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Monarchs used to be a "oh cool, look, it's the 50-100 monarchs in that field which we'll see a couple times a week for the whole season" thing here. Now it's "h
by ashark 9y ago
Monarchs used to be a "oh cool, look, it's the 50-100 monarchs in that field which we'll see a couple times a week for the whole season" thing here. Now it's "holy crap, it's our one single monarch butterfly of the year!" thing.
- GlenTheMachine 9y agoThat has a simple explanation, though. Monarch caterpillars can only survive on milkweed, and we've decimated the amount of milkweed around because we see it as, well, a weed.
- frakr 9y agoYou can help out with this by harvesting seeds and planting them all over!
- georgieup 9y agoGood way of earning yourself some enemies.
- winslow 9y agoI've been growing milkweed at my parents house and we saw a around 20 caterpillars this year! Unfortunately, ~1/2 of them didn't make it but we at least start seeing Monarchs again. Everyone should be planting better garden plants that can compared to the bland green bushes and grass that never blooms.
- kafkaesq 9y agoSo basically the planet is starting to treat us as a kind of a ... weed, in return.
- smt88 9y agoThe planet isn't conscious and can't "treat us" as anything. We are doing this to us. We are changing the environment to support short-term wants/needs at the expense of its human habitability in the future.
- terminado 9y agoTime to face facts. Some of us are weeds.
- radiorental 9y agoLet’s say you were interviewing a butterfly — or a Mayfly. A Mayfly lives for four or five days. Say that Mayfly was standing on the branch of a giant Sequoia tree in California, which lives for thousands of years. If you were to ask that Mayfly, “Do you perceive this branch that you are standing on as being alive?” The Mayfly would say, “Of course not. I’ve been here my entire life, four days, and the branch hasn’t done a doggone thing.” Yet when you look at the tree in our context, it is very much alive. It started with a seed, and it grew. Well, the earth is very much like that tree, and mankind is very much like that Mayfly. If we are lucky, we will live a hundred years. We are standing on a planet that was born four and a half billion years ago. It looked very different when it was born; it evolved and has changed. Africa used to be just outside the window here. Morocco was connected to Cape Cod. Beneath this building are rocks from Africa. It’s hard to imagine that. But if you were to sit on the moon, and look at the earth and blink your eyes once every million years, it would come blossoming to life.
- monochromatic 9y agoNot a great analogy. And even good analogies don't make great arguments.
- gibberfish 9y agoStill doesn't mean this clump of rock has any kind of intentionality.
- radiorental 9y agoohhh you, and your 'free will'
- naasking 9y ago> The planet isn't conscious and can't "treat us" as anything. Well, we don't really know what consciousness really is, so it's hard to say that the Earth isn't conscious. After all, who would have thought a complex network of simple neurons arranged in a particular way would be conscious?
- artursapek 9y agoGeorge Carlin called it.
- kafkaesq 9y agoIndeed. Talk about a man ahead of his time.
- analogic 9y agoNot getting my hopes up, but have seen more this year (Ohio) than I remember seeing in a long time. As in, like maybe 4-5 instead of 1-2, but I'll take it.
- delbel 9y agoreplying to your comment, I have seen hundreds of monarch butterflies this year. so many, my cat has given up and runs away. I have problems walking around. There are also dozens of other types of butterflies. Like I said you have to stop when you are walking and let them fly away 30-50 at a time. I actively look where I walk because I don't want to run into them, like in-my-face-there-are-so-many. So I don't know what everyone is talking about.
- Infernal 9y agoWhere have you seen all these butterflies?