this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
129 points (97.8% liked)
UK Nature and Environment
387 readers
74 users here now
General Instance Rules:
- No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia.
- No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
- No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users.
- Do not share intentionally false or misleading information.
- Do not spam or abuse network features.
Community Specific Rules:
- Keep posts UK-specific. There are other places on Lemmy to post articles which relate to global environmental issues (e.g. slrpnk.net).
- Keep comments in English so that they can be appropriately moderated.
Note: Our temporary logo is from The Wildlife Trusts. We are not officially associated with them.
Our autumn banner is a shot of maple leaves by Hossenfeffer.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah the front grille of my car remembers.
Traveling from Montreal to Chicoutimi or to Sherbrooke, the car used to be covered in bugs.
Nowadays I don't even have to take it for a wash. I get the odd bug on my windshield and that's it
Probably due to overuse of pesticides.
I've always wondered about this anecdote, partly because I still see a lot of bugs when going out into the country. Is it that there are actually fewer bugs, or do the more aerodynamic cars of today cause fewer dead bugs to stick to bumpers/grills/windshields?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320474864_More_than_75_percent_decline_over_27_years_in_total_flying_insect_biomass_in_protected_areas (Please note: some scales are logarithmic and this is only for 27 years)
There are fewer bugs.
I've had the same car for 15 years. In that span alone I can confirm there's a lot less bugs on my car.
It's actually the opposite - more aerodynamic means a smaller cushion of air, which should translate to hitting more bugs because they aren't pushed out of the way as strongly or for as long. Instead, insect populations have fallen so dramatically that this effect still doesn't make up for it.
I see this comment so much, but it was never true where I lived. In fact, I only ever experienced the insects covering my windshield thing for the first time less than a decade ago when driving through North Dakota, Montana.... Big, open spaces, I guess. Where I grew up, there were trees and houses everywhere, no real open spaces. So maybe that made the difference.
I just drove through Montana again and had barely half a dozen insects on my windshield throughout the trip, so I do believe that's a very obvious sign for people who live in that kind of area.
Anyway, what I miss is frogs. I used to see frogs and toads and even turtles all the time. Can hardly remember the last time I saw one.
middle east coast US in the 70's and 80's in the suburbs you would constantly have to clean your grille and windshield from bugs. If you left a window without a screen on it and a light on overnight it was some Temple of Doom shit
Same for where I lived in Southern Ontario. We used to need to really scrub the windshield every time we drove back into the city to get all the bugs off. Last time I drove, you could count every bug on your fingers.
There also used to be swarms of gulls at my parents' cottage. Hundreds and hundreds of them every day. We used to bring a giant brush broom to clean all the bird shit off the granite at our swimming spot. Just 2 decades later (a decade ago) there were only dozens we'd see most days, and we only clean off the bird shit once/season.
As a child, there were hundreds of frogs there, too. I saw only a few at all on my last trip there.
Our ecosystems are struggling everywhere, at every level.