It is _AGONY_ to even glance at the comments on this. Hundreds of people who think using cordyceps in place of pesticide means we’re going to accidentally wipe out all life on Earth or create a Video Game Zombie scenario.
What people don’t understand is that insect-zombifying fungi already exist literally everywhere that there are insects. From the moment you were born you’ve already breathed in the spores of several thousand strains. Constantly. That is literally why there are plans to use them as “pesticide,” because they’re already natural and already never hurt anything but their single, specific host species for literally millions of years.
It is physically impossible for them to ever make the jump to vertebrates. It works on insects because of the relative sizes. Fungal cells cannot physically exist that could parasitize us the same way. That is why the fungi that parasitize us simply make us itchy.
People raise honest concerns about the safety of insect populations, but even that’s nothing to worry about here!
Every single insect already has a single strain of fungus (or more) that specializes in killing it. This has been the case for millions and millions of years, and the fungi don’t just suddenly “jump species.” Since every insect is already “claimed” by a fungus, a new strain only arises WITH a whole new species of insect.
They steadily evolve in step together.
So the idea here is, if there’s an explosion of hornworms eating your tomato crop, you powder them with a mega dose of the one fungus that consumes hornworms. This is something that already might happen in nature, when the density of a host population allows for a rapid population boom in their parasites.
Any given pesticide we previously used would not only kill the same number of “intended” insects, but kill, sicken or significantly weaken millions more insects and other small animals, often leaching into the groundwater and working its way up through the food chain world wide.
This is sincerely the best idea we have ever had in regards to “pest management” and it’s sad we didn’t realize we could do this so much sooner.
We Can Save The World
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