Contents
1 Twilight dance of moths
2 A digger wasp colony in action (coming soon)
3 Tiny ant killing flies
4 Blurred borders Slow slow hunter
catches the worm!
5 Narrowing options for the future
6 Dramatic changes in Thailand
Moth Dance of
Beauty
Environmental observation and Can Love Survive in a noisy world?
. Moth dance!
One still evening just after sundown in 1999 in June, I was walking
with my girlfriend. We went to watch horses in a nearby field. We gazed
over the gate at them awhile, and about 2 feet above the grass in
the distance, we saw something jerking up and down like a tiny puppet.
We investigated and it was a large white moth. It fluttered about 2 feet
upwards and then gently dropped and repeated the upwards movement. Always
staying over the same spot! Slowly our eyes got accustomed to the
light and we saw the site being repeated all over the field. It was SO
Beautiful! The scene was serene and haunting. On closer inspection, we
saw larger black moths crawling/flying/approaching from the north (following
the scent) through the tall grass to
meet them. A timeless mating dance!
The old man who owned the field didn't cut the grass as others did
and more or less left it untended for 10 years or so.
Several days later, I revisited the scene. There was a slight
breeze. I waited and searched for them. One, then two, then many appeared!
The lovely dance begins again! Suddenly, a gas banger (used to frighten
crows away from fields of grain) fired about 400 meters away. The puppeteers
string cut, the moths fell in unison to the ground! Minutes later,
cautiously, the dance begins again. Bang! All fall down!
No banner headlines! Moth love disrupted by noisy neighbours!
It is just one more example of totally unexpected results from the
use of technology.
Think about it! If these moths are affected, why not snails, earthworms,
ants, bees, fish?
All around that field of beauty, there were fields of sugar beet,
intensive grazing for dairy cows, wheat and barley. No moths
there. Perhaps soon, No Moths Anywhere?
Heard about this bull
on radio on16th feb 2001
A 15 year old bull has just retired as an artificial insemination
donor in abbotsford, BC Canada.
He has sired 300, 000 sons and daughters. Heard it on the
radio this morning.
No doubt some of his sons are still donating, so it is easily possible
that he has over a million desendants! Under natural conditions, he would
have done hugely well to have, say 50 decendants.
I think that this should be seen as part of a dramatic narrowing
of the genetic base among farm animals and plants..
His genes have been successful but the genes of many of his competitors
are lost forever. Some of these genes could have proved useful in future
changed conditions.
We are living in one of the great extinctions. We are the cause
and generally, we are not deliberately going out to exterminate. Letting
one bull have millions of decendants is STUPID. We should not allow it!
It is more likely that a disease will devellop and spread rapidly
now than years ago when there was lots of variability in the population.
Brian white
6
Water buffalos and the economy in thailand.
In a few years, the population of water buffalos has gone down like
a shot. From 4 million to less than 1 million in 6 years!!
They have been replaced by tractors.
What of the people who tended them? Presumably they have left the
countryside for life in the cites. A guy buying up buffalo to preserve
the species is paying about $350 each for them. This tells us the economic
value of the slaughter.
$1750 million per year! Not a small amount. It is an extraordinary
amount of biological capital to lose so quickly! People are talking about
the extinction ot the water buffalo in thailand now! These animals are
slow breeders.
Picture of a buffalo