which brain processes and regions matter most.
Since at least the nineteenth century, scientists have known that the cerebral cortex is important for consciousness.

 

[Rory17]

I don't believe in killing bugs, except when they come in my home. I tend to deal with spiders by just taking down their webs. Ants will be dealt with organically, and by making sure that they can't get to any of my food. And with most bugs, cleanliness will help to keep them out.

I've never had the really bad ones like cockroaches, bedbugs, or termites. But if they did show up; they would be met with lethal force.

That’s just cruel and not vegan. PLEASE don’t kill bugs!!

 

[silva]

That’s just cruel and not vegan. PLEASE don’t kill bugs!!

cockroaches, bedbugs, or termites---all multiply very rapidly.
Cockroaches are a leading cause of asthma
Bedbugs cause excruciating itching which can lead to infection (I know)
Termites will destroy your home
I believe the vast majority of people who won't have these bugs dealt with in the early stages will come to regret their decision--and by that time their can be thousands more, and very hard to destroy

It's like avoiding a vaccine because animals are used then getting sick and needing to get treatments that involve far more animal use and testing

 

[KLS52]

I'm battling carpenter ants at the moment. I think I'm finally making some headway. It's been awful.

 

[Veganite]

I'm battling carpenter ants at the moment. I think I'm finally making some headway. It's been awful.

Oh my, they are so destructive. This happened to some close friends of mine. The ants got under their roof, which was a disaster, as you can well imagine. Just when they thought they had them under control,. they came back with a vengeance. They eventually had to remove their entire roof, which exposed, not one, but 5 separate nests, with their own queens. The pest dude said he had never seen anything like it before.

*

 

[Graeme M]

I've mentioned before the idea that as r-strategists, insects might be afforded less moral weight when evaluating our actions. When weighing up the consideration of interests, I am inclined to worry less about individual insects in favour of a species consideration.

Some animals reproduce sparingly and invest a lot in the upbringing of offspring (K-strategists). Others do the opposite by having many offspring and investing less in their success (r-strategists). R-strategists such as insects invest little in the individual and achieve species success on the back of raw numbers. Perhaps the individual counts for far less insofar as our ethical duty extends.

We can care about insects, but we need not apologise when we kill many of them to protect our interests.

 

[silva]

I'm battling carpenter ants at the moment. I think I'm finally making some headway. It's been awful.

I had carpenter ants at my old house. Initially they were in an outside tree, and I was told to leave them alone, they would have no reason to go to the house. Well they did. If I had been more proactive I'm sure I wouldn't have had to get a pest company, and far less would have been killed
It's important to know when to take action, and when to be willing to coexist

 

[tlc1976]

Yes, keeping harmful (and plentiful) pests in check is much better for the environment than having to rebuild a house damaged due to them, or getting medical treatments due to them. They can exist on my acreage, but I take measures to keep them out of my house.

 

[g0rph]

My take on this. Outside... away from the house, I leave all insects in peace...other than on our vegetable garden.
We take organic precautions, but sometimes it needs more force...
We use a citrus spray , but we have had a lot of ants this year, so the poison is down. They are getting out of control and destroying plants and coming into the house.
Insects inside I usually catch in a glass and release, but mosquitos and house-flies get the chop. They bite and spread disease.
Spiders, I leave (unless the missus sees them) as they eat flies and mosquitos.

In what I eat I am 100% vegan. But I do rank species of level of sentience.
By the time we get down to flies and ants, I don't really feel any compassion other than to leave them be if they are out in nature.

 

[Brian W]

A man with virtually no cortex was capable of advanced mathematics. This shows how little we really know about the brain and what causes consciousness.

Man born with "virtually no brain" has advanced math degree | Boing Boing

Scroll a bit further down and there is a link to a page which talks about spiders appearing to dream. When we rank creatures according to a belief in different levels of sentience, we are just guessing. If we have no option but to kill, then kill we must, but with no knowledge whatsoever of what causes consciousness we should always give the benefit of the doubt to the creature and avoid killing it where there is no necessity.

 

[silva]

Again, it's the way humans have chosen to conduct out lives that impacts all species. We've created unbalanced habitats for so many others.
Is it far to other species? No. But unless you're willing to go off grid and live in the wilderness, in a hut you build, and garden you grow, (we of course would never hear from you again....) it's guaranteed that you have impact on other species

Unless you've ever dealt with children, trying to stretch a paycheck to cover bills, figure out what to do for transportation, medical issues, so many problems that people have to work around every day, it's really not honest to expect everyone to care whether the bugs in their families food, or beds, or biting everyone get killed once and for all, or escorted out the door for infinity

 

[Graeme M]

A man with virtually no cortex was capable of advanced mathematics. This shows how little we really know about the brain and what causes consciousness.

There is a difference between no cortex and a highly compressed one. We would need to know just what actual loss this person experienced. Equally, there is a difference between cognition and consciousness.

 

[g0rph]

A man with virtually no cortex was capable of advanced mathematics. This shows how little we really know about the brain and what causes consciousness.

Man born with "virtually no brain" has advanced math degree | Boing Boing

Scroll a bit further down and there is a link to a page which talks about spiders appearing to dream. When we rank creatures according to a belief in different levels of sentience, we are just guessing. If we have no option but to kill, then kill we must, but with no knowledge whatsoever of what causes consciousness we should always give the benefit of the doubt to the creature and avoid killing it where there is no necessity.

I agree. Other than houseflies and mosquitos in my house. I never kill spiders. If my missus sees one I have to pick it up and put it outside though.
If I lived alone my house would probably be full of them

 

[silva]

Spiders have always seemed magical to me. Of course in north east Ohio I haven't worried about any being poisonous!
As a kid there would always be a big web on the side of the porch steps I considered my friend. We don't get many in the house, but I never shoo them out.
Flies however....I really really really ....dislike .... flies. Houseflies,horseflies, esp those swarming deer flies that bite. They creep me out soooo badly,.

 

[Tom L.]

@silva I've always been creeped out by spiders, but insects never bothered me. Which is illogical, since as you said, in our area (northeastern U.S.) there aren't any spiders that are really dangerous to humans. OK, we have the occasional Black Widow, but they're really more southern, and the only time I ever saw one was in the Biology Building were I went to college- she was kept in her own cage. (It was definitely a female- as I understand it, the males are smaller and a very different color).

Flies, on the other hand, are a real health hazard. Even the ones that don't bite can leave germs on your food or elsewhere. And I've been gang-attacked by deerflies in the Adirondacks. NOT FUN.

 

[Graeme M]

Flies however....I really really really ....dislike .... flies. Houseflies,horseflies, esp those swarming deer flies that bite. They creep me out soooo badly,.

Funnily enough, they are really interesting little critters. If you get down close and watch them, they are amazing. Fastidious with personal hygiene, they will clean their mouthparts and legs very assiduously. And they are very aware of what's going on around them. They even see the world in slow motion which is why they move so quickly. Weirdly enough, with care you can even stroke some flies, they seem to like it.

It's odd, I used to think insect just weren't really all that sentient. Nowadays, I think quite differently.