Free Republic

I took up the hobby of woodworking a few months ago. My wife was impressed by my work, so she asked me to make a pair of garden chairs as my next project. I obliged soon after and went about my business, putting in a lot of hard work over the next couple of weeks. When it was time for the final touches, I asked her to pick a suitable color except for pink, which kickstarted an exciting discussion, bringing up the topic of using colors to scare bugs away. Since we didn’t know much about the eyesight of bugs...

A swarm of bees attacked and killed a terrified man while he was mowing his lawn. Stephen Daniel had been mowing the lawn close to an abandoned building near Friendship Park in Eastland, Texas, on April 27, when he accidentally disturbed a large beehive. Within moments the bees swarmed Stephen as he raced toward his vehicle. But as he tried to escape, he ended up in Chrishae Cooper's front garden. She watched on as Stephen struggled to fight off the bees and alerted emergency services. Police were then dispatched to the scene in an attempt to save Daniel's life.

In just ten minutes, an ant could learn to identify urine from mice with cancerous tumors, a new study findsScientists want to train insects to test humans for cancer. In a new study, published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, ants could differentiate between the smell of urine from healthy mice and from mice with cancerous tumors. The research serves as a proof of concept demonstrating that ants could someday be used as a fast, inexpensive and noninvasive tool for detecting cancer, the authors write. “This is an exciting direction,” Debajit Saha, a biomedical engineer at Michigan State...

The two men had entered Kenya on a tourist visa and were staying in a guest house in the western town of Naivasha. Their lawyer said that her clients did not know what they were doing was illegal. Two Belgian teenagers who were found with thousands of ants valued at more than €8,000 and allegedly destined for European and Asian markets will be sentenced in two weeks, a Kenyan magistrate has said. Njeri Thuku, sitting at the court in Kenya's main airport, said she would not rush the case but would take time to review environmental impact and psychological reports...

Did you know your lipstick might be made from beetles? Or that some cat food may soon be made from flies? People farm insects for all sorts of reasons: Farmers rear bees to pollinate billions of dollars of crops, textile companies raise silkworms for their cocoons, and cosmetic companies use cochineal beetles for dyes. Researchers also put insects to work in labs: Fruit flies have revolutionized genetics, cockroaches provide insights into neurobiology, and ants inspire AI-driven robots.On top of that, medical companies raise blowfly larvae to clean wounds, desert locusts for compounds that might help reduce the risk of heart...

In some regions of the world, wild-caught insects have been a valuable source of protein for centuries. However, the mass farming of insects for food and feed is a modern practice. Over the last decade, the insect farming industry has been hailed as a silver bullet for many of our food system’s problems. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has been a proponent since 2013, when it published a report advocating the potential of farmed insect protein to contribute to global food security. Things haven’t worked out quite as planned, however, a reality that was brought into stark relief recently...

On Jan. 24, 2017, PBS aired a two-hour special on Rachel Carson, the mother of the environmental movement. Although the program crossed the line from biography to hagiography, in Carson’s case, the unbridled praise was well deserved – with one exception. Rachel Carson was an American hero. In the early 1960s, she was the first to warn that a pesticide called DDT could accumulate in the environment, the first to show that it could harm fish, birds, and other wildlife, the first to warn that its overuse would render it ineffective, and the first to predict that more natural means...

A larvae emerges from an adult fruit fly. (Moore et al., Nature, 2024) ======================================================================= A team of biologists has stumbled across a new species of wasp in an unlikely place: the back end of an adult fruit fly. The wasp is a previously undescribed species the researchers named Syntretus perlmani. And the strangest thing about it? It begins its life in the abdomen of adult Drosophila flies, a place that, as far as we know, no other wasps are willing to go. Though parasitoid wasps lay their young in the bodies of all kinds of insects, up to 200 species...

Cities America are spraying chemicals through their streets in response to a rise in several deadly mosquito-borne illnesses, in an unprecedented move. Massachusetts, New York, Texas and California are among the states deploying pesticides to repel the increasingly disease-ridden insects. The decision comes on the heels of an onslaught of mosquito-borne illnesses throughout the US, including West Nile Virus, which hospitalized White House Covid doctor Anthony Fauci this month, 'Triple E', a brain-swelling disease that has killed two Americans so far this year, and 'sloth fever', a disease transmitted from sloths to mosquitos. Officials are spraying the streets at night...

Singapore became the latest country to authorize insect products for human consumption, in what The Guardian described as a move that “paves the way for plates to become wrigglier, leggier and more sustainable” and as “a sign of things to come.” In an announcement on 8 July, the Singapore Food Agency said it had approved 16 insects for human consumption as food, making it the latest country to do so. The approved insects include silkworm pupa and mealworms. The European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, and other countries have also approved certain insects for human consumption, with clear labeling requirements...

Huma Abedin is engaged to George Soros' son and heir Alex. The Democratic insider, 47, and the younger Soros, 38, got engaged six weeks ago and were spotted recently celebrating in Italy, according to Page Six. The couple confirmed their engagement on Instagram shortly after Page Six published their story, with Soros writing: 'this happened…we couldn’t be happier, more grateful, or more in love.' Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s former deputy chief of staff, was previously married to disgraced New York politician Anthony Weiner. It will be the first marriage for Soros, who has been named as the heir to his father's...

Huma Abedin and Alex Soros are engaged, Page Six has exclusively learned. Sources tell us Soros popped the question six weeks ago, and the couple were spotted recently celebrating the happy news in Italy. “The best way I can describe the relationship is effortless,” a friend of Abedin’s for over 15 years tells Page Six. “After a lot of tumultuous years for Huma, she’s relaxed and happy and in love,” the insider added. The Democratic political insider and the son of billionaire Democratic donor George Soros were first linked earlier this year when the duo posted a cozy pic from...

The Singapore Food Agency said ‘these insects and insect products can be used for human consumption or as animal feed for food-producing animals’ A young girl eating a fried grasshopper. Singapore on Monday approved grasshoppers, and 15 other insects as food. Photo: Shutterstock =================================================================== Sixteen species of insects, including crickets, locusts and silkworms, have been approved as food in Singapore, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) said on Monday. “With immediate effect, [the] SFA will allow the import of insects and insect products belonging to species that have been assessed to be of low regulatory concern,” the agency said in a...

Scientists in South Africa have been stunned to discover that termite mounds that are still inhabited in an arid region of the country are more than 30,000 years old, meaning they are the oldest known active termite hills. Some of the mounds near the Buffels River in Namaqualand were estimated by radiocarbon dating to be 34,000 years old, according to the researchers from Stellenbosch University. “We knew they were old, but not that old,” said Michele Francis, senior lecturer in the university’s department of soil science who led the study. Her paper was published in May. Francis said the mounds...

Float like a butterfly, sniff out cancer like a bee? Honeybees can detect the subtle scents of lung cancer in the lab — and even the faint aroma of disease that can waft from a patient’s breath. Inspired by the insects’ exquisite olfactory abilities, scientists hooked the brains of living bees up to electrodes, passed different scents under the insects’ antennae and then recorded their brain signals. “It’s very clear — like day and night — whether [a bee] is responding to a chemical or not,” says Debajit Saha, a neural engineer at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Different...

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has launched a new project that seeks to introduce “maggot milk” into the food supply of the general public. The new “EntoMilk” is described as a “dairy alternative” that is made from “black soldier fly larvae” or maggots. The maggots are blended into a “rich and creamy liquid which looks and acts just like dairy,” according to its creators. “It’s got a very creamy mouthfeel,” a promotional video claims. Gates and his allies argue that EntoMilk should replace traditional dairy milk because farming allegedly destroys the planet. “The world needs alternatives to survive,” the promo claims....

What is a Love Bug? A love bug is a nickname for a type of beetle commonly referred to as the ‘Plecia nearctica’ or ‘March Fly.’ These small insects are native to the southeastern United States and are most commonly found in Florida and other nearby states. Love bugs are known for their distinctive black-and-red coloring and for their incredibly dense swarms, which can be quite a nuisance for drivers. Though they don’t bite, sting, or cause any other harm, love bugs can be a nuisance due to their sheer numbers.

There are plenty of contenders for the top 10 deadliest insects. Forget great white sharks and grizzly bears, insects are actually the most dangerous group of animals in the world to humans. This is in a large part due to their proficiency at carrying and spreading deadly diseases, from malaria to the black death. Many species of insect feed on vertebrate blood, putting them in a prime position to carry nasty bacteria, viruses, and parasites from victim to victim, and often from animal to human.

(Best USA Beef)—In mid-2022, we set up a news alert for terms like “cricket protein” and “cricket burgers.” Since then, there have been occasional peaks with a whole lot of valleys in interest as Americans generally aren’t excited about the prospects of getting their necessary protein from bugs. There was a spike that started shortly after news broke that bird flu was being transmitted to cattle. On the surface this makes sense, but it was conspicuously odd that there was no spike when bird flu was limited to poultry. Surely Americans would be concerned about their sources of protein whether...

Glenn told us we were going to eat bugs, and here we are... If you live anywhere between Texarkana and Chicago, you have likely already seen—or heard—about the 2024 cicada superbrood. This Biblical-scale insect invasion is the result of two cicada broods, Brood XIII and Brood XIX, emerging simultaneously. The last time something like this happened was in 1803. Trillions of cicadas will swarm out of the earth and fill the trees with a chorus of deafening buzzing. It didn't take long for the leftist elites to hop on this opportunity to push Klaus Schwab's dream: "eat the bugs." The...