I have made cricket fried rice once. With grubs. It wasn't too bad until I was reminded I was eating a cricket. That tasted like shrimp. I had an existential experience.
@@rukarindieyeah, it's weird that if you reasonably think about it, it shouldn't be much gross than eating shrimp. But for some reason our brains can't get over it even if the taste isn't bad.
I think another factor could be that some insects are often found in a lot of yucky environments (e.g. rotting carcasses, excrements, etc.) so the repulsion might have evolved to keep us safe from potentially contaminated food sources and/or pathogen vectors...
Exactly. Looking at how ancient Roman texts (or rather, their authors) talked about mushrooms and fish sauce, these two seem to have had the same shock factor as well as culinary vogue for them: yuck because mushrooms grow next to rotten wood and fish sauce looks like decomposed blood, but also insanely fashionable, expensive and tasty to eat.
Many arthropods do not recognize larger animals like humans as a living thing. They see us more like many smaller things or another object in their path
the difference between insects and crustaceans is that based and limepilled Crustaceans have a calciferous shell which protects against all while foolish weak insects have flimsy chitinous shells like dumb a mushroom. (This post was made by the hard shelled crustacean alliance)
I've tried ants, worms and crickets. The biggest issue I have is that insects bring it all, digestive track, head, eyes, etc. I only eat the meat of crab, shrimp or crawfish. The off-putting thing is that insects have very little meat to everything else ratio.
@@zoulzopan Crickets and Grashoppers are actually pretty tasty if you frie, or grill them. Better if they are not too small. I always called them land shrimps. With a bit of garlic they are delicious! Or like stated in the movie Hidalgo "once you pass the head they're quite tasty" But it's true! I love shrimps fried in garlic and the same goes for hoppers. Did it many times in many years in Portugal. Just get the head and the shell off and you can't taste a difference...
@@zoulzopan Lol... I guarantee you, if I would serve you a garlic fried hopper plate you will love it. Ok, only if you are fancy for shrimps aswell... ;-)
People eat baby shrimp whole, like baby shrimp fried rice. Basically a swarm of ocean mealworm larvae if you think about it. Very few are icked by it though.
There's lots of implications to why we don't eat insects but I think the biggest one is we tend to associate most them with unsanitary or uncleanliness, especially in first world countries.
western countries don't eat bugs as much because european bugs are smaller than in other regions (different climate!) and very few edible bug species exist in europe pigs are also associated with uncleanliness -- probably why they aren't kosher or halal
Hey Adam, great videao as always! Paleontologist here, the whole thing you mention that the oxygen levels 300 million years ago were the reason that there were so many giant bugs is no longer considered a valid explanation. Majority of bugs at that time were in the size ranges we see today, only some were exceptionally large. On top of that, in some later periods, when the oxygen levels were lower, there lived bugs of simmilar, gigantic size. The more likely reason for this is the advent and subsuquent evolution of land-dwelling, and later gliding and flying vertebrates, which are generally "better" at being large animals. They put more and more pressure on bugs in these large-sized niches, and subsuquently outcompeted them. Hope this helps!
What are some examples of large bugs from after that time period? I know quite a few of the "giant bug greatest hits" - Meganeura, Arthropleura, Mazothairos, and pretty much _all_ of them are from the Carboniferous
Insects: Tiny legs with no meat, abdomens full of puss like organs. Smells bad. Crustaceans: Large limbs and tails with lots of meat, organs arent pusslike and are much smaller in proportion to body. Doesnt smell like crap. If scorpions had fat lobster tails, spiders had claws and crickets abdomens were meaty tails like a prawn and not full of goo we'd eat those too.
Oh my god he has vampire crabs! That is unexpected, but probably shouldn't have been. Also I'm sorry my dude, if you're reading this the babies yeah they do get creepy as the baby swarm.
@@darcieclements4880 I wouldn't go that far. There's likely some biological response as well. Some insects/bugs are poisonous, and they tend to ruin our foods, so we have likely evolved to be slightly off put by them.
I think what you're missing about insects is that they are very often stinging and/or flying things; and much worse. fleas, bedbugs, lice, flies that burrow into your skin to lay their eggs, etc. from a natural survival point of view they're very dangerous and something we instinctively fear for good reason. something like a crab on the other hand, at worst it can pinch your toe, but it's not dangerous in the way that insects are. additionally we probably just have less aversion to aquatic dangers than to forest/jungle ones.
Except for sharks it appears! But otherwise, a great observation to which I entirely agree! and now it feels like I have bugs walking up my legs... thanks!
Good point. Also makes sense why we fear things like spiders and snakes. Because their venom can actually kill you quite easily depending on the species
Yea but the insects that are commonly eaten are not really any of those things. If someone can catch a flea and deep fry it without losing it in the process they'd be literal superhuman. Of course there's the association part but, let's be real, does anyone think flies when talking about crickets or mealworms?
"Pancrustacea" is a misleading clade that, when looking into the research, is simply a concept proposed by one person in 2010 who looked at the genetic code of two Arthropoda Subphylums and concluded the obvious answer that they were related. The results are cherry-picked at best and overexaggerared for clout at worst. It's a "Cladistic" classification and not a Taxonomic Classification. meaning it goes out of its way to scoop a handful of subjects, asks if they are related, and then confirms such. If we were talking about Mammals, it would be like redifining Humans as a part of the "Panmetatheria" Clade to emphasize a common ancestor between Humans and Marsupials.
Nah I'm really scared about all of this... There's an ongoing conspiracy theory claiming that the World Economic Forum wants people to start eating bugs. You decide if you want to discredit the theory just for it being a "conspiracy theory", or really apply rational thinking to decide if it's true or not. I think we are scared of insects for a very good reason. All the gross feelings you get when looking at a worm are a signal from your ancestors telling you to not eat that sh1t. The WEF is full of postmodernists that will claim 2+2=5, and calling insects "pancrustaceans" sounds very sketchy to me. May as well call snakes and cats "pananimals".
cladistics is part of taxonomy. idk why you're making it out like they're separate things. a clade is simply a given organism and all of its descendants, and is often defined as all organisms more closely related to X than to Y. kingdom, phylum, class, etc all the way down to genus and species are all clades too. we basically just grandfathered in the names and ranks from an older system from before we knew about evolution. so pancrustacea could be defined as the common ancestor of the house fly and the coconut crab and all of its descendants, or as all organisms more closely related to the coconut crab than to the house centipede (there might be something more closely related than myriapods, idk, but you get my point). insects and crustaceans are more closely related to each other than they are to anything else (this is, as i understand, well supported by genetic and morphological evidence), thus they form a clade, which we call pancrustacea. your hypothetical "panmetatheria" already exists, and it's just called theria, the clade containing marsupials and placental mammals. placentals and marsupials are more closely related to each other than to monotremes and other extinct groups of mammals, so they form a clade to the exclusion of those other groups but i do agree that hexapods and crustaceans being part of the same clade doesn't necessarily make them "basically the same thing", though i get the point adam is making
It seems to me the reason people are not really afraid of crustaceans is because they are very clumsy on land when we see them. Compare to spiders, roaches, centipede that are so agile that some times you can only see them in the corner of your eye.
There is also an important psychological component: Speed Crustaceans underwater do not move as fast as arthropods on land do, that's why they're fascinating to look at in tanks, because you see the robotic movements of arthropods in slowed-down time. I'd wager something in our primal Cro-Magnon brains sees insects, being the flittering and skittering things that they are, as minor threats because of that speed; an insect or arachnid could swarm and skitter up your leg and bite you in places you don't want to be bit, flying bugs could land on all of your food, and can hide themselves away, in the blink of an eye. It's a minor threat, in the case of non-venomous bugs, but still one that probably evolutionarily came about because enough of our ape and caveman ancestors had problems like this. Water arthropods don't have this problem, not only are they just in another world, but the speed at which they do things is so, so slowed down compared to land arthropods that everything I typed up there they couldn't do in the time it would take to grab it; they're simply not a threat psychologically, however minor, as land bugs are.
Speed is the biggest factor. I have an aquarium with bugs in it that are way too fast, the first time I saw one run the only thing I could imagine was it sprinting out of the tank and attacking me
I've only eaten insects once in my life. I was in Hong Kong with my girlfriend at the time (she dared me to eat one), and there was a street food vendor selling crickets that had been fried to heck in a giant wok with garlic and chilli. Honestly, they just tasted like garlic and chilli and were super crunchy. As long as you didn't think too much about what you'd just put in your mouth, they were pretty good.
Very interesting that you found a street food vendor that sells crickets. I'm born and raise in Hong Kong and I'm pretty sure it is not a common practice in the last 30-40 years. I know some folks from the older generations eat diving beetles, but I have never heard anyone in HK eating crickets, let alone selling them as food.
Some do, not generally the ones which are commonly eaten- crickets and mealworms might be farm pests, but not disease laden. Pigs and cows have a huge association with awful diseases but nobody bats an eye.
Not quite true, there's many cultures who forbid eating shellfish due to the high risk of getting sick. Particularly in hotter climates where before refrigeration, shellfish would spoil rapidly and make people very ill. Even nowadays there is risk with eating it, but as long as it's prepared correctly it's fine.
@@headerahelixyeah but people are still more likely to eat crustaceans than insects so they don’t care about the risk unlike land insects and arthropods which they dont eat
@@headerahelix He's coming at it from an American perspective, as is Adam. He's completely wrong that a majority of people are grossed out at eating bugs. Millions of people in Asian countries eat bugs regularly, as they are a cheap source of protein.
One of the most fascinating things is that there are a few videos of like this: A million or so little brown things moving and kind of squirming in the sand. Everyone's immediate reaction is visceral fear and disgust. Camera zooms in, and reveals that they are not in fact spiders, but crabs. Everyone immediately finds it kinda cute.
My immediate reaction is "ANTS, BACK AWAY!" because I grew up in Louisiana and had a swarm of fire ants literally crawling across my entire body once when I was a kid because I stepped into an absolutely MONSTEROUS mound not knowing it was a mount. That gave me a VERY healthy caution when it comes to ants. The moment I find out they're not ants specifically, I'm fine.
Perhaps it's a biological response to avoid parasites. There are plenty of parasites in land crustaceans (insects) that can infect and poison humans, yet sea dwelling crustaceans likely don't project this issue to the same extent, hence we're more inclined to eat them
Parasites have become the most underrated cause of illness, because globalist controlled Big Phama make big money out of treating and never curing viruses
my man, cows and chickens and sea creatures had this problem too until very recently. just say you are white so you dont want to eat anything the “uncivilized people” eat and move on, you dont have to rationalize this
@@LangkowskiYeah I think while he did mention an example or two Adam really underestimated just how many people see eating at least some insects as totally normal. Insects themselves do turn up in spoilt meat in the form of maggots and such but that's not even close to universal among insects, and even parasites aren't always ingestible (eg malaria has to be injected into you by mosquito bites, you won't catch it from eating them).
It's a combination of instinctive fear and experience reinforcement. Humans despise things that feel, look, or move like insects because of an inborn revulsion for decay and parasites. And then we encounter insects on a regular basis, where most of them are annoying, painful, or closely associated with rot and manure. Meanwhile, most aquatic crustaceans look different enough, most people don't encounter them on a regular basis, they're limited to the water and not our homes and cities, and most people closely associate them with delicious food. Of course, people are still revolted by those isopods that eat fish's tongues and other parasites regardless of being aquatic.
It's not fear, it's instinct people should listen to. Chitin is dangerous to eat. You're not eating Chitin when you eat the flesh of Shrimp or Lobster, but you are when you eat bugs.
Kind of off topic but when people say “it’s just cultural thing bro” I find it funny because when I meet people who used to eat bugs in their home countries I’ve never heard them say “damn I could go for some mealworms right now”. It’s almost like this shit is disgusting and not something people want to eat outside of necessity
@@jaxonsevero1045 The countries where they eat this stuff have long histories of food insecurity. That's the part they always leave out. It's not some quaint delicacy like you've been told.
@@pkattk that's literally the filtering system for contaminants that those animals have, it's not recommended to eat on many countries and outlawed by several. It's the equivalent of cigarette butt
If you cooked the crickets in the same pot as the crab, of course they will taste like crab! You should do the experiment with a second pot filled with only water. You will see that they mostly taske like cardboard.
I think one of the major things that freak us out about most bugs is that they move quickly and skitteringly, the ones that don't do this (think pillbugs and ants) tend to be seen as more neutral. And since most aquatic crustaceans (that we think of as such, so not barnacles or tiny mites) are pretty large and are moving through water, they inherently move slower and at a steady pace, thus we don't get that feeling of them being unnerving.
Crustaceans tend to not crawl on people either and usually flee from humans whereas insects can and do skitter on people or even use us for food as parasites. Crabs? Not so much
I was just thinking this. Skittering is unsettling. Writhing is unsettling. An ant carrying a bread crumb across the floor - totally cool. I might stare at that for a while. Maybe even cheer him on, if I'm drunk enough. There's just something about rot and decay and pestilence that's just so intertwined with a specific kind of bug movement and appearance.
I think people forget that there has to be a significant reason for almost all of humanity to have this instinct and it’s not some irrational socialized trait. Nobody reply to this comment saying cultures eat bugs, eating bugs is the socialized trait not the other way around
Pillbugs are actually terrestrial crustaceans, not insects. They have ten legs instead of the six that insects have, among other differences. Mites, meanwhile, are arachnids, like spiders, and so are related to but distinct from crustaceans and insects.
It's absolutely about the venom/disease vector associated with bugs. It's the same reason humans instinctually abhor snakes. Millions of years of evolution during which those things proved to be threatening more often than not.
Don't forget parasites. Marine life has very few parasites that are harmful to humans. Insects have many, and they are widely infected with said parasites.
Not even close. Evolution is a fairytale for adult children. People eat shellfish because they’re delicious, people don’t eat bugs because they’re disgusting.
People (at least usually) doesn't think in taxonomical categories as well as doesn't racionalize why something is yummy and something else is gross. Its just a matter of being accustomed to see some things as food and so feel less repulse towards it
The Navajo word for "crab" is chʼosh bikágí ntłʼizí which means "hard-shelled bug". Ch’osh means "small invertebrate animal" and can be found in other words like chʼosh bikǫʼí "firefly" or chʼosh łitsxooí "ladybug". 😊
@@absolutelyunepic3072 Fresh water Crayfish most likely. Also it's still a "modern" Language, Hell it was used in WW2. Some languages like loan words, some don't.
I can say that I don't fear crustaceans because I don't live near a big body of water, whereas insects are land-roaming and can enter my house, and sometimes these insects grow to the size of a baseball (though luckily, not where I live)
Exactly people that hate or are scared if crabs, shrimps and lobsters stay away from them, but so many people simply don't eat crustaceans. I live in a country where fish I eaten regularly, but crustaceans are eaten sparcely. This seems to be an American/ western thing
Ants are a good "starter insect". They're so tiny they just get crushed down. All you then get is their requisite protein and flavor. I had an "ant sauce" one time; if no one told me it was ants, I'd say it had a nice umami/salty flavor I couldn't distinguish the source from.
It is not a double standard because the entire eating experience is different. On a crab you can actually eat the meat and the meat only. Not so on an insect. I don't want to eat either personally.
i think another main difference why people don't like the idea of eating bugs but will eat shellfish, is like you say they live in the water. not only does this make it feel detached from the "dry world" but we generally clean things in water. so these things have been living in water all their live, they're as clean as can be... whereas bugs crawl around in dirt all day.
@@llaughridgeYes but the spongey bits lead the yuckies into the tummy. You remove the tummy. The rest of it is in a shell which is basically nature's tupperware - fresh, clean, ready to snack on at a moment's notice. Primal brain says underwater tupperware lunchable safe, ergo safe.
We also associate insects with decay and filth at least I do. I have never felt afraid of an insect but they do trigger a strong disgust response. I would never eat one and if I did I doubt that I could keep it down. Shrimp and crab don’t have that association and so they don’t have that effect on me.
Crustaceans generally don’t risk disease but primarily, you have meat on crab and shrimp vs a cricket which is a lot of chitin with some organs. Insects tend to trespass into your house and attack (ticks, mosquitoes, etc),
Yeah, fact is people just have negative experiences with insects but usually not with aquatic arthropods. So if an arthropod lives underwater, people won't grow up with a negative association with it. Insects though? They experience all sorts of negative things with them.
The classic categorization (used in the last few centuries): Animal "Kingdom" -> Arthropods -> Crustaceans Animal "Kingdom" -> Arthropods -> Instects The modern categorization (used for the last 20 years): Eukaryota -> Animalia -> Arthropoda -> Crustacea Eukaryota -> Animalia -> Arthropoda -> Insecta The latest form of the categorization used nowadays (updated just a few years ago): Eukaryota -> Animalia -> Arthropoda -> Pancrustacea -> Crustacea Eukaryota -> Animalia -> Arthropoda -> Pancrustacea -> Hexapoda -> Insecta No matter what you say, none of the categorizations that have existed in all of human history has ever considered insects to be crustaceans. They are inherently different. They have similarities, because of their evolutionary relationships, but are you going to start denying evolution for the sake of claiming that they are the same?
@@katra5673 The pancrustacea proposal is only that - a proposal, or idea. It is not currently considered accurate taxonomy. Insects are still considered something different than crustaceans. The creator of the video obviously isn't an expert on insect taxonomy, so it's forgivable that he made an error. Probably just googled "are bugs crustaceans" and got one of those AI answers (which are usually wrong) saying they're pancrustaceans.
@@bugjams Admittedly, I only have very basic taxonomy knowledge, but nobody said crustaceans = insects. People said crustaceans and insects = pancrustacean.. Which seems to be the most accepted grouping of those two groups
Yah and that’s changed. Science isn’t static. Human classifications don’t exist in the real world. Genetics does, and gene its shows that insects are closely related to what we called crustaceans. You’re the one denying evolution here.
Same with mice, I have not seen a restaurant provides mice dish on the menu, and when it happens, the place got closed for the day and a health inspector is on the scene.
Insects are also vectors for a large number of diseases wich can affect primates, like us. On the other hand the diseases that crustaceans can carry mostly affect sea life. There are still some risks but from an evolutionary perspective avoiding insects was a lot more important than avoiding crabs.
Hey Adam, I'm no expert but from what I've seen and read, it's a common misconception that a higher concentration of oxygen caused the dinosaurs to be larger. This literally only applies to insects, specifically because of how they respirate.
@@ezforsaken Higher earth temperatures during mesozoic era, reptiles grow larger in hotter areas compared to mammals which grow larger in colder areas thats why largest mammals evolved during ice ages and largest reptiles arose during dino age. Oxygen is only a contributing factor for insects not animals having lungs. Its the same reason for large number of triassic and jurassic dinos are the largest and Cretaceous dinos being smallest due to colder climates as by creatceous a large number of dinos became warm blooded while the earlier ones are cold blooded. The warm blooded ones gave rise to birds.
@@ezforsaken 1) huge gut with fermentation system allows eating of "low quality" plant food. 2) be largely immune from predators; 3) predators consider that a challenge.
One time, my father made me what I thought was a pretty standard bowl of white rice with fried chicken. I was pretty hungry, so without looking I dug right in. However, after a few chews, I realized something tasted seriously off; this was neither rice, nor chicken, nor anything I'd tasted before. You see, buried under the rice was a whole bowl of fried silkworms. I did not know they were silkworms; I thought they were maggots. Somehow, my dad thought it would he a pleasant surprise for me.
one thing that contributes to my fear of insects is that they move so fast relative to their size. theyre like constantly on the verge of fnaf jumpscaring you. crustaceans dont do that. I can be 5 feet away from a crab with relative confidence that it isnt going to clear that distance and get to me in a quarter of a second.
@@VinluvAntonHandesbukia I'm going to ask this question in my aquarium hobbiest discord. Surely it's happened to SOMEONE due to thier pets going on an adventure
Just because insects are crustaceans doesn't mean they're equally good as food compared to shellfish. Cats, humans, and cows are all mammals but we only eat the last one.
Cats are eaten too, taboo or not. In Brazil, BBQ skewers in poor areas are jokingly called churrasquinho de gato for a reason. And their cleaned carcasses are supposedly very similar to rabbits or hares, which scammers abused of in the past. Humans... Ever heard of long pork? And that cannibal disease, Kuru. Insects not looking so bad now, are they? Hahaha
@@vitor6928that reminded me of a part of Around the World in 80 Days where Phileas Fogg is served a "rabbit" stew, and after taking one bite asks the vendor: 'did this rabbit miaow?'
The list of problems with eating random insects : toxins, carcinogenic substances, parasites that are extremely dangerous to humans and extremely hard to remove, many times making it to packaged products that use insects as its primary source, other toxic substances, etc... in short, eating random insects is just extremely dangerous, and cleaning them up for proper human consumption sometimes is just not feasable, specially when dealing with production of large quantities of food based on insects, so many times these steps are just disregarded and they lead to the intoxication and eventual death of many people all around the world... there are very clear reasons why we don't just eat random bugs. There is a reason why it is preferable to consume specific bugs that are far easier to maintain, produce and guarantee that they are safe for consumption... but even at that point, it is just far safer and easier to just not eat any bugs at all. Only a few byproducts of insects are relatively safe to use for consumption on products that we consume daily, and those don't contain the bugs themselves, mind you... in short, this whole "eat the bugs" movement is just promoting a practice that is harmful for humans and should be stopped at once. Not to mention that the parasites and chitin in insects is not digestible, so first, you're eating a material that is not giving you any form of nourishment (even worse than eating the shell of sunflower seeds considering how at least your digestive system can extract just a tiny bit of useable material out of that... which is on the same level as eating wood, so you can imagine why we just don't eat it LMAO...), and second you are consuming parasites that if not properly removed, your digestive system cannot eliminate them, and since they are transmissible to humans, they WILL infect you just fine... and once they do infect you, since they are not something the average human is exposed to on a daily basis, then you will just probably get an illness that might even lead to your death. Just like the many kids that "randomly die" in third world countries. Those are the ones that didn't get to build an immunity... In short : eating bugs is just dangerous, and comparing eating bugs to eating crustacean seafood because both are crustaceans is just insane, because we're just glossing over the fact that, despite being within the same large group, their subcategories contain such differences that just make them not feasable nor safe for human consumption... sad that we have to explain the things that humanity has had figured out for thousands of years. Specially when you see these people trying to use the science to their advantage but they purposefully gloss over a lot of details or just ignore them to make themselves look convincing, when the real science, with all of the details laid out, actually tells us what we already knew... but I, too, enjoy misinformation!
One reason towards why we dont mind sea crustaceans but fear insects is color. Those in the sea are very vibrant and often have larger body proportions, while those in land are usually dark colored, like black or brown, with offputting patterns and many, often hairy, legs. This could also be why we often dont mind butterflies and ladybugs compared to other bugs
@@ymck7246 yes, that is included in the second part of my response. For me personally, I find cockroaches very offputting but not so much for green cockroaches or dark brown beetles compared to colorful beetles
@@elisehalflight wait crickets actually turn bright red when cooked? thats interesting. I also stated that color is possibly "one reason" and not the only one
@@Pavme Yeah!, well, at least the species we eat here does. I'm mexican and I eat them from time to time, they're very tasty with lemon if a bit spicy, sadly there aren't many places that sell them these days. And yeah, that's understandable, sometimes things are just icky, i am a very adventurous person when it comes to trying out foods but you'd never convince me to try Escargot.
this is the exact kind of video i wanna be watching. it’s dense, educational about things im interested in, and not at all overstimulating. this is wonderful
1. being in a saline solution all their life, crustaceans are basically sterilized. bugs, otoh, tend to kongregate around filth. 2. we dont eat the crustacean armor, but we are supposed to eat bug egsoskeleton, which, according to some studies might be problematic (chitin may cause an inflammatory response)
Edible insects aren’t supposed to be scavengers. There are plenty of harmful diseases in the sea too. Also it is hard to determine what is true about chitin or not, given the conspiracy theories.
Chitin is the same stuff Mushrooms are made of. Do you eat Mushrooms? Salt water is sterile? Have you looked at it under a microscope? I get your point, I've tried crickets (a cricket) only once and it freaked me out and I do not plan on doing it again. But its all just in my head. But to be honest I'm not that into seafood either. Only if its already cleaned. Also I don't want to touch live crabs
Crustaceans is an enormous sub-phylum containing over 67,000 species. Humans are in the sub-phylum vertebrate which contains, among other things all mammals. So while we eat tasty beef and chicken we do not eat possums or rats. Saying that because shrimp and cockroaches are both crustaceans we should eat both is the same as saying because skunks and chickens are both vertebrates we should eat both. Sure there are some insects that would be good to eat, but they aren't the same as shrimp.
I agree. While its nice that he is raising awareness about how some cultures do eat bugs and that many types of bugs are edible or even very good, its a massive generalization to say: bugs are crustaceans, we eat crustaceans, we should eat bugs QED.
@@pr0hobo He didn't say that we should eat bugs, i don"t think this was him trying to convince anyone to eat insects. I think it was just a video making guesses at why we don't eat bugs as much.
@@cookiecraze1310 My point is that the category is too broad. I actually think that there are some insects that can be incorporated into our diet. But my point is to compare shrimp to other crustaceans is like comparing vertebrates we eat to vertebrates we don't.
Also the spines. Crickets & grasshoppers among many others have sharp spines on them to deter larger predators. And in the case of predators who can just eat a can of beans instead, that does work.
this really is just a culture thing. Frogs, beetles and snails are traditional foods in some European countries, spiders and many insects are traditional foods in Asia and Africa. If it was about some bad/harmful compounds in the animals, then we would have evolved to avoid fish because many fish are highly toxic to us.
Good point. People don't consider shrimp bugs because normally the antennae, legs, and exoskeleton are removed. They only see a nice little morsel of meat.
@@tapewerm6716 idk where you guys are getting your shrimp from but at least half of all shrimp I've eaten were served with everything still attached. Obviously I remove the head, legs, and exoskeleton (the tail I either eat or remove depending on how tasty it looks). Never even thought about it or made me lose my appetite. Even then, you will never catch me eating bugs no matter what.
@@slav7571 You're missing the point. Shrimp are bugs. Not saying you should eat other bugs as well, I'm with you there, but crustaceans are bugs. We don't refer to them as such because they're food. But they are definitely a type of water bug, no doubt about it, as are lobster, cray fish, crabs etc. They have exoskeletons, antennae, pincers. Their eyes are on stalks. They have a larval stage, they molt their shells. They're bugs.
literally the reason I don't eat seafood. I was pretty young when I realized it's all been arthropods all along. I don't think insects are crustaceans either, they're part of the arthropodea. Crustaceans and insects are subphylums of arthropods, no?
I’ve never been a fan of shellfish specifically because they’ve always reminded me too much of bugs. Good to know there’s a real evolutionary basis for that, I guess?
A lot of bugs respirate in a more efficient way than their relatives! If you look at the abdomen of certain bugs like wasps, you'll notice they constantly pulse in and out. This is their way of forcing air in and out of their body, similar to how other animals breathe. I think this trait is more common in bugs which fly a lot, which makes sense because flight is energy intensive.
Yes, this is a statement I wish people would speak about more. Even some more terrestrially-inclined insects such as cockroaches, orthopterans, and certain beetles preform active respiration in the way that you described. I doubt passive respiration is a limiting factor in regards to insect size, considering how many different groups are able to respirate actively.
@@norberthemmingsway I wouldn't doubt if their active respiration is still more inefficient somehow. Like maybe the organs the air is pulled into still don't absorb as much oxygen as actual lungs. Or maybe they do and it actually has nothing to do with their breathing that they're so small. I really don't know
@@catpoke9557 Oh their respiratory system is definitely less efficient than ours. But since some are capable of active respiration, I think they could theoretically evolve a more efficent respiratory system which could support a larger body size. I think the main limiting factor of insect (and terrestrial arthropod) size is the fact that they have to molt, along with competition from tetrapods. Molting is a very strenous activity for the largest terrestrial arthropods, which are all crabs. It can take them weeks or even months to undergo the process fully, and they are totally vulnerable to predation during that time. Now compare this with a tetrapod, which needs to do basically nothing in order to grow larger. I'm not sure if terrestrial crustceans are a great comparison to insects. Their exoskeleton is especially thick and calcareous, which might be why it takes them so long to molt. Molting seems to be less strenous on large insects compared to similarly-sized land crabs. I'm sure molting is still an issue though as its a period of vulnerability. Another factor that might be keeping them small is that adult insects can't really heal. Arthropods repair wounds and regenerate appendages by molting. But once insects become adults, they stop molting so any damage they take is permanent. An adult insect can't even regrow hair like a mammal could, since their hair is part of their exoskeleton.
A podcast I used to listen to taught me that if you have a shellfish allergy you might also be allergic to cockroaches. Having eaten both I can safely say I'm not allergic to either
Liberals: "We aren't trying to make you eat bugs, that's a right wing myth!". Liberals 2 seconds later: "Eat bugs, stop being a bigot, a cockroach is the same as a lobster!"
We don't eat the shells of crustaceans. Chitin is not very digestible, can be completely indigestible depending on the chitinase mRNA levels in the individual stomach, and can lead to allergic responses. If you answer the question: how many crickets would you have to "de-shell" to get the equivalent quality calories of a single medium sized shrimp? You have one of the answers as to why insect consumption is not more widespread.
yes lets just ignore the meaty tail and claws. Still, your one good point about tiny lobsters not being food is valid. Its why nobody eats baby lobsters, there's no meat there, duh
To be fair, deep fried tarantulas are a thing in Cambodia. The meat from the head looks similar to the meat from crabs. Some people stay away from the abdomen because that's where the poop is while others eat the whole thing. I would still be creeped out by seeing a deep fried one on my plate, but if I were hungry enough I might eat it. I might even try a little to say I'v eaten it before. I have no plans to try it in the near future though.
@@Chuito12PR There are "tiny lobsters" and they're called crawfish. Not quite cricket sized, but pretty small and quite edible. There's no meat in the claws, but their tail meat is the same proportionally as a scaled down lobster. It ends up being very similar to shrimp.
Well Truthfully, Hexapods (Insects such as grasshoppers, social insects and beetles) are classified in a different class and are shown to diverge into separate groups. I do get that crustaceans are the most closely related clade compared to the rest of the Arthropods however they are very different. (I get that you wanted a sweet video title)
Let me one leave one last comment to clarify just in case; Insects are Crustaceans. It’s not a silly video title, it’s literally the classification group that insects belong in.
I'd say it's largely cultural - most people get presented with crustaceans AS food, in a way that's visually distinct from their living state. Like the most popular form of lobster is Lobster Tail, which removes a good 20% of the creature from view, namely the legs, antennae and face. Same happens with shrimp, we remove their shell and front before cooking, leaving only their lower body and tail. Indeed, if you go places where shrimp and crawfish are served whole, you'll find a lot of visitors who have the same disgust reaction that they might have to insects.
We also think insects are gross, that's another reason that we don't like eating them. We don't, idk, go on a picnic and find little crustaceans walking all over our food, but we do find insects out there. We also find a bunch of them in our homes, especially around rotting fruit. We find insects on poop outside, all of this gives land insects a gross connotation, while crustaceans don't get the same treatment (even though they probably do the same thing, just out of sight of our daily lives)
Yeah that’s be true as our experience as an individual. I wonder if there’s also a cultural/societal factor at play as well. For example in America there’s not much places that handle and serve insects as a culinary option so we never consider insects as something that can be eaten. It certainly doesn’t help people in those types of societies overcome any repulsion they may have to insects.
Most shellfish are bottom feeders/scavengers, so they definitely feast on dead marine life that settle to the sea bed; but like you said, it's an out of sight, out of mind thing. Catfish are also bottom feeders/scavengers, and it's one of the most widely consumed(and delicious) freshwater fish. 😆
Sea scanvengers are vastly different from land scanvengers in this aspect. You almost never heard of any serious disease carried over from sea foods, but land animals are a whole different story there. Just because they all eat basic stuffs doesn't mean they are the same@@Burtocd
No, he's right in his description. After saying that insects have "vent holes", he isn't explaining what the vent holes are, he's supporting how vent holes could allow respiration (by explaining the presence of tracheae, "teeny little tubes" that allow diffusion). He simply doesn't mention the name of the "vent holes".
The intonation had me thinking you were about to say “maybe I’ll be freaked out by the dozens of crabs I’m hoping to breed in my new CRAB SINK, sponsor of this video!”
Hey man, the enclosure at 1:11 is a vampire crab death trap. It looks nice but they need way more land to live on and soil to dig into, my crabs have a big 1.5 meter tank with about 1/4 of the area beeing water and they live mostly on land. Please reconsider keeping them that way as this will stress them out (no hiding spots) and they have a good chance of just dying of exaustion because they cant rest on land
Not many at all compared to mammals, the insects currently used for food production will pretty much never have parasites that us humans will have to worry about, just don’t go eating bugs off the street (which I wouldn’t suggest for any animal). What I would be worried about is meat from animals closely related to us as the parasites are more likely to effect warm blooded animals. That’s how we got most major outbreaks as of late: Covid, swine flu, foot and mouth disease, mad cow disease, Ebola etc.
My issue with the logic of crustaceans being bugs is that they split off from them so long ago that humans were shrews. Now I know we also have issues eating certain animals, and one of those is rodents. So its fair to say that our distinction, while cultural and silly- does have a logical thru line across different sorts of creatures.
we don't eat rodents because post-urbanization we perceived them as unclean animals, and also they're quite gamey and historically have been vectors of disease (mostly post-urbanization), similar to insects. but bugs and rodents are eaten in many parts of the world, and over the span of human history, we have arguably been eating them for much much longer than we have not. i believe it is largely a cultural tendency riding on targeted evolutionarily engrained pattern recognition and the historical tradition of avoiding poison/venom rather than a "truly" genetically intrinsic human property (in quotes to avoid teleology). they also move really fast and people don't like that lol
@@lightningkittenalso we do eat rodents. Guinea Pigs, Rats, Squirrel, Rabbits (technically Lagomorphs but same boat), etc… they just aren’t optimal livestock, so they aren’t mass produced.
@@lightningkitten I agree that there is a large cultural aspect to it, but as a potential staple food source insects are severely deficient. Pound for pound when compared to, say, chicken or beef you will find that insects are up to ~40% less bioavailable and they require essentially the same amount of feed to cultivate, meaning that if you farmed them you would be using your animal feed almost half as efficiently as if you had just raised chickens. This is a big factor when we are talking about large human populations.
I think that there is one other psychological component at play: the idea that underwater "bugs" stay clean and must be free of any germs or diseases. I can remotely imagine eating an underwater snake, but a land snake, not so much.
Also the status of "pests" bugs invade your home, spread disease, and destroy food..... crustaceans leave your home alone (infact we invade THEIR home), are nutritious and healing in some ways, and are literally food. Believe you me, if I had shrimp marching into my home every summer and jumping into my flour... I would just shake the flour up and throw them into some oil for dinner instead of calling an exterminator. Just like if chickens or cows were finding their way into my home to multiply instead of mice...I couldn't be happier.
"Its not disgusting to eat insects if we change a definition!" Thats a hard pass. Im not gonna eat bugs just to support an ecosystem of 40 billion Chinese and Indians. Not our problem.
Woah woah woah… what “Indians” bruh? people don’t eat insects there, Are you high? They literally eat spicy veggie stuff and lentils or chicken, lamb kinda normal food. Get it together, also 40 billion? 😂
@@alphamineron my post doesnt imply that jeets eat insects. In implies that jews are pushing for eating bugs because farming meat is unsustainable if you have 700 trillion humans, most of which are Indian and Chinese. I am saying, its not my problem if there are 40 billion Indians that will starve when they reach they carrying capacity, im not gonna eat a single bug in order to help Jeets and bugmen multiply astronomically
Insecta is a separate class from crustacea. Both are arthropods. No crustacea can fly. They have more than six legs. They have four antennea instead of two. Culinarily speaking, I have no idea if it matters.
Pancrustacea contains both hexapoda and crustacea :D but then he brings up arachnids which, yeah, are sister to the pancrustaceans, pretty far out there
nope. any definition for a "crustacean" clade that includes all animals we commonly call crustaceans must include all insects as well. as one example, fairy shrimp are more closely related to insects than they are to crabs.
to be clear, you can absolutely draw useful, albeit blurry lines based on morphology and behavior and such. but there is no doubt that insects evolved within the crustacean clade, and you can never evolve out of a clade
Then don't, no one is actually forcing you to in the real world, this idea that eating insects will be mandatory in the near future is conspiracy (and poorly founded conspiracy given how profitable industries like beef production are, there's no real financial incentive or meaningful political will to suddenly ban beef)
IDK if I agree with the basic premise of the video. Saying all crustations are the same for eating is like saying all mammals are the same for eating. They're not, and we actually eat relatively few mammals and birds... and plants. "Water crustaceans and insects are the same" a wildly sweeping statement, and it's super weird to me that we'd grab a massive collection of diverse living things, bundle them together, and announce "if you like one, you should like them all, there's _basically_ no difference!".
Your comparison is wrong. We don't eat every mammal because that's wouldn't be sustainable. There's basically two species we eat globally, pig and cow, with some local differences. Comparing insects and crustaceans is really fair and helps to rationalize insect-eating as something that could be normal and incredibly beneficial to the planet.
@@tiempoimplacable I'm sure someone could argue it would also be good for the planet if everyone ate, for example, seaweed, kelp, etc. But I'm telling you, independent of environmental benefits, seaweed and friends are a fundamentally different food experience from lettuce or asparagus or beans or pineapple. Different things in the same broad group aren't the same, and it's not wise to gloss over those differences and insist they're the same thing because they're all "plants". If you go into the discussion trying to gaslight people, they'll learn to distrust you quickly and permanently, and your plans die. Assuming you want to convince people to try insects (instead of sabotaging that plan with what feels like lies), acknowledging these differences and being upfront about it is a much better path. I've heard a LOT of differing opinions on the insect experience vs eating sea bugs, and I don't find "everything's all the SAME bro, trust me!" compelling; it seems like BS. I also don't find "it's beneficial to the planet" compelling enough to try something I find gross. The fact that I've looked into it reflects that I'm open to trying bugs, but... I don't trust all the information I get. There's too many Bug Bros, with the same energy as Crypto Bros, Finance Bros, etc. If I ever try bugs, it'll have to be despite the arguments for them, not thanks to them.
When you eat mammal meat, does it taste more or less similar to other mammal meat than, say, bird meat? Does chicken taste like fish? It’s totally fair to say that you don’t like certain types of fish, but their taste is undeniably more similar than other animals. As someone who’s eaten some more exotic mammal meats, my brain compares them to cow, maybe sometimes deer or lamb, never chicken or salmon. Bugs be tasting like bugs, sea bugs also just taste like sea.
It's not a double standard, it's relative standards. Dogs are mammals and so are pigs, but we don't usually eat dogs. it's not a double standard, we just have different standards for different things. Cockroaches and shrimp may be genetically close, but VERY different to consume as food.
I don't fear them at all - I love eating certain seafood. But I don't love the idea of eating Chitin and getting cancer, so that's a no on the bugs. Can't believe Adam is shilling this propaganda.
Farming insects is not environmentally friendly right now, just like "lab" meat. There is the promise that one day it will be, and you can even believe it, but I will not eat the bugs, I will own stuff, and I'll be happy.
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
so you're telling me, a cricket fried this rice?
my hometown has an interactive children's science museum, and they had a chef make safe-to-eat cricket fried rice once. it was decent
I have made cricket fried rice once. With grubs. It wasn't too bad until I was reminded I was eating a cricket. That tasted like shrimp. I had an existential experience.
That's so cool I didn't know crickets could do that
House cricket to be specific.
That's why it's on the house.
@@rukarindieyeah, it's weird that if you reasonably think about it, it shouldn't be much gross than eating shrimp. But for some reason our brains can't get over it even if the taste isn't bad.
I think another factor could be that some insects are often found in a lot of yucky environments (e.g. rotting carcasses, excrements, etc.) so the repulsion might have evolved to keep us safe from potentially contaminated food sources and/or pathogen vectors...
A lot of crustaceans are scavengers, we just don't see them eating dead fish very often.
Exactly. Looking at how ancient Roman texts (or rather, their authors) talked about mushrooms and fish sauce, these two seem to have had the same shock factor as well as culinary vogue for them: yuck because mushrooms grow next to rotten wood and fish sauce looks like decomposed blood, but also insanely fashionable, expensive and tasty to eat.
Ever eat a pig?
@@ludwigziffer6895 hell, pigs are considered yucky creatures (why we call disgusting homes or places "pig stys"), yet people happily eat bacon
@@GameFuMasterPigs are only “unclean” because we keep them in enclosed spaces. They, much like rats, prefer to be clean when possible.
"spiders are not insects, but in the war they will side with the insects." - Bill Bailey
Really? I always imagine spiders are on human side. Their diet is literally only insects.
"Traitors, traitors, spider traitors! They'll betray us, and they'll make us..."
@@bipolar-tigerdepends on the spiders size
Humans will see anything without hair on it and assume they are all on the same side.
@@404_nowheresnotfound3
I agree but only if we change it to “without hair or feathers” lol
Sea critters usually run away. Spiders, flies, crickets, roaches, beetles start climbing my legs and have complete disregard of the food chain.
Many arthropods do not recognize larger animals like humans as a living thing. They see us more like many smaller things or another object in their path
I've never had a cricket run up my leg before.
@@lawrencemorris2261 come to think about it most sea critters don’t run.
@@lawrencemorris2261lucky those mf's always fly at me just like wasp I hate it
spiders (well, some of them) and crickets are cool, fuck flies and roaches tho
the difference between insects and crustaceans is that based and limepilled Crustaceans have a calciferous shell which protects against all while foolish weak insects have flimsy chitinous shells like dumb a mushroom.
(This post was made by the hard shelled crustacean alliance)
…what?
Crabpeople! Crabpeople! Looks like crabs! Talks like people!!
pincers wrote this post
Based and Crab pilled
LMAOO GOOD ONE 😐
I've tried ants, worms and crickets. The biggest issue I have is that insects bring it all, digestive track, head, eyes, etc. I only eat the meat of crab, shrimp or crawfish. The off-putting thing is that insects have very little meat to everything else ratio.
do they taste good when you had them? or would they have the potential to taste good in like a spicy sauce, bbq or fried?
@@zoulzopan Crickets and Grashoppers are actually pretty tasty if you frie, or grill them.
Better if they are not too small. I always called them land shrimps. With a bit of garlic they are delicious!
Or like stated in the movie Hidalgo "once you pass the head they're quite tasty"
But it's true! I love shrimps fried in garlic and the same goes for hoppers.
Did it many times in many years in Portugal. Just get the head and the shell off and you can't taste a difference...
@@PeteDarrell1972 i am sold
@@zoulzopan Lol... I guarantee you, if I would serve you a garlic fried hopper plate you will love it. Ok, only if you are fancy for shrimps aswell... ;-)
People eat baby shrimp whole, like baby shrimp fried rice. Basically a swarm of ocean mealworm larvae if you think about it. Very few are icked by it though.
There's lots of implications to why we don't eat insects but I think the biggest one is we tend to associate most them with unsanitary or uncleanliness, especially in first world countries.
Partly because they are- raising them without enabling pathogens to run wild is hard, and oversight is similarly difficult to implement
And the "people eat them in exotic countries" crowd forget that there exists a thing as "famine food"
@@gunblade7610 they are eaten regularly in a lot of places, not just as "famine food". lobsters used to be poverty food too
western countries don't eat bugs as much because european bugs are smaller than in other regions (different climate!) and very few edible bug species exist in europe
pigs are also associated with uncleanliness -- probably why they aren't kosher or halal
@@pinky_pepper Not ALL of we Westerners live IN Europe, or N America!
Hey Adam, great videao as always!
Paleontologist here, the whole thing you mention that the oxygen levels 300 million years ago were the reason that there were so many giant bugs is no longer considered a valid explanation. Majority of bugs at that time were in the size ranges we see today, only some were exceptionally large. On top of that, in some later periods, when the oxygen levels were lower, there lived bugs of simmilar, gigantic size. The more likely reason for this is the advent and subsuquent evolution of land-dwelling, and later gliding and flying vertebrates, which are generally "better" at being large animals. They put more and more pressure on bugs in these large-sized niches, and subsuquently outcompeted them. Hope this helps!
Very interesting, thank you
What are some examples of large bugs from after that time period? I know quite a few of the "giant bug greatest hits" - Meganeura, Arthropleura, Mazothairos, and pretty much _all_ of them are from the Carboniferous
Insects: Tiny legs with no meat, abdomens full of puss like organs. Smells bad.
Crustaceans: Large limbs and tails with lots of meat, organs arent pusslike and are much smaller in proportion to body. Doesnt smell like crap.
If scorpions had fat lobster tails, spiders had claws and crickets abdomens were meaty tails like a prawn and not full of goo we'd eat those too.
Pretty much. Insects don't have tasty claws and tails
GOOOOOOOoooooOOO
Came here to say this. This video needed to be 30 seconds long: "We can avoid eating insect organ meat and chitin, so we don't eat insects."
spider with a claw is nightmare
That's only because you cooked the "crustacean". There are indeed large insects and if you cook them, they too, become meaty.
Crustaceans: "Aww, how sweet. 😊"
Insects: "Hello, human resources?! 😰"
It is very weird but 100% social learned stigma.
Oh my god he has vampire crabs! That is unexpected, but probably shouldn't have been. Also I'm sorry my dude, if you're reading this the babies yeah they do get creepy as the baby swarm.
And also, insects are taxonomically crustaceans.
So really it's marine crustaceans vs land crustaceans
Insects: **currently eating Jim**
@@darcieclements4880 I wouldn't go that far. There's likely some biological response as well. Some insects/bugs are poisonous, and they tend to ruin our foods, so we have likely evolved to be slightly off put by them.
I think what you're missing about insects is that they are very often stinging and/or flying things; and much worse. fleas, bedbugs, lice, flies that burrow into your skin to lay their eggs, etc. from a natural survival point of view they're very dangerous and something we instinctively fear for good reason. something like a crab on the other hand, at worst it can pinch your toe, but it's not dangerous in the way that insects are. additionally we probably just have less aversion to aquatic dangers than to forest/jungle ones.
Except for sharks it appears! But otherwise, a great observation to which I entirely agree! and now it feels like I have bugs walking up my legs... thanks!
Good point. Also makes sense why we fear things like spiders and snakes. Because their venom can actually kill you quite easily depending on the species
Yea but the insects that are commonly eaten are not really any of those things. If someone can catch a flea and deep fry it without losing it in the process they'd be literal superhuman. Of course there's the association part but, let's be real, does anyone think flies when talking about crickets or mealworms?
That doesn't make sense because crabs can pinch you
@@yungrichnbroke5199 say you didn't read the whole thing without saying you didn't read the whole thing
"Pancrustacea" is a misleading clade that, when looking into the research, is simply a concept proposed by one person in 2010 who looked at the genetic code of two Arthropoda Subphylums and concluded the obvious answer that they were related. The results are cherry-picked at best and overexaggerared for clout at worst. It's a "Cladistic" classification and not a Taxonomic Classification. meaning it goes out of its way to scoop a handful of subjects, asks if they are related, and then confirms such. If we were talking about Mammals, it would be like redifining Humans as a part of the "Panmetatheria" Clade to emphasize a common ancestor between Humans and Marsupials.
Well put. But they are all still arthropods, so I think comparing crustaceans to land bugs/spiders is still poignant.
Nah I'm really scared about all of this... There's an ongoing conspiracy theory claiming that the World Economic Forum wants people to start eating bugs. You decide if you want to discredit the theory just for it being a "conspiracy theory", or really apply rational thinking to decide if it's true or not.
I think we are scared of insects for a very good reason. All the gross feelings you get when looking at a worm are a signal from your ancestors telling you to not eat that sh1t.
The WEF is full of postmodernists that will claim 2+2=5, and calling insects "pancrustaceans" sounds very sketchy to me. May as well call snakes and cats "pananimals".
@@bugjams it's really not. It's about as poignant as comparing human flesh with beef or pork
cladistics is part of taxonomy. idk why you're making it out like they're separate things. a clade is simply a given organism and all of its descendants, and is often defined as all organisms more closely related to X than to Y. kingdom, phylum, class, etc all the way down to genus and species are all clades too. we basically just grandfathered in the names and ranks from an older system from before we knew about evolution.
so pancrustacea could be defined as the common ancestor of the house fly and the coconut crab and all of its descendants, or as all organisms more closely related to the coconut crab than to the house centipede (there might be something more closely related than myriapods, idk, but you get my point).
insects and crustaceans are more closely related to each other than they are to anything else (this is, as i understand, well supported by genetic and morphological evidence), thus they form a clade, which we call pancrustacea.
your hypothetical "panmetatheria" already exists, and it's just called theria, the clade containing marsupials and placental mammals. placentals and marsupials are more closely related to each other than to monotremes and other extinct groups of mammals, so they form a clade to the exclusion of those other groups
but i do agree that hexapods and crustaceans being part of the same clade doesn't necessarily make them "basically the same thing", though i get the point adam is making
I mean, yeah. Human flesh is the same as cow flesh and pig flesh basically @yeeyee5057
Adam finally made a video on why shrimps is bugs
great tattoo
bugs is shrimp
lmao
butt is legs
Truf shrimps is bugs
It seems to me the reason people are not really afraid of crustaceans is because they are very clumsy on land when we see them. Compare to spiders, roaches, centipede that are so agile that some times you can only see them in the corner of your eye.
some crabs are super fast on land
@@benselander1482 example?
@@Retrovorious
cockroach 3mph
ghost crab 10mph
@@benselander1482 Alright, that particular crab moves pretty well.
I wonder what people’s thoughts are on pillbugs which are crustaceans with gills
There is also an important psychological component: Speed
Crustaceans underwater do not move as fast as arthropods on land do, that's why they're fascinating to look at in tanks, because you see the robotic movements of arthropods in slowed-down time. I'd wager something in our primal Cro-Magnon brains sees insects, being the flittering and skittering things that they are, as minor threats because of that speed; an insect or arachnid could swarm and skitter up your leg and bite you in places you don't want to be bit, flying bugs could land on all of your food, and can hide themselves away, in the blink of an eye. It's a minor threat, in the case of non-venomous bugs, but still one that probably evolutionarily came about because enough of our ape and caveman ancestors had problems like this.
Water arthropods don't have this problem, not only are they just in another world, but the speed at which they do things is so, so slowed down compared to land arthropods that everything I typed up there they couldn't do in the time it would take to grab it; they're simply not a threat psychologically, however minor, as land bugs are.
Speed is the biggest factor. I have an aquarium with bugs in it that are way too fast, the first time I saw one run the only thing I could imagine was it sprinting out of the tank and attacking me
and then there is the snapping shrimp...
I agree with this
There are some large beetles out there that waddle along, and they provoke little worry. I think their large eyes also help.
This is such a good point. I saw a camel cricket the other day and I've never quite recovered partially because of just how quickly it moved
Sounds pretty accurate to my anecdotal experience
I've only eaten insects once in my life. I was in Hong Kong with my girlfriend at the time (she dared me to eat one), and there was a street food vendor selling crickets that had been fried to heck in a giant wok with garlic and chilli.
Honestly, they just tasted like garlic and chilli and were super crunchy. As long as you didn't think too much about what you'd just put in your mouth, they were pretty good.
I hate to tell you, but you have eaten plenty of bugs in your life, lol.
Very interesting that you found a street food vendor that sells crickets. I'm born and raise in Hong Kong and I'm pretty sure it is not a common practice in the last 30-40 years. I know some folks from the older generations eat diving beetles, but I have never heard anyone in HK eating crickets, let alone selling them as food.
@@bringit3164 you also got plenty of bad gamma rays penetrating your ass... yet it doesn't make plutonium for your health any better, does it?
thats probably somewhere outside of Hong Kong in the poor areas bro
Bugs also have a huge association with disease, unlike underwater bugs 🦀
Some do, not generally the ones which are commonly eaten- crickets and mealworms might be farm pests, but not disease laden. Pigs and cows have a huge association with awful diseases but nobody bats an eye.
Not quite true, there's many cultures who forbid eating shellfish due to the high risk of getting sick. Particularly in hotter climates where before refrigeration, shellfish would spoil rapidly and make people very ill.
Even nowadays there is risk with eating it, but as long as it's prepared correctly it's fine.
They say you can get sick from eating raw crab
@@headerahelixyeah but people are still more likely to eat crustaceans than insects so they don’t care about the risk unlike land insects and arthropods which they dont eat
@@headerahelix He's coming at it from an American perspective, as is Adam. He's completely wrong that a majority of people are grossed out at eating bugs. Millions of people in Asian countries eat bugs regularly, as they are a cheap source of protein.
One of the most fascinating things is that there are a few videos of like this:
A million or so little brown things moving and kind of squirming in the sand.
Everyone's immediate reaction is visceral fear and disgust.
Camera zooms in, and reveals that they are not in fact spiders, but crabs.
Everyone immediately finds it kinda cute.
My immediate reaction is "ANTS, BACK AWAY!" because I grew up in Louisiana and had a swarm of fire ants literally crawling across my entire body once when I was a kid because I stepped into an absolutely MONSTEROUS mound not knowing it was a mount. That gave me a VERY healthy caution when it comes to ants. The moment I find out they're not ants specifically, I'm fine.
@@angelousmortis8041 you're so hard omg youre so cool
I would not think that’s cute whatsoever that would freak me out. Crabs freak me out just as much as any insect
Crabs are literally armoured spiders
@@aunnaqvi3133 dont project your insecurities on others
Perhaps it's a biological response to avoid parasites. There are plenty of parasites in land crustaceans (insects) that can infect and poison humans, yet sea dwelling crustaceans likely don't project this issue to the same extent, hence we're more inclined to eat them
Or it could be something cultural, as people often eat insects in areas where they are plentiful.
@@Langkowski more likely
Parasites have become the most underrated cause of illness, because globalist
controlled Big Phama make big money out of treating and never curing viruses
my man, cows and chickens and sea creatures had this problem too until very recently. just say you are white so you dont want to eat anything the “uncivilized people” eat and move on, you dont have to rationalize this
@@LangkowskiYeah I think while he did mention an example or two Adam really underestimated just how many people see eating at least some insects as totally normal. Insects themselves do turn up in spoilt meat in the form of maggots and such but that's not even close to universal among insects, and even parasites aren't always ingestible (eg malaria has to be injected into you by mosquito bites, you won't catch it from eating them).
5:40 the sound of “like shrimp but not fishy” sounds amazing tbh. When are they making full size land shrimp?
watching you repeatedly eat mealworms and grimacing isn't really how I imagined spending my afternoon.
Saw the video go up in my recomended and went "Yep I'm eating my dinner to this"
@@flip269 I ate my king crab legs last night while watching the bone collector. I have made better choices before.
I think those are superworms. Mealworms are smaller.
yeah lol. Those are superworms btw. 10000000x creepier cause they're very strong and bite HARD
@@flip269 lol eating my breakfast to this right now
It's a combination of instinctive fear and experience reinforcement. Humans despise things that feel, look, or move like insects because of an inborn revulsion for decay and parasites. And then we encounter insects on a regular basis, where most of them are annoying, painful, or closely associated with rot and manure.
Meanwhile, most aquatic crustaceans look different enough, most people don't encounter them on a regular basis, they're limited to the water and not our homes and cities, and most people closely associate them with delicious food. Of course, people are still revolted by those isopods that eat fish's tongues and other parasites regardless of being aquatic.
It's not fear, it's instinct people should listen to.
Chitin is dangerous to eat.
You're not eating Chitin when you eat the flesh of Shrimp or Lobster, but you are when you eat bugs.
Kind of off topic but when people say “it’s just cultural thing bro” I find it funny because when I meet people who used to eat bugs in their home countries I’ve never heard them say “damn I could go for some mealworms right now”. It’s almost like this shit is disgusting and not something people want to eat outside of necessity
@@jaxonsevero1045 The countries where they eat this stuff have long histories of food insecurity.
That's the part they always leave out. It's not some quaint delicacy like you've been told.
@@commonsensecraziness7595 exactly
@@jaxonsevero1045 Lots of paid shills in the comments section that are suddenly "science" experts in chitin.
I eat crab meat not guts. Bugs have very low meat to body mass, its mostly guts. Obvious differences
You WILL eat the guts
Speak for yourself, I love the tamale in lobster
The guts are delicious.
I only eat the crab shell, my dog gets the rest, im not a fan.
@@pkattk that's literally the filtering system for contaminants that those animals have, it's not recommended to eat on many countries and outlawed by several. It's the equivalent of cigarette butt
If you cooked the crickets in the same pot as the crab, of course they will taste like crab! You should do the experiment with a second pot filled with only water. You will see that they mostly taske like cardboard.
I think one of the major things that freak us out about most bugs is that they move quickly and skitteringly, the ones that don't do this (think pillbugs and ants) tend to be seen as more neutral.
And since most aquatic crustaceans (that we think of as such, so not barnacles or tiny mites) are pretty large and are moving through water, they inherently move slower and at a steady pace, thus we don't get that feeling of them being unnerving.
Crustaceans tend to not crawl on people either and usually flee from humans whereas insects can and do skitter on people or even use us for food as parasites. Crabs? Not so much
I was just thinking this. Skittering is unsettling. Writhing is unsettling. An ant carrying a bread crumb across the floor - totally cool. I might stare at that for a while. Maybe even cheer him on, if I'm drunk enough.
There's just something about rot and decay and pestilence that's just so intertwined with a specific kind of bug movement and appearance.
I think people forget that there has to be a significant reason for almost all of humanity to have this instinct and it’s not some irrational socialized trait.
Nobody reply to this comment saying cultures eat bugs, eating bugs is the socialized trait not the other way around
@@jaxonsevero1045 ibk about that. our closest living relatives, chimps, eat bugs as do other apes.
Pillbugs are actually terrestrial crustaceans, not insects. They have ten legs instead of the six that insects have, among other differences. Mites, meanwhile, are arachnids, like spiders, and so are related to but distinct from crustaceans and insects.
It's absolutely about the venom/disease vector associated with bugs. It's the same reason humans instinctually abhor snakes. Millions of years of evolution during which those things proved to be threatening more often than not.
Don't forget parasites. Marine life has very few parasites that are harmful to humans. Insects have many, and they are widely infected with said parasites.
Not even close. Evolution is a fairytale for adult children. People eat shellfish because they’re delicious, people don’t eat bugs because they’re disgusting.
I wonder if scorpions look at lobsters like sailors look at sirens?
That's... Deep
@@XenZenSen 𝒟𝑒𝑒𝓅 𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓊𝑔𝒽𝓉𝓈 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒟𝑒𝑒𝓅.
If scorpions found lobsters sexy I'd buy my local scorpions a drink
or how dogs look at seals lol
This person asking the real questions
People (at least usually) doesn't think in taxonomical categories as well as doesn't racionalize why something is yummy and something else is gross. Its just a matter of being accustomed to see some things as food and so feel less repulse towards it
Balut for example. People eat eggs. People eat chickens. But somehow balut is suddenly repulsive.
The Navajo word for "crab" is chʼosh bikágí ntłʼizí which means "hard-shelled bug".
Ch’osh means "small invertebrate animal" and can be found in other words like chʼosh bikǫʼí "firefly" or chʼosh łitsxooí "ladybug". 😊
In Japanese (/Chinese) the Kanji for crab and other shellfish has the same sub character (i forget what you call the larger parts) as bugs.
Aren't the Navajo landlocked? How do they know about crabs?
@@absolutelyunepic3072 Fresh water Crayfish most likely. Also it's still a "modern" Language, Hell it was used in WW2. Some languages like loan words, some don't.
wow this is cool
@@mzaite Navajo is a modern language like Latin is a modern language.
I can say that I don't fear crustaceans because I don't live near a big body of water, whereas insects are land-roaming and can enter my house, and sometimes these insects grow to the size of a baseball (though luckily, not where I live)
~Don't look up coconut crabs.~
Old sailors actually had a massive fear of crabs- you what they do to a washed up body and you’d have a visceral reaction too.
in London , there are 3 crustaceans - Kings crustacean, charing crustacean and St pan crustacean
You just blew my mind. Thank you.
Goddammit I love this
hmm must be a vampire...
@@lordoftheengines you're welcome
lmao
saying that WE love crustaceans is quite the generalization cuz MY arthropod fearing ahh is NOT going anywhere near one of those hellspawns
Exactly people that hate or are scared if crabs, shrimps and lobsters stay away from them, but so many people simply don't eat crustaceans. I live in a country where fish I eaten regularly, but crustaceans are eaten sparcely. This seems to be an American/ western thing
If bugs were filled with solid meat, I'd eat the heck out of them. But they're just filled with goo!
Ants are a good "starter insect". They're so tiny they just get crushed down. All you then get is their requisite protein and flavor. I had an "ant sauce" one time; if no one told me it was ants, I'd say it had a nice umami/salty flavor I couldn't distinguish the source from.
@@nahor88 Rabbits dont contain the peptides to sustain human life as food, why should Insects?
@@nahor88you fed your friends crushed ants without them knowing?
open up a raw crab sometime. it’s goo there as well!
@@Plate_ProductionsRead his comment again, he was the one eating the ants and he got told beforehand.
It is not a double standard because the entire eating experience is different. On a crab you can actually eat the meat and the meat only. Not so on an insect. I don't want to eat either personally.
That depends a little bit on the insect being eaten but yeah we've caused the extinction of most of the big ones in the last couple hundred years😢
@@darcieclements4880 There aren't any insect species with the muscle mass ratio of even a small crab.
@@darcieclements4880 most big bugs went extinct because the atmosphere changed, large flying insects need lots of oxygen so they can breath.
He isnt talking about the meat amount, but the fucking disgust around it
Nope, this is about the disgust, people 100 years ago were disgusted by crustaceans
i think another main difference why people don't like the idea of eating bugs but will eat shellfish, is like you say they live in the water. not only does this make it feel detached from the "dry world" but we generally clean things in water. so these things have been living in water all their live, they're as clean as can be... whereas bugs crawl around in dirt all day.
Counterpoint: oysters and scallops are essentially living toilet sponges. Just because it's in water doesn't make it clean.
@@llaughridgethat’s true but our mind thinks being in the water makes them clean our primal brains made many assumptions
Ironically land animals are "cleaner." In water bacteria and parasites have free reign.
@@llaughridgeYes but the spongey bits lead the yuckies into the tummy.
You remove the tummy.
The rest of it is in a shell which is basically nature's tupperware - fresh, clean, ready to snack on at a moment's notice.
Primal brain says underwater tupperware lunchable safe, ergo safe.
@@llaughridge Counterpoint: oysers and scallops are gross
We also associate insects with decay and filth at least I do. I have never felt afraid of an insect but they do trigger a strong disgust response. I would never eat one and if I did I doubt that I could keep it down. Shrimp and crab don’t have that association and so they don’t have that effect on me.
Crustaceans generally don’t risk disease but primarily, you have meat on crab and shrimp vs a cricket which is a lot of chitin with some organs. Insects tend to trespass into your house and attack (ticks, mosquitoes, etc),
Yeah, fact is people just have negative experiences with insects but usually not with aquatic arthropods. So if an arthropod lives underwater, people won't grow up with a negative association with it. Insects though? They experience all sorts of negative things with them.
why I season my crustaceans, NOT my insects
GPT 2.0 ass joke
You rocked it
I don't eat insects, including shrimp, lobster, and crabs.
that's my goat
Shrimp, lobster and crabs aren't insects. Insects are a subset of crustaceans, which in phylogenetics is known as a clade.
I’ve never had a crab randomly crawl onto my face while I’m sleeping inside
Not yet
Camping on the beach might get you that experience
Coconut crabs be like
🤣😂
Then you're not living right.
The classic categorization (used in the last few centuries):
Animal "Kingdom" -> Arthropods -> Crustaceans
Animal "Kingdom" -> Arthropods -> Instects
The modern categorization (used for the last 20 years):
Eukaryota -> Animalia -> Arthropoda -> Crustacea
Eukaryota -> Animalia -> Arthropoda -> Insecta
The latest form of the categorization used nowadays (updated just a few years ago):
Eukaryota -> Animalia -> Arthropoda -> Pancrustacea -> Crustacea
Eukaryota -> Animalia -> Arthropoda -> Pancrustacea -> Hexapoda -> Insecta
No matter what you say, none of the categorizations that have existed in all of human history has ever considered insects to be crustaceans. They are inherently different. They have similarities, because of their evolutionary relationships, but are you going to start denying evolution for the sake of claiming that they are the same?
That is what I thought exactly when I saw the title
Have you watched past 50 seconds? He mentions it literally 50 seconds that they're "at least pancrustaceans.."
@@katra5673 The pancrustacea proposal is only that - a proposal, or idea. It is not currently considered accurate taxonomy. Insects are still considered something different than crustaceans.
The creator of the video obviously isn't an expert on insect taxonomy, so it's forgivable that he made an error. Probably just googled "are bugs crustaceans" and got one of those AI answers (which are usually wrong) saying they're pancrustaceans.
@@bugjams Admittedly, I only have very basic taxonomy knowledge, but nobody said crustaceans = insects. People said crustaceans and insects = pancrustacean.. Which seems to be the most accepted grouping of those two groups
Yah and that’s changed. Science isn’t static. Human classifications don’t exist in the real world. Genetics does, and gene its shows that insects are closely related to what we called crustaceans. You’re the one denying evolution here.
Insects: get into your food storage, destroying what you need to survive in winter. Shrimps: are food.
Same with mice, I have not seen a restaurant provides mice dish on the menu, and when it happens, the place got closed for the day and a health inspector is on the scene.
@@varnix1006Not mice per se but Guinea pigs were domesticated for the purpose of being eaten and they’re quite similar
That’s when you eat the food that’s eating your food so you still have food, very much how we started farming insects in the first place
Insects are also vectors for a large number of diseases wich can affect primates, like us. On the other hand the diseases that crustaceans can carry mostly affect sea life. There are still some risks but from an evolutionary perspective avoiding insects was a lot more important than avoiding crabs.
Hey Adam, I'm no expert but from what I've seen and read, it's a common misconception that a higher concentration of oxygen caused the dinosaurs to be larger. This literally only applies to insects, specifically because of how they respirate.
so why where dinos so big? lots of food?
@@ezforsaken More efficient respiratory system. That's what allowed them to grow so big.
@@ezforsaken Higher earth temperatures during mesozoic era, reptiles grow larger in hotter areas compared to mammals which grow larger in colder areas thats why largest mammals evolved during ice ages and largest reptiles arose during dino age. Oxygen is only a contributing factor for insects not animals having lungs. Its the same reason for large number of triassic and jurassic dinos are the largest and Cretaceous dinos being smallest due to colder climates as by creatceous a large number of dinos became warm blooded while the earlier ones are cold blooded. The warm blooded ones gave rise to birds.
the giant millipedes also had book lungs iirc
@@ezforsaken 1) huge gut with fermentation system allows eating of "low quality" plant food.
2) be largely immune from predators;
3) predators consider that a challenge.
"you vill eat ze bugz" doesn't sound so threatening now
One time, my father made me what I thought was a pretty standard bowl of white rice with fried chicken. I was pretty hungry, so without looking I dug right in. However, after a few chews, I realized something tasted seriously off; this was neither rice, nor chicken, nor anything I'd tasted before.
You see, buried under the rice was a whole bowl of fried silkworms. I did not know they were silkworms; I thought they were maggots.
Somehow, my dad thought it would he a pleasant surprise for me.
WTF
That's not how you get someone to try bugs, I'm sorry
Yeah fr, you can't just hide worms in people's rice and expect them to be OK with it 😅
I LIKE your dad!
If it was me I'd instinctively yeet it out the window lmao, no hard feelings dad but natural selection is a very real process in this world
one thing that contributes to my fear of insects is that they move so fast relative to their size. theyre like constantly on the verge of fnaf jumpscaring you. crustaceans dont do that. I can be 5 feet away from a crab with relative confidence that it isnt going to clear that distance and get to me in a quarter of a second.
Exactly! I was going to comment that he missed this point entirely.
When's the last time you seen a shrimp scuttle out of your bathtub?
Or get drawn to faeces?
Well I have a new irrational fear…
last night when i was trying to take a shower :[
they just start swarming
@@VinluvAntonHandesbukia I'm going to ask this question in my aquarium hobbiest discord. Surely it's happened to SOMEONE due to thier pets going on an adventure
Just because insects are crustaceans doesn't mean they're equally good as food compared to shellfish. Cats, humans, and cows are all mammals but we only eat the last one.
Cats are eaten too, taboo or not.
In Brazil, BBQ skewers in poor areas are jokingly called churrasquinho de gato for a reason. And their cleaned carcasses are supposedly very similar to rabbits or hares, which scammers abused of in the past.
Humans... Ever heard of long pork? And that cannibal disease, Kuru.
Insects not looking so bad now, are they? Hahaha
@@vitor6928that reminded me of a part of Around the World in 80 Days where Phileas Fogg is served a "rabbit" stew, and after taking one bite asks the vendor: 'did this rabbit miaow?'
@@vitor6928Yeah and people around the world eat or used to eat humans also.
I eat humans and cats. Cows gross me out.
The list of problems with eating random insects : toxins, carcinogenic substances, parasites that are extremely dangerous to humans and extremely hard to remove, many times making it to packaged products that use insects as its primary source, other toxic substances, etc... in short, eating random insects is just extremely dangerous, and cleaning them up for proper human consumption sometimes is just not feasable, specially when dealing with production of large quantities of food based on insects, so many times these steps are just disregarded and they lead to the intoxication and eventual death of many people all around the world... there are very clear reasons why we don't just eat random bugs. There is a reason why it is preferable to consume specific bugs that are far easier to maintain, produce and guarantee that they are safe for consumption... but even at that point, it is just far safer and easier to just not eat any bugs at all. Only a few byproducts of insects are relatively safe to use for consumption on products that we consume daily, and those don't contain the bugs themselves, mind you... in short, this whole "eat the bugs" movement is just promoting a practice that is harmful for humans and should be stopped at once.
Not to mention that the parasites and chitin in insects is not digestible, so first, you're eating a material that is not giving you any form of nourishment (even worse than eating the shell of sunflower seeds considering how at least your digestive system can extract just a tiny bit of useable material out of that... which is on the same level as eating wood, so you can imagine why we just don't eat it LMAO...), and second you are consuming parasites that if not properly removed, your digestive system cannot eliminate them, and since they are transmissible to humans, they WILL infect you just fine... and once they do infect you, since they are not something the average human is exposed to on a daily basis, then you will just probably get an illness that might even lead to your death. Just like the many kids that "randomly die" in third world countries. Those are the ones that didn't get to build an immunity...
In short : eating bugs is just dangerous, and comparing eating bugs to eating crustacean seafood because both are crustaceans is just insane, because we're just glossing over the fact that, despite being within the same large group, their subcategories contain such differences that just make them not feasable nor safe for human consumption... sad that we have to explain the things that humanity has had figured out for thousands of years. Specially when you see these people trying to use the science to their advantage but they purposefully gloss over a lot of details or just ignore them to make themselves look convincing, when the real science, with all of the details laid out, actually tells us what we already knew... but I, too, enjoy misinformation!
It’s hard to swallow shrimp shells and the lack of meat in bugs makes me say no thank you to eating “ze bugz”.
Yo will eat them
@@Yoshi_172 Commie moment.
@@Stryker98 You will own nothing and be happy
@@Yoshi_172 And so will you. 😁
@@Stryker98 Yummy
7:00 Awwww. Adam wants to parent a tiny cute little crab, that may be the most heartwarming thing I've heard on the internet today
One reason towards why we dont mind sea crustaceans but fear insects is color. Those in the sea are very vibrant and often have larger body proportions, while those in land are usually dark colored, like black or brown, with offputting patterns and many, often hairy, legs. This could also be why we often dont mind butterflies and ladybugs compared to other bugs
@@ymck7246 yes, that is included in the second part of my response. For me personally, I find cockroaches very offputting but not so much for green cockroaches or dark brown beetles compared to colorful beetles
You know lobsters are a brownish green when alive, right? They only turn a tasty bright red once you cook them, which is also true for crickets.
@@elisehalflight wait crickets actually turn bright red when cooked? thats interesting.
I also stated that color is possibly "one reason" and not the only one
@@Pavme Yeah!, well, at least the species we eat here does. I'm mexican and I eat them from time to time, they're very tasty with lemon if a bit spicy, sadly there aren't many places that sell them these days.
And yeah, that's understandable, sometimes things are just icky, i am a very adventurous person when it comes to trying out foods but you'd never convince me to try Escargot.
@@elisehalflightof course the Mexican is eating literal vermin lmao
I've called crustaceans "sea bugs" for as long as I can remember lol.
And crabs are sea spiders.
@@derrickdavis664 YES
this is the exact kind of video i wanna be watching. it’s dense, educational about things im interested in, and not at all overstimulating. this is wonderful
Except that he's wrong in saying insects are crustaceans which the are not. They are both arthropods though!
@@thenickhelms84I was about to say the same thing.
1. being in a saline solution all their life, crustaceans are basically sterilized. bugs, otoh, tend to kongregate around filth.
2. we dont eat the crustacean armor, but we are supposed to eat bug egsoskeleton, which, according to some studies might be problematic (chitin may cause an inflammatory response)
Bro... Salt water parasites and bacteria are nasty, there is a reason why salt water fish spoils faster in the fridge.
chitin IS problematic
Edible insects aren’t supposed to be scavengers. There are plenty of harmful diseases in the sea too. Also it is hard to determine what is true about chitin or not, given the conspiracy theories.
Chitin is the same stuff Mushrooms are made of. Do you eat Mushrooms?
Salt water is sterile? Have you looked at it under a microscope?
I get your point, I've tried crickets (a cricket) only once and it freaked me out and I do not plan on doing it again. But its all just in my head. But to be honest I'm not that into seafood either. Only if its already cleaned. Also I don't want to touch live crabs
@@Luka_Nogalomushrooms don't have chitin, what are you on about?
Crustaceans is an enormous sub-phylum containing over 67,000 species. Humans are in the sub-phylum vertebrate which contains, among other things all mammals. So while we eat tasty beef and chicken we do not eat possums or rats. Saying that because shrimp and cockroaches are both crustaceans we should eat both is the same as saying because skunks and chickens are both vertebrates we should eat both. Sure there are some insects that would be good to eat, but they aren't the same as shrimp.
I agree. While its nice that he is raising awareness about how some cultures do eat bugs and that many types of bugs are edible or even very good, its a massive generalization to say: bugs are crustaceans, we eat crustaceans, we should eat bugs QED.
@@pr0hobo He didn't say that we should eat bugs, i don"t think this was him trying to convince anyone to eat insects. I think it was just a video making guesses at why we don't eat bugs as much.
I mean if you're hungry you can eat a skunk/
I don't think he's saying that we should eat insects, he's explaining why we don't.
@@cookiecraze1310 My point is that the category is too broad. I actually think that there are some insects that can be incorporated into our diet. But my point is to compare shrimp to other crustaceans is like comparing vertebrates we eat to vertebrates we don't.
No one can convince me to eat bugs.
a lot of bugs produce compounds that make them distasteful as well as the fact we didn't evolve to eat them primarily.
You will eat the bugs and be happy
Also the spines. Crickets & grasshoppers among many others have sharp spines on them to deter larger predators. And in the case of predators who can just eat a can of beans instead, that does work.
yeah fuck em crickets
this really is just a culture thing. Frogs, beetles and snails are traditional foods in some European countries, spiders and many insects are traditional foods in Asia and Africa.
If it was about some bad/harmful compounds in the animals, then we would have evolved to avoid fish because many fish are highly toxic to us.
We didn't evolve to eat any particular thing, hence omnivores with varied diets all over the world and over time. We aren't koalas.
Larger shrimp still creep me out when they still have their legs and faces.
Lobsters to ya
My dad one time cooked a couple of those larger shrimps and I couldn't eat them...
Good point. People don't consider shrimp bugs because normally the antennae, legs, and exoskeleton are removed. They only see a nice little morsel of meat.
@@tapewerm6716 idk where you guys are getting your shrimp from but at least half of all shrimp I've eaten were served with everything still attached. Obviously I remove the head, legs, and exoskeleton (the tail I either eat or remove depending on how tasty it looks). Never even thought about it or made me lose my appetite. Even then, you will never catch me eating bugs no matter what.
@@slav7571 You're missing the point. Shrimp are bugs. Not saying you should eat other bugs as well, I'm with you there, but crustaceans are bugs. We don't refer to them as such because they're food. But they are definitely a type of water bug, no doubt about it, as are lobster, cray fish, crabs etc. They have exoskeletons, antennae, pincers. Their eyes are on stalks. They have a larval stage, they molt their shells. They're bugs.
Adam didn't have to eat bugs for us, but he went the extra mile. This is why I love this channel
@@ymck7246 I am vomit
@ymck7246 I see where you're coming from, but from the look on Adam's face every time he bit a bug, it seemed very unpleasant to him, lol
literally the reason I don't eat seafood. I was pretty young when I realized it's all been arthropods all along.
I don't think insects are crustaceans either, they're part of the arthropodea. Crustaceans and insects are subphylums of arthropods, no?
I will not eat the bugs
You WILL live in the pod and eat tha bugs
Well eventually you'll have to 😂
@@AntiTankLover we're close to cloning meat. I think it's easier to convince society to eat cloned meat rather than bugs
You will own nothing and be happy…….. and you will eat ze bugs
Growing a cow on grass is the cheapest and most efficient way to produce food. You do not need to do anything.
I’ve never been a fan of shellfish specifically because they’ve always reminded me too much of bugs. Good to know there’s a real evolutionary basis for that, I guess?
A lot of bugs respirate in a more efficient way than their relatives! If you look at the abdomen of certain bugs like wasps, you'll notice they constantly pulse in and out. This is their way of forcing air in and out of their body, similar to how other animals breathe. I think this trait is more common in bugs which fly a lot, which makes sense because flight is energy intensive.
Yes, this is a statement I wish people would speak about more. Even some more terrestrially-inclined insects such as cockroaches, orthopterans, and certain beetles preform active respiration in the way that you described. I doubt passive respiration is a limiting factor in regards to insect size, considering how many different groups are able to respirate actively.
@@norberthemmingsway I wouldn't doubt if their active respiration is still more inefficient somehow. Like maybe the organs the air is pulled into still don't absorb as much oxygen as actual lungs. Or maybe they do and it actually has nothing to do with their breathing that they're so small. I really don't know
@@catpoke9557 Oh their respiratory system is definitely less efficient than ours. But since some are capable of active respiration, I think they could theoretically evolve a more efficent respiratory system which could support a larger body size.
I think the main limiting factor of insect (and terrestrial arthropod) size is the fact that they have to molt, along with competition from tetrapods. Molting is a very strenous activity for the largest terrestrial arthropods, which are all crabs. It can take them weeks or even months to undergo the process fully, and they are totally vulnerable to predation during that time. Now compare this with a tetrapod, which needs to do basically nothing in order to grow larger.
I'm not sure if terrestrial crustceans are a great comparison to insects. Their exoskeleton is especially thick and calcareous, which might be why it takes them so long to molt. Molting seems to be less strenous on large insects compared to similarly-sized land crabs. I'm sure molting is still an issue though as its a period of vulnerability. Another factor that might be keeping them small is that adult insects can't really heal. Arthropods repair wounds and regenerate appendages by molting. But once insects become adults, they stop molting so any damage they take is permanent. An adult insect can't even regrow hair like a mammal could, since their hair is part of their exoskeleton.
Pulsing wasps be idling like npcs
@@yungrichnbroke5199 LOL it does look like that
Before watching, I'm gonna assume cause it's hard to get the meat out of insects, but easy to get it out of crustaceans.
A podcast I used to listen to taught me that if you have a shellfish allergy you might also be allergic to cockroaches. Having eaten both I can safely say I'm not allergic to either
cool wait what
I am not going to eat the bugs
Who?
You *will* eat the bugs and live in the pod
You vill eat ze bugs, and YOU VILL LIKE IT!!
@@lotgc sorry klaus
some food dyes are made out of bugs: carmine(reddish pink), lac(reddish pink), chochineal(light pink)
That couple of seconds with the fingers like fangs saying "hunting, hunting", will forever inhabit my mind when thinking about hunting.
Liberals: "We aren't trying to make you eat bugs, that's a right wing myth!". Liberals 2 seconds later: "Eat bugs, stop being a bigot, a cockroach is the same as a lobster!"
We don't eat the shells of crustaceans. Chitin is not very digestible, can be completely indigestible depending on the chitinase mRNA levels in the individual stomach, and can lead to allergic responses. If you answer the question: how many crickets would you have to "de-shell" to get the equivalent quality calories of a single medium sized shrimp? You have one of the answers as to why insect consumption is not more widespread.
This is the most educational way to just simply say "shrimps is bugs"
no! bugs is shrimp
@@appa609 No! Neither is true! Bugs is crustaceans, but bugs is not shrimps nor is shrimps bugs!
5:19 ok that’s enough I’m out bye
Take lobster*
Shrink to cricket size*
"Woah there's no meat here"
Take cricket*
Somehow make lobster sized*
"Woah there's meat here"
yes lets just ignore the meaty tail and claws.
Still, your one good point about tiny lobsters not being food is valid. Its why nobody eats baby lobsters, there's no meat there, duh
To be fair, deep fried tarantulas are a thing in Cambodia. The meat from the head looks similar to the meat from crabs. Some people stay away from the abdomen because that's where the poop is while others eat the whole thing. I would still be creeped out by seeing a deep fried one on my plate, but if I were hungry enough I might eat it. I might even try a little to say I'v eaten it before. I have no plans to try it in the near future though.
this seems like a good way to teach children in school. good job!
@@Chuito12PR There are "tiny lobsters" and they're called crawfish. Not quite cricket sized, but pretty small and quite edible. There's no meat in the claws, but their tail meat is the same proportionally as a scaled down lobster. It ends up being very similar to shrimp.
You’d have a gooey shell that smells like rotten grass
Well Truthfully, Hexapods (Insects such as grasshoppers, social insects and beetles) are classified in a different class and are shown to diverge into separate groups.
I do get that crustaceans are the most closely related clade compared to the rest of the Arthropods however they are very different.
(I get that you wanted a sweet video title)
They’re still all crustaceans. They’re not related to crustaceans, they are crustaceans.
Let me one leave one last comment to clarify just in case; Insects are Crustaceans. It’s not a silly video title, it’s literally the classification group that insects belong in.
I'd say it's largely cultural - most people get presented with crustaceans AS food, in a way that's visually distinct from their living state. Like the most popular form of lobster is Lobster Tail, which removes a good 20% of the creature from view, namely the legs, antennae and face. Same happens with shrimp, we remove their shell and front before cooking, leaving only their lower body and tail. Indeed, if you go places where shrimp and crawfish are served whole, you'll find a lot of visitors who have the same disgust reaction that they might have to insects.
Only reasonable argument thus far
In the Amazon, some indigenous people eat tarantulas like crabs. They roast them and then they pick apart the legs and the meat out of them.
Yeah seems like if Europe had had those crawling around hundreds of years ago, we'd still be munching on em today.
@@entiretotal7207 the potato part of europe wouldnt , but the french would
0:45 Joke on you i dont eat both.
We also think insects are gross, that's another reason that we don't like eating them. We don't, idk, go on a picnic and find little crustaceans walking all over our food, but we do find insects out there. We also find a bunch of them in our homes, especially around rotting fruit. We find insects on poop outside, all of this gives land insects a gross connotation, while crustaceans don't get the same treatment (even though they probably do the same thing, just out of sight of our daily lives)
Yeah that’s be true as our experience as an individual. I wonder if there’s also a cultural/societal factor at play as well. For example in America there’s not much places that handle and serve insects as a culinary option so we never consider insects as something that can be eaten. It certainly doesn’t help people in those types of societies overcome any repulsion they may have to insects.
Most shellfish are bottom feeders/scavengers, so they definitely feast on dead marine life that settle to the sea bed; but like you said, it's an out of sight, out of mind thing.
Catfish are also bottom feeders/scavengers, and it's one of the most widely consumed(and delicious) freshwater fish. 😆
Also, not all insects are the same as each other. Flies and roaches may be gross scavengers, but silkworms are pretty clean
Sea scanvengers are vastly different from land scanvengers in this aspect. You almost never heard of any serious disease carried over from sea foods, but land animals are a whole different story there. Just because they all eat basic stuffs doesn't mean they are the same@@Burtocd
@@Burtocd You dont eat catfish guts, neither you eat whole crabs (except the people that eat softshell crab, thats gross as well). Its different.
Adam gushing about 2 fish kissing is the most wholesome thing I’ve seen all day
spiracle not trachea. trachea are the tubes, spiracle are the openings
No, he's right in his description. After saying that insects have "vent holes", he isn't explaining what the vent holes are, he's supporting how vent holes could allow respiration (by explaining the presence of tracheae, "teeny little tubes" that allow diffusion). He simply doesn't mention the name of the "vent holes".
Rare Puck W
hi, so a little mistake on this video, just a nitpick, dinossaurs are not big bc of oxigen, since they dont breathe passivelly, but insects do!
The intonation had me thinking you were about to say “maybe I’ll be freaked out by the dozens of crabs I’m hoping to breed in my new CRAB SINK, sponsor of this video!”
Oh I kept watching and it was indeed a sponsor, just indirectly lol
8:25 - ♪ WHO LIVES IN THE PINEAPPLE UNDER THE SINK? ♪
SpongeBob SquarePants
Krabs...
Spongebob Silverfishpants!
Waterbugsquarebob
"shrimps is bugs" -Adam Ragusea
Shrimps are not bugs. To say they are is to be definitionally wrong
Was looking for this comment 😂
@@theredknight9314I think you are a bug
@@theredknight9314 Shrimps is bugs is meme
@@theredknight9314shrimps were considered prison food before btw
Adam's videos usually make me hungry when I watch them. This was not one of them.
Some of us don't like eating any crustaceans, insect or not.
And those some of you are defective.
baby
skill issue, picky eater
Boo hoo 😢
@@SomeCuteDoragonsnuh uh :*c
I'm not getting in the pod and I'm not eating the bugs.
Now I know why I don’t like seafood, they literally remind me of insects.
So u went ur whole life not knowing WHY u dont like a food lmfao wtf
does eating beef meat remind you of humans?
@@imjonathan6745 More like pig/pork
Ever heard of fish?
Hey man, the enclosure at 1:11 is a vampire crab death trap. It looks nice but they need way more land to live on and soil to dig into, my crabs have a big 1.5 meter tank with about 1/4 of the area beeing water and they live mostly on land. Please reconsider keeping them that way as this will stress them out (no hiding spots) and they have a good chance of just dying of exaustion because they cant rest on land
You missed the one question that my whole family is asking: what about the prevalence of transmissible diseases?
and parasites, probably the only true pathogen
Not many at all compared to mammals, the insects currently used for food production will pretty much never have parasites that us humans will have to worry about, just don’t go eating bugs off the street (which I wouldn’t suggest for any animal). What I would be worried about is meat from animals closely related to us as the parasites are more likely to effect warm blooded animals. That’s how we got most major outbreaks as of late: Covid, swine flu, foot and mouth disease, mad cow disease, Ebola etc.
My issue with the logic of crustaceans being bugs is that they split off from them so long ago that humans were shrews. Now I know we also have issues eating certain animals, and one of those is rodents. So its fair to say that our distinction, while cultural and silly- does have a logical thru line across different sorts of creatures.
well we are still mammals, and so are shrews...
we don't eat rodents because post-urbanization we perceived them as unclean animals, and also they're quite gamey and historically have been vectors of disease (mostly post-urbanization), similar to insects. but bugs and rodents are eaten in many parts of the world, and over the span of human history, we have arguably been eating them for much much longer than we have not. i believe it is largely a cultural tendency riding on targeted evolutionarily engrained pattern recognition and the historical tradition of avoiding poison/venom rather than a "truly" genetically intrinsic human property (in quotes to avoid teleology). they also move really fast and people don't like that lol
Except as Shrew like critters, we ate the heck out of those land bugs.
@@lightningkittenalso we do eat rodents. Guinea Pigs, Rats, Squirrel, Rabbits (technically Lagomorphs but same boat), etc… they just aren’t optimal livestock, so they aren’t mass produced.
@@lightningkitten I agree that there is a large cultural aspect to it, but as a potential staple food source insects are severely deficient. Pound for pound when compared to, say, chicken or beef you will find that insects are up to ~40% less bioavailable and they require essentially the same amount of feed to cultivate, meaning that if you farmed them you would be using your animal feed almost half as efficiently as if you had just raised chickens. This is a big factor when we are talking about large human populations.
I think that there is one other psychological component at play: the idea that underwater "bugs" stay clean and must be free of any germs or diseases. I can remotely imagine eating an underwater snake, but a land snake, not so much.
Eels are a thing, and they are delicious, especially smoked.
@@HazmanFTW sea snakes are also a thing
Also the status of "pests" bugs invade your home, spread disease, and destroy food..... crustaceans leave your home alone (infact we invade THEIR home), are nutritious and healing in some ways, and are literally food. Believe you me, if I had shrimp marching into my home every summer and jumping into my flour... I would just shake the flour up and throw them into some oil for dinner instead of calling an exterminator. Just like if chickens or cows were finding their way into my home to multiply instead of mice...I couldn't be happier.
@@JasminUwU they are but i wouldn't eat them, theyre too cute
Some people say catfish is disgusting, I did so, until I ate one, then I started to eat them more.
"Its not disgusting to eat insects if we change a definition!" Thats a hard pass. Im not gonna eat bugs just to support an ecosystem of 40 billion Chinese and Indians. Not our problem.
Al for them to leave their excrement on their street regardless
Woah woah woah… what “Indians” bruh? people don’t eat insects there, Are you high? They literally eat spicy veggie stuff and lentils or chicken, lamb kinda normal food.
Get it together, also 40 billion? 😂
@@liamthecrusader5056 clearly you’re an illiterate… you’ll fit right in the villages
@@alphamineron my post doesnt imply that jeets eat insects. In implies that jews are pushing for eating bugs because farming meat is unsustainable if you have 700 trillion humans, most of which are Indian and Chinese. I am saying, its not my problem if there are 40 billion Indians that will starve when they reach they carrying capacity, im not gonna eat a single bug in order to help Jeets and bugmen multiply astronomically
"You guys like swarms of things, right?"
~Bender
Insecta is a separate class from crustacea. Both are arthropods. No crustacea can fly. They have more than six legs. They have four antennea instead of two. Culinarily speaking, I have no idea if it matters.
Pancrustacea contains both hexapoda and crustacea :D
but then he brings up arachnids which, yeah, are sister to the pancrustaceans, pretty far out there
nope. any definition for a "crustacean" clade that includes all animals we commonly call crustaceans must include all insects as well. as one example, fairy shrimp are more closely related to insects than they are to crabs.
to be clear, you can absolutely draw useful, albeit blurry lines based on morphology and behavior and such. but there is no doubt that insects evolved within the crustacean clade, and you can never evolve out of a clade
@jotch_7627 are you a clint's reptiles viewer as well
@@sasi5841 a fellow land fish, i see
I still aint eating bugs, fed
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_Service_Agency
Then don't, no one is actually forcing you to in the real world, this idea that eating insects will be mandatory in the near future is conspiracy (and poorly founded conspiracy given how profitable industries like beef production are, there's no real financial incentive or meaningful political will to suddenly ban beef)
I won't eat ze bugs
@@TurtleChad1you vont be happy
@@AaroncadwellI zont care
IDK if I agree with the basic premise of the video. Saying all crustations are the same for eating is like saying all mammals are the same for eating. They're not, and we actually eat relatively few mammals and birds... and plants. "Water crustaceans and insects are the same" a wildly sweeping statement, and it's super weird to me that we'd grab a massive collection of diverse living things, bundle them together, and announce "if you like one, you should like them all, there's _basically_ no difference!".
Exactly. "You like eating cows? You should love eating dog, too!"
Your comparison is wrong. We don't eat every mammal because that's wouldn't be sustainable. There's basically two species we eat globally, pig and cow, with some local differences. Comparing insects and crustaceans is really fair and helps to rationalize insect-eating as something that could be normal and incredibly beneficial to the planet.
@@tiempoimplacable I'm sure someone could argue it would also be good for the planet if everyone ate, for example, seaweed, kelp, etc. But I'm telling you, independent of environmental benefits, seaweed and friends are a fundamentally different food experience from lettuce or asparagus or beans or pineapple. Different things in the same broad group aren't the same, and it's not wise to gloss over those differences and insist they're the same thing because they're all "plants".
If you go into the discussion trying to gaslight people, they'll learn to distrust you quickly and permanently, and your plans die.
Assuming you want to convince people to try insects (instead of sabotaging that plan with what feels like lies), acknowledging these differences and being upfront about it is a much better path.
I've heard a LOT of differing opinions on the insect experience vs eating sea bugs, and I don't find "everything's all the SAME bro, trust me!" compelling; it seems like BS. I also don't find "it's beneficial to the planet" compelling enough to try something I find gross.
The fact that I've looked into it reflects that I'm open to trying bugs, but... I don't trust all the information I get. There's too many Bug Bros, with the same energy as Crypto Bros, Finance Bros, etc.
If I ever try bugs, it'll have to be despite the arguments for them, not thanks to them.
@@tiempoimplacable eating insects would harm the health of billions if adopted en masse
When you eat mammal meat, does it taste more or less similar to other mammal meat than, say, bird meat? Does chicken taste like fish?
It’s totally fair to say that you don’t like certain types of fish, but their taste is undeniably more similar than other animals. As someone who’s eaten some more exotic mammal meats, my brain compares them to cow, maybe sometimes deer or lamb, never chicken or salmon. Bugs be tasting like bugs, sea bugs also just taste like sea.
It's not a double standard, it's relative standards. Dogs are mammals and so are pigs, but we don't usually eat dogs. it's not a double standard, we just have different standards for different things. Cockroaches and shrimp may be genetically close, but VERY different to consume as food.
It would be a different experience, but there’s no clear moral difference. I don’t see how it’s not a double standard.
Crustaceans creep me out in the same way that insects do. I have a 'no arthropods' rule.
Yes! My fear is not contained to land dwellers alone. Crayfish are creepy.
I eschew those crabby bois 😬 👀
Hard same. Crabs just look like huge bugs and idg how people eat them
Shrimp are so so gross
I don't fear them at all - I love eating certain seafood.
But I don't love the idea of eating Chitin and getting cancer, so that's a no on the bugs.
Can't believe Adam is shilling this propaganda.
You will eat the bugs, you will live in the pod, you will own nothing, you will be happy.
Another semi-retired Adam classic, let’s go
Farming insects is not environmentally friendly right now, just like "lab" meat. There is the promise that one day it will be, and you can even believe it, but I will not eat the bugs, I will own stuff, and I'll be happy.