Birds and/or insects harvested en mass like fish.

With any pod after 1860 (though after 1900 is preferable), have it so that either birds or insects (or both) are harvested from the wild to the same extent as fish. As in, part of a huge scale, worldwide billion dollar industry.

And I do not mean just shooting birds with guns. I mean like, planes with huge nets tied to them scooping up entire flocks of birds. Likewise for swarms of insects.

If these industries develop, how profitable would they be? Would fast would stocks be depleted? Which countries would rely on them the most?
 

Lusitania

Donor
We did that in North America against the carrier pigeon whose numbers were so great they would darken the sky. Cities and individuals would use cannons full of buckshot killing tens to hundred of thousands at once.

PS why they extinct now.
 
The fish biomass is practical for large scale harvest. The wild insect & birds are a bit dispersed.

Not really. Turns out we just thought is was. We have seriously over-fished practically every commercial fish species, not to mention the mega-tonnes of so-called by-catch which is just dumped over the side, dead. Something to do with knowing practically nothing about the lifespans of various fish (long) or the breeding rate (low & slow).

There really aren't plenty of fish in the sea anymore. Oops.
 
Not really. Turns out we just thought is was. We have seriously over-fished practically every commercial fish species, not to mention the mega-tonnes of so-called by-catch which is just dumped over the side, dead. Something to do with knowing practically nothing about the lifespans of various fish (long) or the breeding rate (low & slow).

There really aren't plenty of fish in the sea anymore. Oops.
Yeah. How fast would it take to do this to birds or insects? For example, if we used a huge net to catch entire swarms of locusts.
 

MatthewB

Banned
Insects are the protein of the future. Already becoming common in animal feed and soon pet food. I assume though that they’re farmed rather than hunted.
 
We did that in North America against the carrier pigeon whose numbers were so great they would darken the sky. Cities and individuals would use cannons full of buckshot killing tens to hundred of thousands at once.

PS why they extinct now.

You're referring to the passenger pigeon. Yes, at one time there were flocks so large they would block the sun, and for a while they were hunted as a commercial food source. Early protection efforts in the 19th century were largely ineffective and poorly enforced. The last passenger pigeons were three specimens in the Cincinnati Zoo, the last of which, a female named Martha, died in 1914.
 
Well if we extend the definition to include arthropods generally we do have large scale commercial harvesting.
Decapods and other marine crustaceans aren't insects and thus do not count.

Insects are the protein of the future. Already becoming common in animal feed and soon pet food. I assume though that they’re farmed rather than hunted.
Is there a way to get this to happen earlier in the 20th century?
 

MatthewB

Banned
Decapods and other marine crustaceans aren't insects and thus do not count.


Is there a way to get this to happen earlier in the 20th century?
Perhaps. Since the mid 1950s onwards beatles and other insects have been used for food colouring, food-grade shellac and other coatings. In Asia and Africa insects are a common food source. We just need to nudge western society towards it.
 
Perhaps. Since the mid 1950s onwards beatles and other insects have been used for food colouring, food-grade shellac and other coatings. In Asia and Africa insects are a common food source. We just need to nudge western society towards it.
When I was a kid I was told that part of what they put into hot dogs included bugs (I was also told McDonalds burgers included bugs too). This was an urban legend, and one most of them didn't seem to have cared about since the same kids who told me things like that would still eat hot dogs or go to McDonalds. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is pretty notorious for it's descriptions of what went into meat, so much that it led to several changes in how the industry worked. I wonder if you could do something with that to get Americans to accept a higher amount of bugs in their meat (for texture, colour, flavour, protein, etc.) than the very tiny amount which the FDA allows.
 
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