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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

> You Might Not Want to Eat Bugs. But Would You Eat Meat That Ate Bugs?

Ummm. Free-range chickens love insects. Trout also eat lots of insects. And pigs. Well, I'm not going into what pigs will eat.

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AFAICT, chickens also eat any rodents stupid enough to go near them. If chickens were our size they'd be terrifying.

That's basically what an ostrich is. They're chickens that can kill you.

Now that I think of it, I suppose that makes sense considering the whole "birds are dinosaurs" thing.

If only the 9ft tall terror birds [1] from South America hadn't gone extinct 1.8 million years ago, we would never have thought Dinosaurs went extinct in the first place (or said differently, the fast that birds are dinosaurs would have been obvious from the start).

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae

If they were our size, they'd be velociraptors.

If rotisserie velociraptor is as good as chicken, I think I could endorse the risks involved with a revival of the species.

Carnivore meats aren't generally considered as good or trophically advisable given bioaccumulation. Fish are one area we tend to ignore that perhaps because of how obfuscated the ecosystem has been historically - we didn't see what they ate.

I think you mean Utahraptor [1]. Velociraptors are about chicken sized [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utahraptor

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor

Fair enough.

Present day, I'd say mainly watch out for eagles. At least, if you're a child. Ostriches too, but they won't hunt you.

I don't believe they actually hunt them, but in reality are protecting their eggs.

Mice/rats/etc LOVE eggs. Chickens (and all birds) know this. As ground layers, they're surely protective of their eggs from mice.

There was a book that became a TV movie called the Hoboken Chicken Emergency on this subject. I think it started out terrifying, but since it was made for kids didn't stay that way. Probably not a very accurate depiction.

Cattle aren't exactly picky about what they mow down along with their grass or hay or grain either. And if there's ever been a bale of hay that wasn't crawling with spiders and all manner of other beasties, I haven't seen it.

These are things I try not to think about. And not just with animals: plants have grown from and frequently come in direct contact with poo, and that's not a great thought either. Maybe it will be easier when vat grown meat scales up.

I've eaten lots of Psilocybe spp. But the first time I picked them from cow patties, I hesitated. And ended up making tea.

Fresh mushroom picking always seems like a dangerous game to me. How were you 100% sure it was what you thought it was and not something that kills you?

Identifying mushrooms is not that difficult. You need a good book and some diligence. Lots of people pick all kinds mushrooms regularly and accidents are relatively rare.

It also depends on where you look for them. In Europe there is only one mushroom you can pick by mistake. The way to check if it is dangerous (and not really that much dangerous) is to lick it. If it has strong sour taste it is bad (licking it won't get you sick, you need to eat it whole). Most of the times people make mistakes when picking bladed mushrooms that are not even that closely looking as the eatable one.

Mainly because I was with people who had eaten mushrooms from this cow pasture. Also because I know what Psilocybe look like. And that they turn blue where bruised with a fingernail etc.

I don't get why this grosses you out at all.

We have the water cycle, the carbon cycle, etc. The planet is reusing materials all the time. Thus, some of your clean drinking water was someone's pee at some point before.

I don't see why that is gross at all. Drinking actual pee would be super gross. But drinking water that used to be pee is still just water now and that's all the matters.

Intellectually it doesn't bother me. I think it grosses me out because modern society abstracts away nearly all aspects of food production from consumers. At the same time, there's a strong cultural aversion (at least in the West) to eating something like bugs and even more so for consuming human/animal waste. It's not technically bugs or waste anymore, but the association is still there, even if it's illogical.

I live in an intentional community that composts. And many of us are on the non-meat spectrum, so meat scraps are verboten in the compost.

I've pointed out that soil is already loaded with remains of dead animals. But to no avail.

Being vegetarian or vegan doesn't mean not eating anything that contains molecules that previously were meat. It means not eating anything that is an animal product.

By definition decomposers are converting the animal products into basical minerals and nutrients because THEY are eating the meat.

Otherwise plant matter couldn't even be eaten because some of the carbon has been through the carbon cycle and was previously an animal.

I think pigs would eat most of the things used to feed the insects, so this step seems rather unnecessary.

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