Swarms in South Korean capital trigger heated debate over pest control as experts say rising temperatures partly to blame
    • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      1 day ago

      For real. Love bugs are harmless and kind of cute. The main problem is that if you drove anywhere when it was mating season, you had to get a car wash. As bugs go, they were amongst the least annoying. I don’t want to call them “the best” bugs because some butterflies and lightning bugs are pretty cool but love bugs don’t care about us and we don’t care about them. They don’t bite or try to get in your house and birds and other animals have a feast.

      They might be the best behaved bugs. They’re just trying to get their freak on.

      • bassomitron@lemmy.worldEnglish
        111·
        24 hours ago

        Did you see the pictures in the article? They’re blanket everything so thoroughly that the dude was able able to scoop up piles with a shovel. Feels like that is a genuine nuisance, as I can imagine they’d be clogging vents and other things with how intense the swarming is in some areas.

        • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          19 hours ago

          I’m not saying they’re not an annoyance sometimes. But they’ve been in Louisiana (possibly a different species as ours are fully black in color with the same big orange noses). But we have termites, mosquitos, and probably everything else. And the birds, lizards, frogs, etc. have learned to eat them so they probably keep the population in better balance than if they were new to town.

          They’re pollinators that don’t sting, bite, or eat your house. They’re not locusts that ruin the harvest or whatever. And in Spring/Summer, it rains basically every day here around 4pm. That probably mostly cleans them off cars and stuff. They’re just part of the ecosystem. If you want birds, you need bugs.

          • bassomitron@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            19 hours ago

            For sure, I’m not saying that bugs aren’t important to the ecosystem. The way the article was presenting the information, it seemed like they’ve become much more numerous starting around 2022. To me, that indicates that the ecosystem there is out of balance (unsurprisingly, given that climate change seems to be the catalyst for this).

            As a side note, I have a friend who lives in New Orleans. When she was telling us about the annual termite swarms, we were legitimately aghast, lol.