this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Honestly I see everything we do as natural. It may be different to the other life on this planet, but that's just the way nature is: different species do different things.
What we do isn't even terribly unique. Other species have been shown to create and use tech, communicate, do agriculture, have societies, and manipulate other life to its gain. What sets us apart from them is that we're especially good at all that, we're nature's ultra generalists.
I think it's also important to note that nature does not equal good or even beneficial for the environment. Some of Earths most profound horrors come from non-human life (that which is often called natural). And other species have been known to destroy their environment to grow (such as the great oxygenation event or the rats that destroyed Easter Island)
This is the kind of shit that keeps me up at night. Thinking about all the casual horror in the world. I’ve read about these “slaver” ants that kidnap eggs from another colony only to raise them as slaves for the rest of their life. Or those wasps that lay their eggs inside other living insects which then hatch and consume the host.
There are so so many insects on earth, so these fucked up horrors are just happening on a massive scale all the time all around us.
Legit those exact wasps were on my mind as I wrote that nature has horrors. Creatures like that always make me think, "damn nature, you scary" lol