While I relish reading about Science, I’ve no doubt that it’s more fun to be interested in Science than to be a scientist. For all the reasons you’d suspect; it’s much easier and more fun to jump to conclusions than prove them, and you can defend your erroneous assumptions by claiming the other fellow is stupid, something the scientific process will not countenance.

Much of my interest is in aquatic insects and invasive species, and as a reader of other’s work, I’ll suggest there are many really clever assumptions that aren’t as well known and we rarely have an opportunity to hear.

Foremost is the debate over whether invasive species are bad. Which seems like a no brainer on the surface, but in many cases the species being replaced isn’t native, there’s debate on how long it has to be here to be “native,” and if you believe Man crossed the Ice Bridge from Kamchatka, then we’re an invasive species too …

A great deal of heated debate considers the larger issue simply “survival of the fittest”, Darwinism, and with each great leap forward in travel, we’ll incur another invasion of foreigners.

On rare occasion I find much humor in the midst of all this seriousness, most of which is accidental, but points out something instantly understandable to us lay-scientists, like …

Sex-deprived fruit flies drink more alcohol

Not knowing how much time, effort, and tax dollars went into the above, us faux-scientists would have agreed, then pointed at the unsteady fellow at the far end of the bar as proof positive.

Our American Signal Crayfish is likely to extinct the UK’s White Clawed Crayfish, and is source of much invasive angst among British anglers and scientists …

I keep flashing back to the World War II mantra levied against our American GI’s, how they were “Oversexed, Overpaid, and Over here” – and wonder what’s really changed …

The American signal crayfish ate up to 83 per cent more food per day than did their native cousins. The research also showed that white-clawed crayfish are much more choosy about what they eat, preferring particular types of prey, while the signals eat equal amounts of all prey.

– via PhysOrg.com

Okay, so now it’s “Oversexed, Over-ate & Over here”, which is nearly the same thing.

For the European cadre of Singlebarbed, allow me to reassure you, our Signal Crayfish will develop Type II Diabetes, because it can’t distinguish between a home cooked meal and a dog turd, and will soon expire in huge numbers, which is what our doctors have been predicting of our population for the last couple of decades …

Thankfully, you’ll not ask me to prove that – but if you need a recipe for boiled “mud bugs” – I’m your Man …