Death to bananas! (1 Viewer)

[Max Leung]

Bananas could split for good
Oh the humanity!
I shake my fist at you, you damn parasites! *shakes fist*
We must genetically engineer a stronger, faster, better banana to save the species!

 

[Rob Lutter]

No!!! We MUST save Bananas!
Get all those guys working on curing cancer over to the banana research facility this instance

 

[Matthew Chmiel]

OH MY GOD! WE HAVE TO SAVE THEM!
Oh wait, bananas... I thought you meant the Banana Splits... well fark the bananas.

 

[Agee Bassett]

Bananas could split for good
Oh the humanity!
I shake my fist at you, you damn parasites! *shakes fist*

Shouldn't this be in software where Robert Harris can see it? (And no doubt Michael Cimino would agree with you about UA being parasites.)
Oh, those kind of bananas.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Yes, very amusing guys - imagine just for a moment you're a plantation worker in one of these 'banana republics', facing your livelihood being wiped out.

Care to explain to these workers and their dependents why it's side-splittingly funny? It's like laughing at the victims of the dust bowl in the 30s.

 

[Steve Christou]

Would I miss bananas if they became extinct? Hmmm no. Never been one of my favorites, in fact I'm not big on fruits or veg, very much a meat-eater I'm afraid, can French bread be labled a veg? I love bread, my favorite veg is the potato, favorite fruit, prob something orange like an....
ps. Love the headline, Death to Bananas!

 

[Philip_G]

does this mean the banana republic won't have anymore khakis?

 

[Sebastian]

grow up guys....

 

[Max Leung]

Here's another scary one from last year:
Enjoy Your Chocolate While You Can.
The extinction of chocolate would be even worse than losing your bananas!
Without chocolate, we'll lose important Westernized things like:
1) Weight.
2) Cocoa Puffs.
3) Chocolatey drinks.
4) Valentine's gifts.
5) Banana-split ice cream with fudge on top.
And something just awful, too horrible to even contemplate:
Women would have to turn to men for ultimate pleasure.
The utter unspeakable horror...Cthulhu, save us!
(Oh yeah, and a bunch of chocolate farmers would go broke and that's nut funny!)

 

[Matthew Chmiel]

If chocolate goes bye-bye, I'll be pissed as I won't get to drink any more chocolate milk.

But my ass will be happy as the fat from it will start to disappear.

 

[BrianW]

I eat at least one banana a day, so I would definitely miss them. I had no idea that commercially available bananas were from age-old seedless plants that haven't been pollentated for decades. I'm surprised the plants have been viable for this long. Bananas are only, what, the most popular fruit in the world?

 

[Chris Moe]

I give you the dancing Banana

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

I'm confused. I thought that the seed at the bottom of the banana was fertile.

 

[Steve Christou]

Oh no! Not chocolates! Shite! [wipes chocolate stains off screen].
Potatos, French bread and chocolates are the only vegetables I like.[sobs]
Oh well [stuffs mouth with chocolate], better start hoarding...

 

[Brian Harnish]

LMFAO! This thread is freaking hilarious.

 

[Allen_Appel]

I'm confused. I thought that the seed at the bottom of the banana was fertile.

That's not a seed. I don't know what it is, but when I was a kid, you could see the vestigial seeds of a banana, they ran down the center in a stripe. Very tiny, with no real texture. My mother told me when she was little her mother scraped the seeds out with a spoon (they were like poppy seeds).

 

[andrew markworthy]

If the banana really does face extinction, then it would create a very serious economic crisis. If you can just for one second get out of your complacent attitude that this is just a fruit and wake up to reality, the banana is a major source of income for many countries. If it goes, then so does a large part of their national incomes. Since in many cases their economies are in poor shape anyway, this means several bankrupt countries which in turn will have major effects on the world economy. This is other than the primary, human impact on the people made redundant.

*Please* try to see this from the point of view of the countries directly affected. Imagine the impact on the US economy if suddenly suddenly nothing made of, or containing, plastic could be manufactured - imagine what would happen to the US economy. And suppose you then heard that members of a forum in Latin America were making jokes about 'no more Barbie dolls'.

Just to re-iterate - this is not funny a funny topic. It is potentially one of the most serious news stories at the moment. Continuing to laugh and make jokes about this topic is showing a serious error of judgement. And please, nobody tell me to lighten up - the topic is a real and very serious one.

 

[Scott Leopold]

One thing I'm curious about (and this is a serious question): Are there any "wild bannanas" left? If so, you'd think they'd be able to grow and harvest them and develop more seedless strains from those. Either that, or just start shipping out the seeded varieties. I'm not sure how many seeds they'd have, but if they're similar to poppy seeds, that shouldn't be much of a problem.

 

[Sebastian]

Thanks Andrew,
For minute there I was asking myself is this the HTF board?
Usually the members on this board have compassion and are mature on topics like this. Not sure what happened here.
BTW, you do not need to lighten up at all

 

[Max Leung]

Andrew, there was a panic as well when the cacao trees were threatened with a very serious blight. My understanding is that the original cacao, Crillio, is extremely rare, and is at serious risk of disappearing completely. Supposedly chocolates made from that tree are absolutely incredible, and probably one of the major factors in the acceleration of the colonization/exploitation of the New World. No, I don't think anyone but the incredibly rich has tasted chocolate made from this plant. It is that rare. Us mere mortals have to settle for the cheap-ass bitter chocolates you find on the market today.
As serious as you think this is, a much more serious threat was averted in the 1980s when the entire African cassava crop was threatened by a "rare" species of mealybugs (now known as the cassava mealybug). The cassava tree's leaves are a staple of African meals, like spinach, and is akin to rice in China or potatoes in Ireland in importance.
Literally, millions of lives were at stake (200 million estimated at the time). The mealybugs were spread out over an area 1.5 times that of the United States. They were unstoppable. Scientists were trying to make hybrid cassavas that were resistant to the mealybug's poison, released when the mealybug sucks out the sap of the tree. Of course, they would not be able to make a strain in time to save the trees...years spent in development, plus it would take too long to plant and grow them, especially when you consider the scale involved. Pesticides would be useless.
Nobody had considered introducing a parasite. 10 years later, they were desperate and someone thought "hey, this mealybug must have come from the Americas, but somehow did not flourish there as well as in Africa...something, some parasite, must be responsible". So, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture challenged an entomologist, Hans Herren, to find a way to stop the mealybug.
He succeeded...through meticulous field research in Latin America. He confirmed that the American mealybugs were identical to the ones now in Africa, and even better: he finally found the parasitic wasp that preyed on them (the eggs were found in the dead mealybug samples sent to entomologists at the British Museam).
He and his team cultivated the wasps, and worked on an ingenious plan to transplant them to Africa: Bomb the fields from the air with these wasps, and let nature do the work!

The last flight of the wasp duster was in 1991, but for the next few years entomologists still went on tracking its effects. In about 95 percent of the fields where the wasp had been released, the mealybug had virually disappeared. As they lost their hosts the wasps had diminished to only a few survivors as well.

For saving the lives of 200 million people, Herren was given directorship of the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology. He later helped save the East African corn crop from a stem borer pest, which happened to have a bad relationship with another parasitic wasp...
A triumph of science...and nobody knew about it.
Quotes from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, by Carl Zimmer. An incredible book. Everyone should be forced to read it at gunpoint.