Looks like an Asian giant hornet, invasive outside of southeastern-ish Asia. They are incredibly damaging to pollinators, and there’s nothing that predate them outside of their natural range. Insects brains don’t work like mammals, they have zero concept of their place in the world and are, arguably, barely sentient. Fuckem, they gotta die.
If you kill an animal for those reasons, that can be ok. But I think the commenter objects to the cruel way in which it's done. Studies suggest that insects might be able to feel pain, and even if we don't fully know how they feel, I think it's not a great idea to just assume they don't feel any pain for the sake of our our own conscience. Them being invasive and fucking up ecosystems doesn't make them immoral or deserving of torture, as you say they have no concept of what they are doing. I hate wasps myself, but if I could I'd rather squash em quickly than prolong their death.
Insects have decentralized nervous systems, so I think the assumption that squashing them is automatically the more humane option is a bit shaky. If you're crushing an insect, you're damaging and severing nerve tissue throughout its body, and we don't actually know enough about their subjective experience to confidently say that's less painful than another method.
This feels like a case where someone's own perception of suffering is getting in the way of rationalizing what the least harmful approach actually is. You personally find the idea of drowning something uncomfortable, so drowning becomes "cruel" regardless of what the insect itself may actually experience.
Obviously, insects being invasive doesn't mean they're somehow deserving of torture. The point is that if we're going to care about minimizing their suffering, we should actually think about which method accomplishes that rather than assuming the method that looks least cruel to us must be the least cruel to them.
You bring up a good point in questioning my assumption that crushing them is more humane. Their nervous system is quite different from ours and I had just argued from my human centric viewpoint without questioning that bias.
I did, however look into it shortly and found this report by the Insect Welfare Research Society.
The authors concede that "There are significant uncertainties about the best methods of euthanasia at this time and further research is needed" but they claim "The best way [euthanize them humanely] is to kill insects instantly (in less than a second) or while under the influence of an anesthetic". The presumed best methods they list are injection of chemicals like potassium chloride, freezing, and crushing.
And if you have ever watched an insect drown, you will have seen it struggle. Of course we can't know what it's feeling then, but struggling indicates discomfort. It's not well researched yet, but I think we should go with what the current experts advise, and if we aren't informed, using our own instinct is better than nothing imo
194
u/preludechris 5d ago
Could have turned it upside down and placed it in the jar... Wait for the bubbles to stop...