This post is informative, horrifying, and indeed very, very spoopy.
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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Its not 100% accurate. Some wasps get trapped, not all. And there exists a fig species that doesn't need wasps
Ah btw, ground coffee literally has ground bugs in it. To the point, that some people get allergic to it.
Yum!
Everything we eat has allowable amounts of bugs, it's everwhere.
High Protein Coffee
at some point, we'll probably be eating bug flour on purpose for sustainability reasons
When do the bugs enter the coffee, and does me grinding my own coffee change anything?
Its specifically cockroaches they are talking about and ground coffee. If you grind your own beans and don't see any cockroaches or bugs, then your coffee is roach free.
Humans get allergies to cockroaches really easy. Living in cockroach infested areas will eventually create allergies, people who handle cocraches get allergies, it's not a question of if it's a question of when.
So if you have developed cockroach allergies you risk going into anaphylactic shock if you go anywhere where ground coffee is in the air like a gas station or coffee shop. If you aren't griding your own beans, there is some roach in your bean soup.
I've heard cockroach have a smell?
No idea, they skeeve me out. Maybe they smell a bit like ground coffee.
I mean I personally haven't smelled one. One of my elementary teachers had a bunch of them though and they do smell. Just never went up to take a whiff.
That's like being allergic to Florida. The more I think about it, that's a healthy body response!
I had no idea allergies or cockroaches worked like that and I was better off beforehand.
I forgot some details, but there were articles about it years ago, can just google it. And as far as i remember, bean coffee (self-ground or automat) has way less bugs.
False. Wasps don't have souls.
Hornets on the other hand... I'll see you in hell.
Most commercially and home grown produced figs are self-pollinating, only a few wild fig species require wasps to pollinate them. So most people will only ever see wasp-free figs.
How can people not believe in basic evolution when we have created self-pollinating figs
Oh thank god.
I know commercial farming is usually terrible, but this bit just seems like a win
Mostly it’s commercial animal farming that is heinously immoral. The big problems with commercial crop farming is the change to landscape (and therefore ecosystem) and reduction of native species and diversity due to farming of one specific species. These can be mitigated (if humans cared), obviously the animal farming problems too, but the animal cruelty is way more evil, and harder to fix institutionally.
I’m pretty sure about these things, but I am not an expert on these specific matters. Never trust some rando as a source. Always do your own research. And even then be careful….. we live in some weird ass times
Though i once saw a bug crawl out of a ripe fig, just as i was about to eat it.
Better than finding half a bug in the fig after your first mouthful
Apart from the cultivar part, I don't think that's true. Apparently even Aristotle has spoken about fig wasps (without really understanding what they are or do of course). So maybe there are some cultivars that are self a pollinating now, but it seems like all non-cultivated fig trees are dependent on this kind of pollination. And btw, there aren't a "few" wild species, there are over 850 of them!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_coevolution_in_Ficus?wprov=sfla1
I used to have some fig trees, I'd always have to be careful around them as they'd be full of wasps.
Haha yes... Die trash.
TIL figs aren’t vegan
Idk isn't that like saying all animal pollinated plants are not vegan?
I’m a level five vegan. I don’t eat anything that Casts a shadow
Well, this one’s got a literal animal inside of it… Is all I’m saying
I guess it depends on if people think roadkill is vegan; the dead wasp is part of the life cycle of the wasp/fig symbiosis so its going to die well before humans intervene.
Imo the argument could be made that by clearing land for vegetables there's a large reduction in habitable natural environments. This results in things dying that normally wouldn't. Especially true when you consider pesticides.
So is the problem the dead bug in the fig or the dead bug outside, say, an apple?
I’ve only been vegan for eight years. I really don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve never really researched it. I just don’t need animal products. But it seems like eating anything that was an animal or has an animal in it isn’t vegan
Fuck goose down
And I mean, where do we draw the line? There’s microscopic organisms that we kill all the time
Imo, don't think about it too hard. I think it makes more sense to eat creatures based on a mix of survivorship curve and whether they are intelligent enough to need to be confined.
If you're building infrastructure more to contain animals rather than keep other ones out, imo that's the pivot point.
Idealized survivorship curves:
Type 1 and 2 are easy no's. Type 3 is generally fine as long as its not like an adult turtle or octopus. Type 3 organisms are probably going to get eaten a lot and early in nature while its rare for the adults to get eaten.
This one doesn't either, it's just a ghost.
Eating ghosts is vegan
I'm a vegan, although not super strict. But I knew some terror vegans who do not consider vigs vegan.
The definition of "vegan" differs. Like, I don't like products that had a nervous system. So technically I could eat oysters. But some vegans consider oranges not to be vegan because there might be an animal product in the pesticides used on oranges. Some claim they only use plant based products, but they get mad when I ask them about fungi, as their cell structure looks more like an animal cell than a plant cell (I love to make terror vegans mad).
Being vegan means you buy products which fit your idea of being vegan.
And sadly for some it means you need to be a fucking asshole to anyone you meet.
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Dibs on wasp ghosts as my post hardcore band name!
FYI they are very fucking small nowhere near as big as in this image. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_wasp
Forcing her way through the ostiole, the mated mature female often loses her wings and most of her antennae. To facilitate her passage through the ostiole, the underside of the female's head is covered with short spines that provide purchase on the walls of the ostiole.
In depositing her eggs, the female also deposits pollen she picked up from her original host fig. This pollinates some of the female flowers on the inside surface of the fig and allows them to mature. After the female wasp lays her eggs and follows through with pollination, she dies.[15]
After pollination, there are several species of non-pollinating wasps that deposit their eggs before the figs harden. These wasps act as parasites to either the fig or possibly the pollinating wasps.
As the fig develops, the wasp eggs hatch and develop into larvae. After going through the pupal stage, the mature male’s first act is to mate with a female - before the female hatches. Consequently, the female will emerge pregnant. The males of many species lack wings and cannot survive outside the fig for a sustained period of time. After mating, a male wasp begins to dig out of the fig, creating a tunnel through which the females escape.[16]
Once out of the fig, the male wasps quickly die. The females find their way out, picking up pollen as they do. They then fly to another tree of the same species, where they deposit their eggs and allow the cycle to begin again.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard told me they were big though
What a cool band, I was the orchestra manager on their first stop of their Phantom Island Tour. Their drummer is a force of nature
Hell yeah, it's a goal of mine to catch a show
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