Comments by "Gaza is not Amalek" (@Ass_of_Amalek) on "Grasshoppers versus water hyacinths in South Africa | Global Ideas" video.

  1. hey DW, planthoppers are not grasshoppers. as far as insects go, they are very highly unrelated (different orders). you should have people in charge of reports like this who know better than to just change the names of species like that...
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  2. no, these INCREASE evaporation because the surface of the plants is bigger than the water surface and evaporates water uninhibited because as a freshwater plant, it doesn't need to save water. the covering of the water surface causes problems because it not only prevents other plants lower down from growing due to lack of light, but it prevents oxygenation of the water because the hyacinths absorb CO2 from and release O2 into the air, whereas underwater plants do that in the water. meanwhile the dead parts of hyacinths sink to the bottom and decompose there, causing yet more oxygen depletion. the slowing of water flow and shielding of wind at the surface also reduces the rate of water exchange between the surface and the lower levels of the body of water, which further prevents the oxygenation from the air at the surface from benefiting the water down lower. thus water hyacinths dramatically reduce the amount of underwater plants a body of water can support by blocking the light, and dramatically reduce the amount of animals it can support by lowering oxygen levels.
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  3. Benjamin Miller I looked it up, it seems like there also are projects experimenting with using an odd aquatic grasshopper species against water hyacinths. whoever weote the script for DW must have accidentally mixed up the grasshoppers with the planthoppers.
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  4. DW is reporting badly. these are planthoppers, which are highly unrelated to grasshoppers.
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  5. DW is reporting badly. they're planthoppers, not grasshoppers. those are highly untelated insects, and planthoppers tend to be very selective in what plants they feed on, whereas grasshoppers tend to eat a huge range of plants as long as they don't contain some very particular toxins. the DW reporters seem to have just stupidly plastered over the term "planthopper" that they didn't know with the term "grasshopper" that they did know in their minds without ever googling it. 🙄
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  6. I think south africa probably has hippos.
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