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posted by chromas on Wednesday February 06 2019, @02:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the comment-on-this-web-zone-if-you-want-a-pizza-roll dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

These fly larvae really know how to demolish a pizza

It all started with the can't-tear-your-eyes-away video of black soldier fly larvae devouring a 16-inch pizza in just two hours. Watching sped-up action of the writhing mass inspired mechanical engineer Olga Shishkov of Georgia Tech in Atlanta to see what makes these insects such champions of collective feeding.

An individual Hermetia illucens larva doesn't eat steadily, Shishkov found. One feeds for about five minutes on average and then stops for about another five. As a group of thousands, though, they flow continuously like a living fountain splashing up against the edge of their food, Shishkov and colleagues report February 6 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

[...] As larvae took a break from binging, the hungry crowds pressing from behind forced them upward. Those at the top then fell away from cliff-face of food. This up-and-out push lets a larva eager to feed replace one that's taking a break.

The voracious feeding of black soldier fly larvae isn't just nature as entertainment. The larvae define edibility broadly — pizza, garbage, animal waste, it's all good. So people searching for ways to make food systems more sustainable wonder whether there's an opportunity to recapture what would usually be wasted by letting the larvae devour it and in turn, feeding them to chickens or other animals that people eat. That's certainly one reason to embrace a species that not only eat garbage but can handily murder a pizza. Also, Shiskov says, "they're the cutest maggots I've ever seen."


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  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @07:00PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @07:00PM (#797317)

    Maggot Pizza? Leopard seal poop flash drives? Apple store sales tactics? What kind of shit is all this? rDJT submissions? On the Front Page? Oh, SoylentNews! You had such promise! You could have been something wonderful. Now it has come to this!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @08:23AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @08:23AM (#797666)

    You should see some of the stories I submitted that they regretted. Err. Rejected.
    Feel free to submit your own?