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."
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:23PM (9 children)
Big whoop. I can kill half of one in under fifteen minutes all by myself.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:34PM (7 children)
Did you know that the FDA allows 1 maggot per 100 grams of pizza sauce in your pizza?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @03:58PM
it is strange how we are put off by the thought of having to eat a "vegetarian maggot" but not by eating a "cannibal cow" ...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 06 2019, @05:01PM
Only one? I feel cheated.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 06 2019, @07:04PM
Damn, I was looking (hoping?) to Snopes that one but it appears to be true.
CPG Sec. 585.890 Tomato Products - Adulteration with Drosophila Fly Eggs and Maggots [fda.gov]
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:52PM (2 children)
First, fuck you for sharing.
Second, for the Americans that means a 16oz can of sauce can have 4 1/2 maggots in it. They should get down to parts per billion, but that's the FDA for ya.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @03:49AM (1 child)
If you didn't like that, then don't look up the standards for insect parts in chocolate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @08:25AM
Don't.
Really.
Don't.
It could put you off Chocolate for life
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday February 08 2019, @02:57PM
Y U NO STFU ABOUT SECRET INGREDIENT
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @08:20AM
You eat flies?
Oooookay. Filing that one away for future reference.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @07:00PM (1 child)
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!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @08:23AM
You should see some of the stories I submitted that they regretted. Err. Rejected.
Feel free to submit your own?
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Wednesday February 06 2019, @09:32PM
Anybody from a large family knows you get what you can when you can!
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday February 06 2019, @09:57PM
The relevant Youtube search keywords are "BSF time lapse". Watching them devour food waste is entertaining.
A few data points from the last time I looked at these:
1. The Larvae ready to pupate will naturally climb away from food sources and their brethren to avoid being eaten. That means a clever enclosure can make them self harvesting.
2. They don't like cold weather. In the usually mild winter here in Tennessee they die.
3. They are much more tolerant of input material variety than Earthworms. If I feed a bag of moldy oranges to Earthworms the pH change can kill a bunch of them. BSF don't care.
4. The flying adults are visually disconcerting, but don't bite or eat. They reproduce and die.
5. Chickens find the Larvae and Pupae very palatable and will stalk an unattended drop tube of a BSF Digester.
6. They can digest some paper, but not significant quantities like Earthworms.
7. They do not appear to share mealworms' ability to eat and digest expanded polystyrene foam.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday February 08 2019, @01:06PM
> to see what makes these insects such champions of collective feeding
I'll take a wild guess. It's the pizza.
Account abandoned.