What, me worry?

SUBHEAD: Poor humans can see imminent environmental collapse, but seem incapable of avoiding it.

By William E. Rees on 16 November 2017 for The Typee -
(https://www.thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/11/16/humans-blind-imminent-environmental-collapse/)


Image above: The evolution of Alfred E. Neuman at Comic-Con 2014 in San Diego. From (https://coolsandiegosights.com/2014/07/24/pics-of-2014-san-diego-comic-con-preview-night/).

A curious thing about Homo sapiens is that we are clever enough to document — in exquisite detail — various trends that portend the collapse of modern civilization, yet not nearly smart enough to extricate ourselves from our self-induced predicament.

This was underscored once again in October when scientists reported that flying insect populations in Germany have declined by an alarming 75 per cent in the past three decades accompanied, in the past dozen years, by a 15 per cent drop in bird populations.

Trends are similar in other parts of Europe where data are available. Even in Canada, everything from casual windshield “surveys” to formal scientific assessments show a drop in insect numbers.

Meanwhile, domestic populations of many insect-eating birds are in freefall.

Ontario has lost half its whip-poor-wills in the past 20 years; across the nation, such species as nighthawks, swallows, martins and fly-catchers are down by up to 75 per cent; Greater Vancouver’s barn and bank swallows have plummeted by 98 per cent since 1970. Heard much about these things in the mainstream news?

Too bad. Biodiversity loss may turn out to be the sleeper issue of the century. It is caused by many individual but interacting factors — habitat loss, climate change, intensive pesticide use and various forms of industrial pollution, for example, suppress both insect and bird populations.

But the overall driver is what an ecologist might call the “competitive displacement” of non-human life by the inexorable growth of the human enterprise.

On a finite planet where millions of species share the same space and depend on the same finite products of photosynthesis, the continuous expansion of one species necessarily drives the contraction and extinction of others.

Politicians take note — there is always a conflict between human population/economic expansion and “protection of the environment."

Remember the 40 to 60 million bison that used to roam the great plains of North America?

They — along with the millions of deer, pronghorns, wolves and lesser beasts that once animated prairie ecosystems — have been “competitively displaced,” their habitats taken over by a much greater biomass of humans, cattle, pigs and sheep.

And not just North Americans — Great Plains sunshine also supports millions of other people-with-livestock around world who depend, in part on North American grain, oil-seed, pulse and meat exports. 

Competitive displacement has been going on for a long time. Scientists estimate that at the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago, H. sapiens comprised less than one per cent of the total weight of mammals on the planet. There were probably only two to four million people on Earth at the time.

Since then, humans have grown to represent 35 per cent of a much larger total biomass; toss in domestic pets and livestock, and human domination of the world’s mammalian biomass rises to 98.5 per cent!

One needs look no further to explain why wildlife populations globally have plunged by nearly 60 per cent in the past half century.

Wild tigers have been driven from 93 per cent of their historic range and are down to fewer than 4,000 individuals globally; the population of African elephants has imploded by as much as 95% to only 500,000 today; poaching drove black rhino numbers from an already much reduced 70,000 in 1960 to only 2,500 individuals in the early 1990s. (With intense conservation effort, they have since rebounded to about 5,000).

And those who still think Canada is still a mostly pristine and under-populated wilderness should think again — half the wildlife species regularly monitored in this country are in decline, with an average population drop of 83 per cent since 1970.

Did I mention that B.C.’s southern resident killer whale population is down to only 76 animals? That’s in part because human fishers have displaced the orcas from their favoured food, Chinook salmon, even as we simultaneously displace the salmon from their spawning streams through hydro dams, pollution and urbanization.

The story is similar for familiar species everywhere and likely worse for non-charismatic fauna. Scientists estimate that the “modern” species extinction rate is 1,000 to as much as 10,000 times the natural background rate.

The global economy is busily converting living nature into human bodies and domestic livestock largely unnoticed by our increasingly urban populations. Urbanization distances people psychologically as well as spatially from the ecosystems that support them.

The human band-wagon may really have started rolling 10 millennia ago but the past two centuries of exponential growth greatly have accelerated the pace of change. It took all of human history — let’s say 200,000 years — for our population to reach one billion in the early 1800s, but only 200 years, 1/1000th as much time, to hit today’s 7.6 billion!

Meanwhile, material demand on the planet has ballooned even more — global GDP has increased by over 100-fold since 1800; average per capita incomes by a factor of 13. (rising to 25-fold in the richest countries).

Consumption has exploded accordingly — half the fossil fuels and many other resources ever used by humans have been consumed in just the past 40 years.

See graphs in: Steffen, W et al. 2015.The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. The Anthropocene Review, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, page(s): 81-98.)

Why does any of this matter, even to those who don’t really give a damn about nature per se? Apart from the moral stain associated with extinguishing thousands of other life-forms, there are purely selfish reasons to be concerned.

For example, depending on climate zone, 78 per cent to 94 per cent of flowering plants, including many human food species, are pollinated by insects, birds and even bats. (Bats — also in trouble in many places — are the major or exclusive pollinators of 500 species in at least 67 families of plants.)

As much as 35 per cent of the world’s crop production is more or less dependent on animal pollination, which ensures or increases the production of 87 leading food crops worldwide.

But there is a deeper reason to fear the depletion and depopulation of nature. Absent life, planet earth is just an inconsequential wet rock with a poisonous atmosphere revolving pointlessly around an ordinary star on the outer fringes of an undistinguished galaxy.

It is life itself, beginning with countless species of microbes, that gradually created the “environment” suitable for life on Earth as we know it.

Biological processes are responsible for the life-friendly chemical balance of the oceans; photosynthetic bacteria and green plants have stocked and maintain Earth’s atmosphere with the oxygen necessary for the evolution of animals.

The same photosynthesis gradually extracted billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere, storing it in chalk, limestone and fossil fuel deposits, so that Earth’s average temperature (currently about 15º C) has remained for geological ages in the narrow range that makes water-based life possible, even as the sun has been warming (i.e. stable climate is partially a biological phenomenon.); countless species of bacteria, fungi and a veritable menagerie of micro-fauna continuously regenerate the soils that grow our food.

Unfortunately, depletion-by-agriculture is even faster — by some accounts we have only just over a half-century’s worth of arable soils left.

In short, H. sapiens depends utterly on a rich diversity of life-forms to provide various life-support functions essential to the existence and continued survival of human civilization.

With an unprecedented human-induced great global die-off well under way, what are the chances the functional integrity of the ecosphere will survive the next doubling of material consumption that everyone expects before mid-century?

Here’s the thing: climate change is not the only shadow darkening humanity’s doorstep. While you wouldn’t know it from the mainstream media, biodiversity loss arguably poses an equivalent existential threat to civilized existence.

While we’re at it, let’s toss soil/landscape degradation, potential food or energy shortages and other resource limits into the mix.

And if you think we’ll probably be able to “handle” four out of five such environmental problems, it doesn’t matter.

The relevant version of Liebig’s Law states that any complex system dependent on several essential inputs can be taken down by that single factor in least supply (and we haven’t yet touched upon the additional risks posed by the geopolitical turmoil that would inevitably follow ecological destabilization).

There are many policy options, from simple full-cost pricing and consumption taxes; through population initiatives and comprehensive planning for a steady-state economy; to general education for voluntary (and beneficial) lifestyle changes, all of which would enhance global society’s prospects for long-term survival.

Unique human qualities, from high intelligence (e.g., reasoning from the evidence), through the capacity to plan ahead to moral consciousness, may well be equal to the task but lie dormant — there is little hint of political willingness to acknowledge the problem let alone elaborate genuine solutions (which the Paris climate accord is not).

Bottom line? The world seems in denial of looming disaster; the “C” word remains unvoiced. Governments everywhere dismissed the 1992 scientists’ Warning to Humanity that “...a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided” and will similarly ignore the scientists’ “second notice." (Published on Nov. 13, this warning states that most negative trends identified 25 years earlier “are getting far worse.”)

Despite cascading evidence and detailed analysis to the contrary, the world community trumpets “growth-is-us” as its contemporary holy grail.

Even the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are fixed on economic expansion as the only hammer for every problematic nail. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases reach to at an all-time high, marine dead-zones proliferate, tropical forests fall and extinctions accelerate.

Just what is going on here? The full explanation of this potentially fatal human enigma is no doubt complicated, but Herman Melville summed it up well enough in Moby Dick: “There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”

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Where have all the insects gone?

SUBHEAD: People, have a gut feeling. They remember how insects used to smash onto their windshields.

By Gretchen Vogel on 10 May 2017 for Science Magazine -
(http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone)


Image above: Fireflies, like these in a forest in the Netherlands, have disappeared from some areas in North America and Europe where they were once abundant. Photo by Paul Van Hoof. From original article.

Entomologists call it the windshield phenomenon. "If you talk to people, they have a gut feeling. They remember how insects used to smash on your windscreen," says Wolfgang Wägele, director of the Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity in Bonn, Germany. Today, drivers spend less time scraping and scrubbing.

"I'm a very data-driven person," says Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Oregon. "But it is a visceral reaction when you realize you don't see that mess anymore."

Some people argue that cars today are more aerodynamic and therefore less deadly to insects. But Black says his pride and joy as a teenager in Nebraska was his 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1—with some pretty sleek lines. "I used to have to wash my car all the time.

It was always covered with insects." Lately, Martin Sorg, an entomologist here, has seen the opposite: "I drive a Land Rover, with the aerodynamics of a refrigerator, and these days it stays clean."

Though observations about splattered bugs aren't scientific, few reliable data exist on the fate of important insect species. Scientists have tracked alarming declines in domesticated honey bees, monarch butterflies, and lightning bugs.

But few have paid attention to the moths, hover flies, beetles, and countless other insects that buzz and flitter through the warm months. "We have a pretty good track record of ignoring most noncharismatic species," which most insects are, says Joe Nocera, an ecologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada.


Image above: Hover flies, often mistaken for bees or wasps, are important pollinators. Their numbers have plummeted in nature reserves in Germany. Photo by Jef Meul. From original article.

Of the scant records that do exist, many come from amateur naturalists, whether butterfly collectors or bird watchers.

Now, a new set of long-term data is coming to light, this time from a dedicated group of mostly amateur entomologists who have tracked insect abundance at more than 100 nature reserves in western Europe since the 1980s.

Over that time the group, the Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%.

Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in 2014. The numbers were just as low.

Through more direct comparisons, the group—which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades—found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites.

Such losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost hopes that it's not representative—that it's some strange artifact."

No one knows how broadly representative the data are of trends elsewhere.

But the specificity of the observations offers a unique window into the state of some of the planet's less appreciated species. Germany's "Red List" of endangered insects doesn't look alarming at first glance, says Sorg, who curates the Krefeld society's extensive collection of insect specimens. Few species are listed as extinct because they are still found in one or two sites.

But that obscures the fact that many have disappeared from large areas where they were once common. Across Germany, only three bumble bee species have vanished, but the Krefeld region has lost more than half the two dozen bumble bee species that society members documented early in the 20th century.

Members of the Krefeld society have been observing, recording, and collecting insects from the region—and around the world—since 1905. Some of the roughly 50 members—including teachers, telecommunication technicians, and a book publisher—have become world experts on their favorite insects.

Siegfried Cymorek, for instance, who was active in the society from the 1950s through the 1980s, never completed high school. He was drafted into the army as a teenager, and after the war he worked in the wood-protection division at a local chemical plant.

But because of his extensive knowledge of wood-boring beetles, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1979. Over the years, members have written more than 2000 publications on insect taxonomy, ecology, and behavior.

The society's headquarters is a former school in the center of Krefeld, an industrial town on the banks of the Rhine that was once famous for producing silk. Disused classrooms store more than a million insect specimens individually pinned and named in display cases.

Most were collected nearby, but some come from more exotic locales.

Among them are those from the collection of a local priest, an active member in the 1940s and 1950s, who persuaded colleagues at mission stations around the world to send him specimens. (The society's collection and archive are under historical preservation protection.)

Tens of millions more insects float in carefully labeled bottles of alcohol—the yield from the society's monitoring projects in nature reserves around the region.

The reserves, set aside for their local ecological value, are not pristine wilderness but "seminatural" habitats, such as former hay meadows, full of wildflowers, birds, small mammals—and insects. Some even include parts of agricultural fields, which farmers are free to farm with conventional methods.

Heinz Schwan, a retired chemist and longtime society member who has weighed thousands of trap samples, says the society began collecting long-term records of insect abundance partly by chance.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, local authorities asked the group for help evaluating how different strategies for managing the reserves affected insect populations and diversity.

The members monitored each site only once every few years, but they set up identical insect traps in the same place each time to ensure clean comparisons.

Because commercially available traps vary in ways that affect the catch, the group makes their own. Named for the Swedish entomologist René Malaise, who developed the basic design in the 1930s, each trap resembles a floating tent.

Black mesh fabric forms the base, topped by a tent of white fabric and, at the summit, a collection container—a plastic jar with an opening into another jar of alcohol. Insects trapped in the fabric fly up to the jar, where the vapors gradually inebriate them and they fall into the alcohol.

The traps collect mainly species that fly a meter or so above the ground. For people who worry that the traps themselves might deplete insect populations, Sorg notes that each trap catches just a few grams per day—equivalent to the daily diet of a shrew.

Sorg says society members saved all the samples because even in the 1980s they recognized that each represented a snapshot of potentially intriguing insect populations. "We found it fascinating—despite the fact that in 1982 the term ‘biodiversity' barely existed," he says. Many samples have not yet been sorted and cataloged—a painstaking labor of love done with tweezers and a microscope. Nor have the group's full findings been published.

But some of the data are emerging piecemeal in talks by society members and at a hearing at the German Bundestag, the national parliament, and they are unsettling.

Beyond the striking drop in overall insect biomass, the data point to losses in overlooked groups for which almost no one has kept records. In the Krefeld data, hover flies—important pollinators often mistaken for bees—show a particularly steep decline.

In 1989, the group's traps in one reserve collected 17,291 hover flies from 143 species. In 2014, at the same locations, they found only 2737 individuals from 104 species.

Since their initial findings in 2013, the group has installed more traps each year. Working with researchers at several universities, society members are looking for correlations with weather, changes in vegetation, and other factors. No simple cause has yet emerged.

Even in reserves where plant diversity and abundance have improved, Sorg says, "the insect numbers still plunged."

Changes in land use surrounding the reserves are probably playing a role. "We've lost huge amounts of habitat, which has certainly contributed to all these declines," Goulson says. "If we turn all the seminatural habitats to wheat and cornfields, then there will be virtually no life in those fields."

As fields expand and hedgerows disappear, the isolated islands of habitat left can support fewer species. Increased fertilizer on remaining grazing lands favors grasses over the diverse wildflowers that many insects prefer. And when development replaces countryside, streets and buildings generate light pollution that leads nocturnal insects astray and interrupts their mating.

Neonicotinoid pesticides, already implicated in the widespread crash of bee populations, are another prime suspect. Introduced in the 1980s, they are now the world's most popular insecticides, initially viewed as relatively benign because they are often applied directly to seeds rather than sprayed.

But because they are water soluble, they don't stay put in the fields where they are used. Goulson and his colleagues reported in 2015 that nectar and pollen from wildflowers next to treated fields can have higher concentrations of neonicotinoids than the crop plants.

Although initial safety studies showed that allowable levels of the compounds didn't kill honey bees directly, they do affect the insects' abilities to navigate and communicate, according to later research. Researchers found similar effects in wild solitary bees and bumble bees.

Less is known about how those chemicals affect other insects, but new studies of parasitoid wasps suggest those effects could be significant. Those solitary wasps play multiple roles in ecosystems—as pollinators, predators of other insects, and prey for larger animals.

A team from the University of Regensburg in Germany reported in Scientific Reports in February that exposing the wasp Nasonia vitripennis to just 1 nanogram of one common neonicotinoid cut mating rates by more than half and decreased females' ability to find hosts.

"It's as if the [exposed] insect is dead" from a population point of view because it can't produce offspring, says Lars Krogmann, an entomologist at the Stuttgart Natural History Museum in Germany.

No one can prove that the pesticides are to blame for the decline, however. "There is no data on insecticide levels, especially in nature reserves," Sorg says.

The group has tried to find out what kinds of pesticides are used in fields near the reserves, but that has proved difficult, he says. "We simply don't know what the drivers are" in the Krefeld data, Goulson says. "It's not an experiment. It's an observation of this massive decline. The data themselves are strong.

Understanding it and knowing what to do about it is difficult."

The factors causing trouble for the hover flies, moths, and bumble bees in Germany are probably at work elsewhere, if clean windshields are any indication. Since 1968, scientists at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research center in Harpenden, U.K., have operated a system of suction traps—12-meter-long suction tubes pointing skyward. 

 

Set up in fields to monitor agricultural pests, the traps capture all manner of insects that happen to fly over them; they are "effectively upside-down Hoovers running 24/7, continually sampling the air for migrating insects," says James Bell, who heads the Rothamsted Insect Survey.

Between 1970 and 2002, the biomass caught in the traps in southern England did not decline significantly. Catches in southern Scotland, however, declined by more than two-thirds during the same period. 

 

Bell notes that overall numbers in Scotland were much higher at the start of the study. "It might be that much of the [insect] abundance in southern England had already been lost" by 1970, he says, after the dramatic postwar changes in agriculture and land use.

The stable catches in southern England are in part due to constant levels of pests such as aphids, which can thrive when their insect predators are removed. Such species can take advantage of a variety of environments, move large distances, and reproduce multiple times per year. 

 

Some can even benefit from pesticides because they reproduce quickly enough to develop resistance, whereas their predators decline. "So lots of insects will do great, but the insects that we love may not," Black says.

Other, more visible creatures may be feeling the effects of the insect losses. Across North America and Europe, species of birds that eat flying insects, such as larks, swallows, and swifts, are in steep decline. Habitat loss certainly plays a role, Nocera says, "but the obvious factor that ties them all together is their diet."

Some intriguing, although indirect, clues come from a rare ecological treasure: decades' worth of stratified bird droppings. Nocera and his colleagues have been probing disused chimneys across Canada in which chimney swifts have built their nests for generations. 

 

From the droppings, he and his colleagues can reconstruct the diets of the birds, which eat almost exclusively insects caught on the wing.

The layers revealed a striking change in the birds' diets in the 1940s, around the time DDT was introduced. The proportion of beetle remains dropped off, suggesting the birds were eating smaller insects—and getting fewer calories per catch. 

 

The proportion of beetle parts increased slightly again after DDT was banned in the 1970s but never reached its earlier levels. The lack of direct data on insect populations is frustrating, Nocera says. "It's all correlative. We know that insect populations could have changed to create the population decline we have now. But we don't have the data, and we never will, because we can't go back in time."

Sorg and Wägele agree. "We deeply regret that we did not set up more traps 20 or 30 years ago," Sorg says. He and other Krefeld society members are now working with Wägele's group to develop what they wish they had had earlier: a system of automated monitoring stations they hope will combine audio recordings, camera traps, pollen and spore filters, and automated insect traps into a "biodiversity weather station". 

 

Instead of tedious manual analysis, they hope to use automated sequencing and genetic barcoding to analyze the insect samples. Such data could help pinpoint what is causing the decline—and where efforts to reverse it might work best.

Paying attention to what E. O. Wilson calls "the little things that run the world" is worthwhile, Sorg says. "We won't exterminate all insects. That's nonsense. Vertebrates would die out first. But we can cause massive damage to biodiversity—damage that harms us."

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Permaculture in Hawaii

SUBHEAD: Permaculture works to keep the birds, insects, soil and surrounding nature content and ourselves fed.

By Juan Wilson on 26 April 2017 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2017/04/permaculture-in-hawaii.html)


Image above: We at IslandBreath have attempted to do permaculture. Photo from our backyard efforts at creating a "food forest" that we have named "Akea Aina".  In this image are cacao, starfruit, avocado, papaya, cassava, coconut, breadfruit, banana, and mango. Photo by Juan Wilson.

Akea Aina consists of about 1.5 acres of land - a third of it is our property, a third rented from the Robinson family and another third is on Hawaiian public land.

The photo above show haole koa ("false" koa) trees in foreground. They are early adopters in yards on Hanapepe Valley but few people have let haole koa grow so large as they are usually considered weed trees.

Haole koa are hard and heavy wood good for fires and they are good nitrogen fixers. They provide light shade that sun-delicate plants can grow under. Beneath them are a row of cacao trees with fruit.

To the left and right of this photo are breadfruit trees and cassava. Beyond what you can see are beehives.

In the background, from the left is a starfruit tree, coconut, mango, papaya, avocado and more. That's only a small sample of what can be grown on a small farm.

Below is a brief video survey of permaculture efforts in Hawaii on various islands. By "permaculture" we mean intentional living arrangements on land that produces food and fertile land as a foundation of healthy local flora and fauna. This way of life means living "in nature".

That implies sustainable self sufficiency in food, soil, water and energy.      

Mokupuni o Hawaii
Introduction to the permaculture training programs offered at the  La'akea community on the Big Island, with teacher Tracy Matfin. Get a look at La'akea uses permaculture principles.


Video above: Permaculture Education Programs - La'akea, Hawaii in 2011. From (https://youtu.be/-XgpTaAfb7Q).

Mokupuni o Maui
Fruition Permaculture Design as he gives us a tour of Laulima Farm in lush Kipahulu, Maui, Hawaii. Jesse Krebs discusses the key permaculture design features of this beautiful tropical farm.


Video above: Fruit-based Veganic Permaculture on Maui in 2013. From (https://youtu.be/zG2JuTvq5e8).

Mokupuni o Molokai
SustAINAble Molokai and Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Research Institute of America and of PRI Australia. We now have strategies to heal the land by slowing the course of water.


Video above: Heal the land, Harvest water, Grow food security on Molokai in 2013. From (https://youtu.be/P2Lp8YmJaag).

Mokupuni o Oahu
Growing your own food and being self sufficient is one of the best ways to give power back to the people and live in harmony with nature.


Video above: Permaculture with Paul Izak in Hawaii on Oahu in 2012. From (https://youtu.be/_WHG3NJEq90).

Mokupuni o Kauai
Paul Massey, the Director Regeneration Botanical Gardens gives a concise definition of what Kauai Food Forest is all about.


Video above: Permaculture in Kauai Part 2 in 2013. From (https://youtu.be/5pJrw9QuCB0).

There is no doubt in our minds that these methods of "farming" are the way to go here in Hawaii. It works to keep the birds, insects, soil and surrounding nature content and ourselves fed.

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Monsanto's Bizzaro World

SUBHEAD: How the most evil corporation in the world gets it completely backwards when it come to the truth.

By Juan Wilson on 13 August 2016 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2016/08/monsantos-bizzaro-world.html)


Image above: Monsanto's genetic hellstorm on food security and self reliance. From (http://www.activistpost.com/2015/05/shocker-court-document-asserts-hawaii.html).

About a week ago I was scrolling through an article at www.ZeroHedge.com for news few others are reporting. I was doing this through my iPod6 at 3:30am. That's when I usually gathering possible stories from various sites that are getting out at the start of business on the US East Coast.

ZeroHedge is a commercial site with plenty of ads inserted into each article. Often ads are targeted to you based on Google searches you might have done or purchases completed recently. But the ads in the article I was reading were from one company I have had no dealings with... MONSANTO... specifically from MonsantoHawaii.com.

The gist of the contents of the ads were public relations pitches for how many wonderful jobs Monsanto was bringing to Hawaii. How Monsanto was restoring the health of the agricultural industry in Hawaii.

These ads all included the images like one of a tall, young, healthy Hawaiian man standing among  green rows of crops as if it were a small healthy cornfield in Indiana. The pitch was mind boggling effort to show how Monsanto was either making a safe environment for bees; or encouraging biodiversity of the environment, or saving habitat for monarch butterflies.

Welcome to Monsanto's Bizzaro World where lies are the truth and the truth is a lie. The real truth is that Monsanto has had a deep public relations problem that goes back decades to the 1960's with the disaster with Agent Orange. These new internet ads are an attempt to whitewash the corporation's image once again, like it back in 2014 when the Saint Louis Dispatch reported:

It’s part of an effort at Monsanto to improve the St. Louis-based company’s image. Earlier this year the Harris Poll on corporate reputations ranked Monsanto third worst in the country, just behind BP.

One of the ads Monsanto produced was this television spot titled "Dinner's Ready: Let's Talk About Sustainable Food". Don Draper of Mad Men could not have done it better.

"It's time for a bigger discussion about sustainable food. Because growing enough for a growing world, and doing it in a sustainable way, requires a wide range of ideas and solutions. Pull up a chair. Be part of the conversation at Discover.Monsanto.com."


Video above: Monsanto's Dinner's Ready ad released November 5th 2014. From (https://youtu.be/c6hY5-zcC9g).

Here are some examples of pure bullshit from the MonsantoHawaii website:

THE  LIE

Monarch Butterflies Flourish at Monsanto Hawaii Farms
 (http://www.monsantohawaii.com/nggallery/thumbnails?p=2824)


Image above: Stock photo of monarch butterfly from page of www.MonsantoHawaii.com.

Monsanto Hawaii farms have become havens for the monarch butterfly. Through Monsanto’s monarch butterfly program, nearly 100 thriving crown flower plants have been added to the Kunia and Molokai farms in an effort to increase the butterfly’s milkweed habitat and protect biodiversity.

THE TRUTH

Monsanto blamed for disappearance of monarch butterflies
(http://esearchspot.com/WP/monsanto-blamed-for-disappearance-of-monarch-butterflies/)

 As scientists continue to track the shrinking population of the North American monarch butterfly, one researcher thinks she has found a big reason it’s in danger: Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

On Wednesday, the World Wildlife Fund announced that last year’s migration – from Canada and the United States down to Mexico – was the lowest it’s been since scientists began tracking it in 1993. In November, the butterflies could be found on a mere 1.6 acres of forest near Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a decline of more than 43 percent over the previous year.

Back in 1996, the insects could be found covering a span of 45 acres. Part of the decline can be attributed to illegal logging in Mexico that has decimated the butterfly’s natural habitat, as well as rising temperatures, which threaten to dry out monarch eggs and prevent them from hatching.

Now, though, biologist Karen Oberhauser of the University of Minnesota has also pinpointed the increased use of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicides in the United States and Canada as a culprit.

According to Oberhauser, the use of Roundup has destroyed the monarch butterfly’s primary food source, a weed called milkweed that used to be commonly found across North America.

As the agriculture industry boomed and farmers effectively eliminated the weed from the land in order to maximize crop growth, she was able to catalog a parallel decline in the butterfly’s population.

Speaking with Slate, Oberhauser said that when the milkweed population across the Midwest shrank by 80 percent, the monarch butterfly population decreased by the same amount. With some states such as Iowa losing more than 98 percent of their milkweed population – the weed doesn’t even grow on the edges of farmland anymore – the disappearance of the plant poses a huge risk to the insect’s survival.

“We have this smoking gun,” she told Slate. “This is the only thing that we’ve actually been able to correlate with decreasing monarch numbers.”

For its part, Monsanto noted that herbicides aren’t the only reason the monarch is dying. The company cited studies that showed the butterfly’s population in Michigan and New Jersey were not shrinking, though scientists have dismissed those studies since they focused on areas where milkweed was still prevalent.

Monsanto has come under fire before for the effects of its agriculture-oriented chemicals. As RT reported last year, studies linked Roundup’s main ingredient to diseases such as cancer, autism and Alzheimer’s. In spite of these findings, the Environmental Protection Agency ruled to raise the permissible level of the ingredient that can be found on crops.

Meanwhile, another report in October found a clear link between the pesticides sold by Monsanto in Argentina and a range of maladies, including higher risk of cancer and thyroid problems, as well as birth defects.

As for the plight of the monarch butterfly, the insect is still thriving in Hawaii and countries like Australia and New Zealand. In North America, Oberhauser believes the great migration can still rebound due to the monarch’s high fertility rates (a single female can lay up to 1,000 eggs throughout her life). For that to happen, however, scientists believe the US, Canada and Mexico will have to work together and draft a strategy that will help the insect safely make its way through the three countries.

“I think it’s past time for Canada and the United States to enact measures to protect the breeding range of the monarchs,” monarch expert Phil Schappert of Nova Scotia told the Washington Post, “or I fear the spiral of decline will continue.”

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THE  LIE

Monsanto Hawaii Provides a Prosperous Habitat for Bees
 (http://www.monsantohawaii.com/nggallery/thumbnails?p=2824)


Image above: Stock photo of honeybee from page of www.MonsantoHawaii.com.

Honey bees may be small, but they have a big job. Available year-round, honey bees are responsible for pollinating the widest range of crops than any other pollinator species. In fact, the honey bee is responsible for pollinating one-third of the world’s crops, including the fruits, vegetables and nuts we enjoy every day. The impact that this tiny creature has on farming and our food system is invaluable.

Monsanto Hawaii is committed to protecting the health of honey bees by taking into consideration the behavior and habitats of bee populations in our daily operations.


THE TRUTH

Monsanto RoundUp blamed for harming honey bees
(http://www.examiner.com/article/new-study-shows-honeybees-harmed-by-herbicide-used-on-gmo-crops)



Image above: Dead honey bee. (https://twitter.com/gmwatch/status/629261451052630016)

One of every three bites of food we eat is from a crop pollinated by honeybees.

Yet, over the past decade bee populations have been on a rapid decline. The National Agriculture Statistics Service has reported a drop in numbers from more than 5 million to less than 2.5 million honeybees. Scientists have dubbed the phenomenon Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, and have been searching frantically for a cause.

A new study shows that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, can disrupt learning behaviors in honeybees and severely impair long-term colony performance.

Glyphosate is commonly used in conjunction with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, which have been engineered in a lab to survive massive applications of the herbicide. The most common herbicide-tolerant GMOs grown in the United States include corn, soy, and alfalfa. GMOs were first allowed into the food chain in the late 1990s.

With the ability to blanket their fields in glyphosate, many US farmers have abandoned hand-weeding and controlled applications of the herbicide altogether. This has lead to a 527 million pound increase in the use of the chemical over the past decade.

Glyphosate's toxicity is compounded by its persistence in the environment. Many studies show that glyphosate remains, chemically unchanged in the environment, for periods of up to a year.

Recent research suggests that even when glyphosate binds to soil particles, it will cyclically "desorb" or lose its attraction to soil and become active again. A study by the US Geological Survey found glyphosate in nearly 70% of rivers and streams they tested in the Midwest.

The scientists who conducted the new study used field-realistic levels of glyphosate, similar to what honeybees may encounter on a farm growing GMOs. They found that learning behavior and short-term memory retention decreased significantly compared with the control groups.

And since bees don't die immediately when exposed to glyphosate, they bring the chemical back to the hive, where larvae come into contact with it.

This means new bees will likely have lower overall foraging rates, which could have long-term negative consequences on colony performance. In fact, it could lead to the disappearance of the colony altogether.

Although the creation of GMOs was initially hailed as a way to increase crop production and feed a hungry world, the loss of pollinators like the honeybee will have disastrous effects on the global food supply.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, of the 100 crops that provide 90% of the world's food supply, 71 are pollinated by bees. In the United States alone, the value of crops pollinated by honeybees is estimated to be worth more than $20 billion annually.

Commercial beekeepers across the country are suffering astronomical hive losses, severely crippling their ability to meet pollination needs for a variety of crops. In fact, beekeepers have reported average annual losses of 40-50%, with some as high as 100%.

Even as honeybee colonies collapse, the US Environmental Protection Agency is set to approve the use of a new combination of glyphosate with an even more powerful agrichemical known as 2,4-D. But instead of helping farmers meet increasing demand, expanded use of the chemical could backfire.

Without pollinators, the entire backbone of the US agricultural system would collapse, leaving grocery store shelves empty and residents without access to affordable, healthy food.

In many ways, the plight of the honeybee is a warning sign of the aftermath of chemically-intensive modern agriculture.

Beekeeper Zac Browning, whose commercial operation spans three states, laments that "we're just about tapped out."

"Without some real action we'll see this industry dwindle away."

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THE  LIE

Monsanto Hawaii's Commitment to Promoting Biodiversity
 (http://www.monsantohawaii.com/monsanto-hawaiis-commitment-to-promoting-biodiversity/)


Image above: Incoherent photo of chemical drip system on page of www.MonsantoHawaii.com.

Promoting diversity among plant and animal species is one of Monsanto Hawaii’s fundamental goals. Short for biological diversity, biodiversity is the scientific term used to describe the variety of life on earth and the way that species interact with each other and their environment. Biodiversity ensures the viability of ecosystems, which satisfies life’s basic needs like food, water, fuel and shelter.

“Biodiversity is critical to the health and stability of our ecosystems,” said Dan Clegg, business and operations lead at Monsanto Hawaii. “As farmers, we are committed to collaborating with conservation entities and implementing programs that help our crops thrive by encouraging a diverse ecosystem of flora and fauna on our farms.”

A healthy ecosystem provides an environment that supports activities such as pollination, seed dispersal, climate regulation, water purification, nutrient cycling and management of pests. 

---

THE TRUTH

More Monsanto Herbicide = Less Biodiversity 
(http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/increasing-herbicide-use.html#.V6-6oo4nqe8)


(http://stephennowers.photoshelter.com/image/I0000SeDdqKob2t0)


Monsanto’s proposed solution is to develop and seek regulatory approval for new engineered herbicide-tolerant crops to augment Roundup Ready crops. Predominant among these new engineered crops are those with resistance to two of the oldest herbicides, 2,4-D and dicamba.

These herbicides may be more harmful in some respects than glyphosate. Both become volatile after application, which means they can spread to nearby wild vegetation—important for biodiversity and natural pest control—and to other susceptible crops.

There is also evidence that 2,4-D may increase the risk of some types of cancer.

More Herbicide = Less Biodiversity = More Insecticide

Because of the volatilization problem, increased use of the old herbicides may also harm neighboring crops that are not resistant to them—including locally grown fruits and vegetables.

A recent article estimates that risk to plants surrounding sprayed fields is from 75 to 400 times greater for the older herbicides than for glyphosate.  The industry is working on formulations of these herbicides that may be less volatile, but that is unlikely to eliminate the problem—especially because the use of these herbicides is projected to increase tenfold.

Damage to plant biodiversity near crop fields may also reduce the abundance and diversity of beneficial organisms that thrive in those habitats (but not in monoculture crop fields). Recent research has shown that when agricultural landscapes are simplified by the reduction of plant and beneficial organism diversity, much more chemical insecticide is needed to control pest insects.

So if the volatilization problems are not eliminated, this “solution” to glyphosate resistant weeds may make matters worse, and may also lead to increased insecticide use—and possibly greater risk to people, especially farmers and farm workers.


.

Leaf Cutters

SUBHEAD: The problem is the solution. Damaged soils is a problem. Natures solution is to send leaf cutter ants.

By Christopher Nesbitt on 22 February 2015 for the Great Transition -
(http://peaksurfer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/leaf-cutters.html)


Image above: Leaf cutter ants marching to nest carrying sections of leaves. From (http://www.optibacprobiotics.co.uk/blog/2013/09/leaf-cutter-ants-carry-friendly-bacteria).

We are up river in Belize at the Maya Mountain Research Farm these next two weeks, teaching our tenth annual Permaculture Design Course here. This year we have 16 local Mayan farmers, healers, businessmen and women, trainers in development work, and students from the US, UK, Russia and Greece. Our own essay this week, about a different topic, is being guest-published at Club Orlov on Monday, so we thought we would publish here a short piece by our host, Christopher Nesbitt.

This is a small nest of a leaf cutter ant queen, establishing a colony. We tend to see them in tired land, rebuilding soils, assaulting the biological obscenity of monoculture, especially citrus, and aerating soils, hauling carbon down to the subsoil, allowing oxygen and water to infiltrate soils.

They will do some damage to native species, like cacao, but mostly concentrate on introduced species. Chemicals are not a constant necessity. I have been farming in a tropical setting since 1988, and I have NEVER used any biocides.

I am farming about 15 acres of a 70 acre piece of land. Most of the land I am working right now is old cattle pasture or abandoned citrus. You would not be able to tell looking at it. I live in a pretty lush forest of trees, with hundreds of species. Most of what I am doing is creating a stacked polyculture with a large diversity of species, ranging from banana, papaya and pineapple, to timber, to fuel wood, to tree legumes, to food, to medicinals and market crops that fit into the matrix of the farm, things like cacao, coffee and vanilla.

We do have some gardens, and we are expanding on the periphery of the land to create coconut dominated polycultures and feed banks for pigs, but the majority of the farm resembles the primary rainforest in structure, with less diversity, and with all the species being selected by us. We get both termites and leaf cutter ants. While they can both be a nuisance, if we step back a bit, we can see some of the services and products they provide.

Think of the presence of leaf cutter ants as being an indicator of an ecosystem out of balance, of being a cure for damaged soils. The lack of leaf cutter ants may mean a healthy ecosystem, or massive use of chemicals, including aldrin. I think of leaf cutter ants as being nature's way of rehabilitating damaged soils.

You really only see leaf cutters in the wake of a biological catastrophe, hurricanes, fire damaged land, or places like played-out milpa, after the window of 3-6 years of annuals productivity has dwindled out, and the return on energy invested is not worth the effort, and the land in question is being fallowed, or in the wake of the life of a citrus grove, abandoned banana plantations or damaged cattle pasture.

Most biological "catastrophes" are man made, with monocultures being the biggest biological catastrophe, sustained through work and inputs. These systems are only sustainable in simplistic economic models of capital invested in input and labor versus kilograms per hectar x dollar per kilogram.

Often, in terms of calorie based accounting, they are net losses of energy. Without cheap petroleum to subsidize their profitless existence, they would not exist.

I have lots of leaf cutter ants here in Belize, and while they can be a nuisance, they seldom damage a tree beyond the capacity of recovery. The biggest problem is that, if one is looking to produce marketable quantities of a single species, you have painted a sign on your ass that tells nature "bite me." Nature obliges.

While working industriously to undo the biological abomination of a monoculture the ants are the rescue squad, aerating the soil, allowing water to percolate in, and hauling carbon, all things that help damaged soil to recover.

Monocultures lead to leaf cutter ants. Leaf cutters have adapted to citrus in particular, with a preference for Washington navels and Valencia oranges. They are less excited by grapefruit or limes. What we call Jamaica lime here in Belize is practically immune to leaf cutter ants (and tolerates poor soil).

One way to avoid leaf cutters is to have a diversified farm in the first place, but any young polyculture in the lowland humid tropics is going to be prone to leaf cutter ants. When the land is more mature, it will be less susceptible, but not immune.

We see a lot of leaf cutter nests. I periodically dig up the mounds, looking for their fungus gardens, the subterranean chambers where they use the leaves for a substrate for their fermentations. When the young flightless queens are in the embryonic stage, they are like milk shakes for chickens. Even whacking on the surface of the nest will excite the colony.

Ants, being social insects, react to any perceived threat to the queen by swarming. Any disturbance on ground level will result in massive retaliation by the soldier ants, which are like micro pit bulls.

My chickens have visually imprinted on soldier ants and queen ants as being food. Soldier ants come out, looking to attack the source of the disturbance, and chickens happily eat them, racing about to snatch them up, converting a problem into eggs, meat and manure. I invest a bit of energy in harassing the colony, and the result is a smorgasborg of insect protein for my chickens. I have eliminated a few nests with this technique.

You can also make barriers of lemon grass, or vetiver, which leaf cutter ants do not like, lay cannavalia ensoformis leafs in their trails, which has antifungal properties and eventually, accidentally, will be taken into their nest, working better than a Stuxnet virus. If I put the soil from one nest across the trail of another nest they will not cross the trail (for a while). All of these are more about management than destruction.

The important thing is to see the inherent limitations of sustainably managing your farm. Certain crops are leaf cutter ants' favorite foods. If you want to grow citrus, you need to walk your land regularly, looking for new nests. How much land can a farmer adequately monitor? When you find a new nest, you must dig it up and find the queen, and kill her. I find a certain spiteful glee of throwing the helpless queen out into a flock of chickens, and watching them fight over her.

If the colony is young enough that it has no capacity to requeen itself, you have killed the colony. If not, you will need to dig it several times to kill the colony. Sometimes, its just going to be there. In Costa Rica and Panama, I hear they use pig manure to discourage the leaf cutter ants, pouring in a foul slurry into their home.

The key is to have a diversified system whereby you can use that energy in a useful way. Without poultry, we would have little use for either leaf cutter ants or for termites. With them, they both become assets.

Industrial mentality: the solution is the problem. Have leaf cutter ants. Apply biocide. Poison soil, water, self. Support nasty earth destroying chemical company.

Permaculture mentality: The problem is the solution. Damaged soils is a problem. Natures solution is to send leaf cutter ants. Leaf cutter ants are a problem. My solution is to use them to solve another problem, what to feed our chickens. 

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'Silent Spring' Turns 50

SUBHEAD: In 1962 Rachel Carson warned of the 'Pesticide Treadmill' powered By Big Ag.

By Lynne Peeples on 27 September 2012 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/27/silent-spring-50-pesticide-big-ag_n_1920181.html)


Image above: Detail from portrait of Rachel Carson by Minnette D. Bickel, 1987. From (http://www.chatham.edu/host/library/carson/collection/full_view/pcw15.html).

Fifty years ago Rachel Carson wrote,

  "Chemical control is self-perpetuating, needing frequent and costly repetition."

"This is not what Rachel Carson would have wanted for her 50th anniversary present." Mardi Mellon, senior scientist with the non-profit Union of Concerned Sciences, referred to the pending rollout of crops engineered to be resistant to "one, two, three, perhaps more herbicides."

The resultant "dousing" of crops with larger quantities of a multiple poisons, Mellon said, is not exactly the future Carson sought with the publication of her landmark book, "Silent Spring," on Sepember 27, 1962.

Thursday's anniversary comes as debate over the healthiness of conventional, genetically-modified foods has arguably reached record decibels -- thanks in part to the publication this month of two controversial studies. One concluded that organics offered no better nutritional value  than conventional foods (IB Editior note: without taking into account the effects of pesticides nor genetic engineering); another suggested that genetically modified corn increased cancer in lab rats.

Lost in this debate, some experts said, is a more fundamental issue facing the food system and public health: a vicious cycle of chemical-dependency that we can't seem to break, even 50 years after Carson warned of the dangers of an arms race against nature we are destined to lose.

The marine biologist may have been among the first scientists to refer to the "pesticide treadmill," as well as to suggest that the chemical industry keeps it running by "pouring money into universities to support research on insecticides."

Many scientists repeat those insights today.

"Herbicide resistance is not new. We've been dealing with it for about 50 years," said Mike Owen, a weed expert at Iowa State University. "But every time we've ended up with resistance in particular weeds, industry would bring forward a new solution -- so it again became a non-problem."
.

Roach & Gecko Stealthiness

SOURCE: Steve Peters (petersgroup@mac.com) SUBHEAD: Roaches, geckos and now robots can flip under a ledge and disappear in the blink of an eye. By Robert Sanders on 6 June 2012 for UC Berkeley News - (http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/06/06/stealth-behavior-allows-cockroaches-to-seemingly-vanish/) Image above: Roach after making flip over edge of ramp in a fraction of a second. From original article.

New cockroach behavior discovered by University of California, Berkeley, biologists secures the insect’s reputation as one of nature’s top escape artists, able to skitter away and disappear from sight before any human can swat it.

In addition to its lightning speed, quick maneuvers and ability to squeeze through the tiniest cracks, the cockroach also can flip under a ledge and disappear in the blink of an eye, the researchers found. It does this by grabbing the edge with grappling hook-like claws on its back legs and swinging like a pendulum 180 degrees to land firmly underneath, upside down.

Always eager to mimic animal behaviors in robots, the researchers teamed up with UC Berkeley robotics experts to recreate the behavior in a six-legged robot by adding Velcro strips.

The UC Berkeley team published the results of the study on Wednesday, June 6, in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE.

Graduate student Jean-Michel Mongeau of UC Berkeley’s biophysics group said he and his colleagues first noticed the roaches’ newly-identified behavior while studying how they use their antennae to sense and cross gaps.

“As we made the gap wider, they would end up on the underside of the ramp,” Mongeau said. “To the naked eye, it wasn’t clear what was happening, but when we filmed them with a high-speed camera and slowed it down, we were amazed to see that it was the cockroach’s hind legs grabbing the surface that allowed it to swing around under the ledge.”

“Cockroaches continue to surprise us,” said Robert Full, a professor of integrative biology who 15 years ago discovered that when cockroaches run rapidly, they rear up on their two hind legs like bipedal humans. “They have fast relay systems that allow them to dart away quickly in response to light or motion at speeds up to 50 body lengths per second, which is equivalent to a couple hundred miles per hour, if you scale up to the size of humans. This makes them incredibly good at escaping predators.”

Surprisingly, the researchers discovered a similar behavior in lizards, animals that have hook-like toenails, and also documented geckos using this escape technique in the jungle at the Wildlife Reserves near Singapore.

“This behavior is probably pretty widespread, because it is an effective way to quickly move out of sight for small animals,” Full said.

Full’s group then teamed up with the robotics group led by Ron Fearing, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer science. In Fearing’ s lab, graduate student researchers Paul Birkmeyer and Aaron Hoover attached Velcro to the rear legs of a small, cockroach-inspired, six-legged robot called DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod). It was able to reproduce the same behavior as seen in roaches and geckos.

“This work is a great example of the amazing maneuverability of animals, and how understanding the physical principles used by nature can inspire design of agile robots,” Fearing said.

Mongeau and Brian McRae, an undergraduate bioengineering major, analyzed the mechanics of the ninja-like maneuver and discovered that the cockroach, an American cockroach (Periplaneta americana), wasn’t merely falling over the ledge. It actually ran at full speed toward the ledge, dove off, then grabbed the edge with its claws – sometimes using only one leg – and swung like a pendulum under the ledge, retaining 75 percent of its running energy.

This pendulum swing subjects the animal to 3-5 times the force of gravity (3-5 gs), similar to what humans feel at the bottom of a bungee jump, Mongeau said.

Full looked at trapeze artists as well as other animals to find a comparable behavior, and found only one well-studied similarity: the tree-swinging behavior of gibbons.

These studies of cockroach and lizard behavior are a hallmark of Full’s biomechanics teaching laboratory, where undergraduate and graduate students put animals through their paces to determine how they walk, run, leap and maneuver. Recently, Full and his students discovered that geckos use their tails to remain upright in midair, stabilize their body during leaping and even steer during gliding. Now, they are focusing on other body parts – abdomens and appendages such as antennae and legs.

“All this must be put together into a complete package to understand what goes into these animals’ extraordinary maneuverability,” Full said.

Aside from helping scientists understand animal locomotion, these findings will go into making better robots.

“Today, some robots are good at running, some at climbing, but very few are good at both or transitioning from one behavior to the other,” he said. “That’s really the challenge now in robotics, to produce robots that can transition on complex surfaces and get into dangerous areas that first responders can’t get into.”

In addition to Full, Mongeau, McRae, Birkmeyer, Hoover and Fearing, the UC Berkeley coauthors include graduate student Ardian Jusufi from the Department of Integrative Biology. Hoover is now a professor at Olin College.

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, including the NSF’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, a Swiss NSF Grant for Prospective Researchers, and the Micro Autonomous Systems Technologies (MAST) consortium, a large group of researchers funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory that is focused on creating autonomous sensing robots.

Video above: Film of roach, gecko and robot stealth maneuver. From Berkeley study. See (http://youtu.be/EP-v1z2prg8). .