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VonBonfire
Well-known member
From my understanding Australia is full of creepy crawlies.
Thumbpicker
Well-known member
Oh no... not like America... All those deadly creatures... Take Amity Beach for example and those bloody white pointers...
Farewell an’ adieu to you fair Spanish ladies,
Farewell an’ adieu to you ladies of Spain,
For we’ve received orders for to sail for old England,
An’ hope very shortly to see you again.
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin’ back, from the island of Tinian to Leyte, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know, you know that when you’re in the water, chief? You tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. Well, we didn’t know. `Cause our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin’. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it’s kinda like `ol squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark nearest man and then he’d start poundin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin’ and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ they all come in and rip you to pieces. Y’know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I don’t know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin’ chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, bosom’s mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He’d a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
Thumbpicker
Well-known member
Also you've got Hilary Clinton! That'd strike fear into the heart of any normal human being.
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VonBonfire
Well-known member
When she's buzzing around we put up the good silver so it don't come up missing like when she was in the whore hou-,er, white house.
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VonBonfire
Well-known member
@Thumbpicker what do you think of these bad boys:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1348456904...T8A6HG&hash=item1f656df275:g:5ygAAOSwolZlc8Wb
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1348456904...T8A6HG&hash=item1f656df275:g:5ygAAOSwolZlc8Wb
Thumbpicker
Well-known member
They are pretty expensive for metal fingerpicks - must be high quality huh?
I tried using metal picks for banjo but being a thumbpicker on guitar I got lazy and dispensed with them and used just the thumbpick and nails... I know it doesn't have that biting sound.
Floyd Eye
Well-known member
This.
Floyd Eye
Well-known member
Right. The deadly creatures here are congressmen and doctors. Not Black Mambas and rabid kangaroos and all that other shit you guys have. We pay the fuckers that kill us so they do it very slowly.
Monkey Man
Super Moderator
My controversial opinion that I've had for decades:
Saying that this bug or that creature is vital to an ecosystem's ability to survive and flourish is horse shit, with a few notable exceptions such as bees, and here's why:
When something dies in the water (no sharks or cleanup crew required)
Proteins break down, producing ammonia. Nitrifying bacteria break the ammonia (most-toxic) down into nitrites (less-toxic), then to nitrates (least-toxic). In anoxic environments bacteria then converts nitrates back into freely-available plant food. Plants also thrive on ammonia, nitrites and nitrates directly, so there's that too.
When something dies on land (no hyenas or vultures required)
Bacteria and Maggots devour the flesh. Even if the scavengers all died, bacteria would take care of everything.
That's it. Simple principle.
Saying that this bug or that creature is vital to an ecosystem's ability to survive and flourish is horse shit, with a few notable exceptions such as bees, and here's why:
When something dies in the water (no sharks or cleanup crew required)
Proteins break down, producing ammonia. Nitrifying bacteria break the ammonia (most-toxic) down into nitrites (less-toxic), then to nitrates (least-toxic). In anoxic environments bacteria then converts nitrates back into freely-available plant food. Plants also thrive on ammonia, nitrites and nitrates directly, so there's that too.
When something dies on land (no hyenas or vultures required)
Bacteria and Maggots devour the flesh. Even if the scavengers all died, bacteria would take care of everything.
That's it. Simple principle.
dcburn mk.ii
Well-known member
Me too!
Stumplegriltskin
Well-known member
These are fun as fuck
I got this 10 years ago. The newer ones are weak. I have a friend that hates bugs more than me. He super glued a bunch of bees legs to one of those balsa wood airplanes to see if it would fly. He told me about this executioner racket. So I got the thing, put 2 AA batteries in it and said, well how bad could it be? Pressed the button and touched the racket. I did that once and once only. Holy shit.
So then I called him up. I said, "John, when you got your bug racket, did you touch it?" He replied, "I had to, but only did it once."
I got this 10 years ago. The newer ones are weak. I have a friend that hates bugs more than me. He super glued a bunch of bees legs to one of those balsa wood airplanes to see if it would fly. He told me about this executioner racket. So I got the thing, put 2 AA batteries in it and said, well how bad could it be? Pressed the button and touched the racket. I did that once and once only. Holy shit.
So then I called him up. I said, "John, when you got your bug racket, did you touch it?" He replied, "I had to, but only did it once."
MadAsAHatter
Well-known member
I live in South Louisiana. It's pretty normal to see mosquitos huffing DDT on the street corner. You have to watch out for the ones with war stripes. I've seen them car jack one of those pesticide spray trucks.
Dan Gleesak
Well-known member
I think there is a lot more to it though.
Insects certainly spread up the decaying process, but bacteria does help as well.
But they also play an important role in the soil biota as a whole. Insect biomass is about a billion metric tons, their absence would certainly have an impact
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Racerxrated
Well-known member
True.
But, the quicker the dead are recycled the lower the chance of a festering vessel existing that may transfer a nasty disease to us..like anthrax for instance.
Ben Waylin
Banned
Well-known member
Monkey Man
Super Moderator
Bacteria can do the job all on its own and there's no shortage of 'em.
It doesn't just "help"; it's the star of the show mate.
No matter which creatures eat a dead one, their poo then has to be broken down by... you guessed it, bacteria.
IOW, the super-fast eaters are simply middle men, extracting some utility from what's on-offer, whereas bacteria ultimately has to clean up the mess, regardless of how many intermediate stages happen to exist in any given situation. Note that these can vary greatly from place to place, but there's always one common denominator - bacteria, making it the only indispensable factor IMHO.
An impact, sure, but I'd argue that it'd be hard-to-measure seeing as bacteria does the most-scrupulous job.
Insect and arthropod biomass is huge, sure, but the heavy lifting is being done by "species" that're ridiculously-prevalent and in zero danger of becoming extinct. Earthworms aren't going away any time soon either.
Some context:
I've been able to achieve perfectly-balanced aquaristic ecosystems and the most-critical decision I made to reach that goal was never vacuuming substrate / gravel or even removing dead leaves. On the rare occasions a fish dies, I push it into the gravel near the base of a plant.
Point being that "science" and "big" industry in the fish keeping sector's Hell-bent on selling we hobbyists all manner of chemicals and cleaning and filtering equipment, declaring that our fish will die if we don't follow the generally-accepted paradigm. Big filtration. Big water changes. Effectively-sterile environment.
OTOH I've found that by not cleaning, I've ended up with a greater variety and total biomass of bacteria and other critters which actually help the fish's immune systems. So, minimal maintenance and healthier fish, all achieved by simply allowing bacteria to thrive where it otherwise is discouraged.
Note that I've not introduced any "intermediate" players, the equivalents of insects for example; everything's being done by invisible-to-the-naked-eye critters. These things will never go extinct as long as creatures shit and die.
Hence my assertion in my first post - The underwater environment is not only most of the earth's surface, but the bio-dynamics and critters involved therein are analogous to on-land.
Sorry for the rant.
PS:
My tanks look pristine BTW. No mulm whatsoever 'cause everything's being devoured as fast as it can be produced. Tell that to someone who spends 3 hours a week cleaning and maintaining his fish tank. Heck, I don't even run "cleanup crews" anymore (considered essential in the hobby - catfish to eat uneaten food and specific fish and / or shrimp to eat algae). IOW, and again, bacteria's taking care of everything.
Another way of looking at all this:
You could remove any given "species" or number of them and an environment would still be able to thrive as long as the bacteria remain.
If you removed the bacteria, it'd be all over red rover.
Monkey Man
Super Moderator
I should probably say that I've been keeping and breeding fish for 54 years, always intently watching what's going on and experimenting, hence my apparent confidence in my assertion re bacteria's exclusively-indispensable place in the so-called food chain.
Dan Gleesak
Well-known member
I enjoy reading about the aquatic side of things. Soils and botany were my focus at college but I am largely woefully ignorant about life in the water
Thumbpicker
Well-known member
The most important thing to know is it's wet in the water.
Stumplegriltskin
Well-known member
And there's shit in the water with Teeth. 5 beer minimum to get my feet wet. 7 beers to go in waist high
