12/22/2023 0 Comments Apocalypse cow recording![]() They called it the windshield phenomenon. ![]() The feeling was so common that entomologists developed a shorthand for it, named for the way many people first began to notice that they weren’t seeing as many bugs. People noticed it by canals or in backyards or under streetlights at night - familiar places that had become unfamiliarly empty. “It’s the diminishment that we don’t see.”īecause insects are legion, inconspicuous and hard to meaningfully track, the fear that there might be far fewer than before was more felt than documented. “We notice the losses,” says David Wagner, an entomologist at the University of Connecticut. ![]() With other, less-studied insect species, one butterfly researcher told me, “all we can do is wave our arms and say, ‘It’s not here anymore!’ ” Still, the most disquieting thing wasn’t the disappearance of certain species of insects it was the deeper worry, shared by Riis and many others, that a whole insect world might be quietly going missing, a loss of abundance that could alter the planet in unknowable ways. In the United States, scientists recently found the population of monarch butterflies fell by 90 percent in the last 20 years, a loss of 900 million individuals the rusty-patched bumblebee, which once lived in 28 states, dropped by 87 percent over the same period. Riis was not alone in noticing their decline. Insects are the vital pollinators and recyclers of ecosystems and the base of food webs everywhere. The more he learned, the more his nostalgia gave way to worry. Riis had not been able to stop thinking about the missing bugs. “This is not 100 percent legal,” he said, “but I guess, for the sake of science.” Riis eyed his parking spot nervously as he adjusted the straps of the contraption. Drivers whizzing past twisted their heads to stare. Made of white mesh, the net ran the length of his car and was held up by a tent pole at the front, tapering to a small, removable bag in back. From his garage, he retrieved a large insect net, drove to a nearby intersection and stopped to strap the net to the car’s roof. He was anxious about not having yet written his address for the school’s graduation ceremony that evening, but first, he had a job to do. I met Riis, a lanky high school science and math teacher, on a hot day in June. ![]() “Maybe I didn’t like it when I was on my bike and I ate all the bugs, but looking back on it, I think it’s something everybody should experience.” “I guess it’s pretty human to think that everything was better when you were a kid,” he said. It was, he granted, an odd thing to feel nostalgic about. Riis watched his son, flying through the beautiful day, not eating bugs, and was struck by the melancholy thought that his son’s childhood would lack this particular bug-eating experience of his own. Where had all those insects gone? And when? And why hadn’t he noticed? But this absence, he now realized with some alarm, seemed to be all around him. He couldn’t recall the last time he needed to wash bugs from his windshield he even wondered, vaguely, whether car manufacturers had invented some fancy new coating to keep off insects. When his parents took him driving, he remembered, the car’s windshield was frequently so smeared with insect carcasses that you almost couldn’t see through it. Back then, summer bike rides meant closing his mouth to cruise through thick clouds of insects, but inevitably he swallowed some anyway. But strangely, he wasn’t eating any bugs.įor a moment, Riis was transported to his childhood on the Danish island of Lolland, in the Baltic Sea. Sune Boye Riis was on a bike ride with his youngest son, enjoying the sun slanting over the fields and woodlands near their home north of Copenhagen, when it suddenly occurred to him that something about the experience was amiss.
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