
Several species of flatworm have made a home in metropolitan France - wglb
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/05/22/giant-predatory-worms-invaded-france-but-scientists-just-noticed-them/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2a5944aa5283
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solipsistnation
'A colleague once tried to put a flatworm in his mouth, Justine recounted. The
man still describes it as “one of the worst experiences of his life.”'

...why would you do this?

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matte_black
At some point someone must experiment in eating something unknown, perhaps
several times in different ways, in order to determine if there's potential
for it to be palatable for a mass audience. If you discover something truly
remarkable and capitalize on it, you can become very rich very quickly.

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Falling3
It never ceases to amaze me the extent to which a humanity's response to new
life is either: "Can I eat it?" or "How do I kill it?".

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Semirhage
You forgot the classic third option, “Can I have sex with this?”

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hartator
Probably the first option in fact.

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cwkoss
I'm always surprised by how little we understand the soil under our feet.

For example, Glomalin is a soil protein produced by fungi which can constitute
more than 10% of soil by weight (as is strongly correlated with 'tilth'/high
quality soil). It was only discovered in 1996!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomalin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomalin)

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trhway
the first joking thought was that French cuisine will get a new dish ... after
reading the article i see that it is only half a joke as there has already
been a tasting attempts. So there is only a technical issue of finding a good
way of cooking them - like for some other foods which are unpleasant/toxic in
uncooked state. May be these worms is what going to save our future
overpopulated Earth from hunger?

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webkike
Overpopulation is a myth

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larkeith
Citation? I'm unfamiliar with the views on this, but considering the amount of
starvation in the world, this seems suspect, especially considering an
increasing population.

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mjn
One way of quantifying it really roughly is to estimate the total caloric
value of worldwide food production and divide by the population, to get a
global estimate of calories-per-person. According to one estimate, anyway,
that's been steadily rising and is now around 2900 kcal/person/day [1]. There
still is hunger in some parts of the world, which suggests that the problem is
distribution not happening correctly, whether due to logistical or economic or
political issues. This seems to be true even if you do the averaging per-
continent: the continent with the lowest per-capita production, Africa, still
produces 2600 kcal/person/day, which should be plenty to avoid starvation.

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-supply-by-region-
in-...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-supply-by-region-in-
kilocalories-per-person-per-day-1961-2013)

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pvaldes
Change "metropolitan France" by "most temperate Europe and USA" and you will
have a more accurate picture. I have those hammerhead worms in my garden and
you could probably find them in your closest local garden center too. The
"scientists just noticed then now" claim is false, of course. Very curious
creatures.

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ableal
Funding idea: ask homeland security to pay for flora and fauna surveys.

I suppose that CDC already does that for virus and bacteria ...

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Jazgot
article is behind paywall

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MayeulC
Try opening it in private browsing? It might be that you've read too many of
their articles (should be stated on the paywall).

I say this out of general experience, the article was not pay walled for me.

