Experts say that if food were a country, it would rank second behind the US as one of the biggest greenhouse gas polluters. The reason is the rising demand for meat. Animal farming is responsible for14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas methane(甲烷) emissions(排放). While cows are the worse contributors, pigs, sheep, donkeys and other animals play a part as well.

Animal agriculture also causes land to become damaged, water to be polluted and forests to get destroyed. With the world population forecast to rise to 9.8 billion by 2050, things are only looking worse for our already decreasing natural resources, While going vegetarian(素食的)would help meat consumption too deep - rooted in most western diets to allow for such a sharp, permanent change. That is why experts are advocating substituting some of the beef, chicken, or pork with ordinary insects！

Insects, which grow into adults within a matter of months, if not weeks, are ready for consumption much faster than domestic(驯养的) animals. They also require much less room，use less water and food, and produce far less greenhouse gas than animals

Of the 1.1 million insect species worldwide, scientists have identified 1.700 as eatable. Among them are ants, grasshoppers, grubs, and earthworms. Just like animals, each insect has a different taste. Tree worms taste just like pork, and grubs are similar to smoked meat

While eating insects might be a new concept for Western people, over 2 billion people worldwide consume insects as a regular part of their diet. Besides being delicious, insects are high in protein, have very few calories, and are free of the saturated(饱和)at found in animal meat. Insects can be prepared in many ways. Creative cooks can use them to cook protein-rich soup make baked treats, and even fry a few with vegetables. So eat insects -both your body and Mother Earth will thank you for it ！

Female cichlids are mouthbrooding (口育) fish, which carry their young in their mouths first as eggs and then as hatchlings. But in a study published in the journal Biology Letters, the scientists reported that in some instances, cichlid mothers swallow some of their young.

Dijkstra and his coworkers first suspected that something was wrong with their cichlid mothers when they noticed that some of the eggs in one female cichlid’s mouth were missing because the fish can hold up to 100 eggs at once, but in this case, the female was carrying only 25 eggs.

“We realized that one of the mothers wasn’t holding all of her young,” Dijkstra said. “We figured that she probably ate them. There’s quite a bit of literature out there about this phenomenon. It’s very common in a lot of animal species.”

But why would a mother chow down on her babies? The researchers said it likely is because females become desperate for nutrients while they’ re mouthbrooding.

Mouthbrooding also can be a high-stress time for female cichlids, and a prior study of A. burtoni, published in 2020, found that high-stress environments can lead mouthbrooding females to this behavior. In the new study, the authors discovered that some mouthbrooding mothers showed signs of liver damage, with levels of DNA damage that were 24% higher than in non-brooding females.

Horrible as it may sound, this behavior of female cichlids is actually a beneficial strategy for reproduction.

“As a parent, you don’t want to spend all of your energy on one child, and this is also true for humans,” Dijkstra said. “You want to make sure that in the future maybe you will have more children and you still want to be in good enough shape to take care of your existing children as well.”

It’s not only cichlids that exhibit this baby-swallowing behavior. Many different types of animals engage in this phenomenon, including many fish species, birds, insects, spiders and even some large animals.

Shark attacks are usually rare but their in recently years has been put down to one major factor —us.

Scientists believe that humans are directly to blame for man-eating sharks taking a great interest in our bodies lately. Researchers at Bond University in Queensland, Australia, believe that human interference with their habitat--like scuba diving and coastal development —is the reason.

Last year there were 98 reported shark attacks, which is an 11% increase on the previous record of 88 in 2000. Overall, there has been a staggering 69% rise over the last ten years and warmer seas because of global warming are thought to be to blame.

Dr Blake Chapman and Dr Daryl McPhee, who conducted the study, said: Coastal development and infrastructure can have major environmental implications on the distribution of sharks, and this can flow on to the number of unprovoked shark bites. Citing the construction of a new port in Recife, Brazil, the scientists believe the sharp rise in the number of sharks attacking people is down to the destruction of their habitat and forcing them closer to humans.

The researchers added: Unprovoked shark bite was virtually unheard of in Recife prior to the construction and operation of the Suape Port. “However, due to environmental changes displacing local shark species and the presence of increased shipping activity, Recife is now renowned for having one of the highest rates of shark bites per unit area in the world.”

Most attacks on humans are carried out by great white shark, bull sharks and tiger sharks, with 84% of bites taking place in just six countries or territories, including the US, South Africa, Australia, Brazil, the Bahamas and Reunion.