They're also considered a delicacy in that part of the world.
Always wanted to try them myself, but probably going to be more partial to wittchety grubs ..
pastage•7mo ago
> [Bogong moths] provide an ample food source due to their large numbers and high fat content.
Considering they were eaten near the alps where they spend the summer sleeping in caves (aestivate not hibernate!), there must have been some serious respect for that food resource. There apparently are 16000 months per square meter in those caves. Feels like the risk of over fishing is high.
aa-jv•7mo ago
I don't think the Australian aborigines ever overfished anything. From my experience, they managed their resources with superlative efficiency. 10,000 year old fish traps in my old home region are still in operation...
adrian_b•7mo ago
Many kinds of aborigines in various parts of the world where the Europeans have arrived only relatively recently have been praised for the sustainable and efficient ways in which they were exploiting their local resources.
Nevertheless, this assessment is true only for their more recent history, i.e. for the last few hundreds or few thousands of years before the contact with Europeans, depending on the place.
Everywhere, their more distant ancestors had not practiced a sustainable way of exploiting the local nature and they had hunted to extinction many of the bigger animals, or even all of them. Even many smaller animals and plants may have become extinct as a consequence of human activities. Only later, the aborigines have eventually learned to practice a sustainable way of living, otherwise they would have become extinct themselves.
This is also true for Australia, which was very different by the time of the arrival of the first humans.
Unfortunately, while indeed many aborigines had learned by necessity to be not greedy in order to have a society based on equilibrium, not on growth, this did not happen for the more "civilized" humans, because for a long time they were able to expand over the rest of the world and now they continue to hope for miracles that would allow unlimited growth in the future too.
aa-jv•7mo ago
The aborigines practiced a very sustainable agriculture, such that the first European arrivals couldn't believe their eyes and arrogantly assumed that the lands must've been tended to by a lost European tribe.
5 years after settlers arrived with their sheep, the plenty was ruined and the land decided to make subsistence harder for its new occupants.
Your dismissal of the efficiency of their methods is, to my eyes, just European bluster.
strken•7mo ago
I'm not an expert in archaeology, but this is more complicated than it appears at first glance.
My understanding is that either people are in equilibrium, or they are not. When they're not in equilibrium, they can cause extirpation or extinction of food species if the alternative is starvation. Once equilibrium is reached, resources get managed pretty well, partly because anything that's still around must be resilient and partly because people learn to manage resources. Then the climate unexpectedly changes, people leave equilibrium, food sources either become available or disappear, and we can see middens switch to different foods or become abandoned.
GTP•7mo ago
> 10,000 year old fish traps in my old home region are still in operation...
You mean that the design is so old or that the traps themselves are?
bGl2YW5j•7mo ago
The traps themselves. Look up “Brewarrina fish traps”
femto•7mo ago
They're actually in pretty serious trouble as a species, with potential to go extinct.
I can remember bogon moths all over the fly-screens on our house windows at nighttime in Sydney 50 years ago. In the last 30 years or so, I've seen one bogon moth in Sydney (a couple of years ago).
pastage•7mo ago
> Mouritsen–Frost flight simulator
Has apparently been used to study other insects (monark butterfly). Seems to be a very simple construction a tube only showing the night sky and recording of the flight direction.
aa-jv•7mo ago
Always wanted to try them myself, but probably going to be more partial to wittchety grubs ..
pastage•7mo ago
Considering they were eaten near the alps where they spend the summer sleeping in caves (aestivate not hibernate!), there must have been some serious respect for that food resource. There apparently are 16000 months per square meter in those caves. Feels like the risk of over fishing is high.
aa-jv•7mo ago
adrian_b•7mo ago
Nevertheless, this assessment is true only for their more recent history, i.e. for the last few hundreds or few thousands of years before the contact with Europeans, depending on the place.
Everywhere, their more distant ancestors had not practiced a sustainable way of exploiting the local nature and they had hunted to extinction many of the bigger animals, or even all of them. Even many smaller animals and plants may have become extinct as a consequence of human activities. Only later, the aborigines have eventually learned to practice a sustainable way of living, otherwise they would have become extinct themselves.
This is also true for Australia, which was very different by the time of the arrival of the first humans.
Unfortunately, while indeed many aborigines had learned by necessity to be not greedy in order to have a society based on equilibrium, not on growth, this did not happen for the more "civilized" humans, because for a long time they were able to expand over the rest of the world and now they continue to hope for miracles that would allow unlimited growth in the future too.
aa-jv•7mo ago
5 years after settlers arrived with their sheep, the plenty was ruined and the land decided to make subsistence harder for its new occupants.
Your dismissal of the efficiency of their methods is, to my eyes, just European bluster.
strken•7mo ago
My understanding is that either people are in equilibrium, or they are not. When they're not in equilibrium, they can cause extirpation or extinction of food species if the alternative is starvation. Once equilibrium is reached, resources get managed pretty well, partly because anything that's still around must be resilient and partly because people learn to manage resources. Then the climate unexpectedly changes, people leave equilibrium, food sources either become available or disappear, and we can see middens switch to different foods or become abandoned.
GTP•7mo ago
You mean that the design is so old or that the traps themselves are?
bGl2YW5j•7mo ago
femto•7mo ago
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-17/bogong-moth-populatio...
I can remember bogon moths all over the fly-screens on our house windows at nighttime in Sydney 50 years ago. In the last 30 years or so, I've seen one bogon moth in Sydney (a couple of years ago).