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Should We Eat Invasive Species?
The Washington Post's Energy & Environment section raises today the question of whether the best way to control certain invasive species is to eat them. The biggest success story on this front in the U.S. has been the lionfish; it destroys the habitat of some other fish in the areas where it's been introduced, but it turns out to be a palatable food fish, too. Its population has gone down since the start of a concerted effort to encourage it as a food, rather than just a nuisance. The article touches on invasive species of fish and crustaceans, but also land animals and plants. I know that garlic mustard (widespread in eastern U.S. forests) is tasty, and so are the blackberries all over Seattle.
Let's hope the rest of the earth's species don't adopt this plan to control the invasive naked apes.
I assure you that they try. All the time.
We're not at the top of the food chain because the other species are nice to us. Or because we're nice, for that matter.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Let's hope the rest of the earth's species don't adopt this plan to control the invasive naked apes.
At a population level, the reverse might actually be true:
One of the few tactics that any species large enough to gun down faster than it can reproduce, or touchy enough that you can just set its habitat on fire, can embrace to survive, and even thrive, is to be docile and tasty. Humans go crazy for that, and promptly allocate massive amounts of effort, and delicious calories, to encouraging your population to increase dramatically. Sure, then they put a captive-bolt stunner into your brain and chop you up for parts; but being a darwinian winner isn't about quality of life...
Given that 'being eaten' is the plan for plants that go to considerable metabolic expense to produce attractive fruits or berries, those probably aren't good candidates for this strategy. (Admittedly, humans probably excrete more of the seeds into the water treatment plant than birds do, so they probably aren't the ideal customer; but fruits are still the deliberately expendable seed carriers, not life-critical components.)