I love you, New York City, but you smell. It’s not just the tourists urinating on skyscrapers or the all-around body funk of people pressed into crowded subway cars but also the mountains of rotting food discarded wherever. Just imagine how stanky it would be if there weren’t armies of insects gobbling up the the crumbs, crusts and cores we toss aside. In Mike Jeffries’ new piece at the Conversation, the ecologist charts the results of an experiment into the startling powers of voracious vermin in Manhattan. An excerpt:

“To audit the pavement biodiversity, the team collected insects from among the leaf litter, with additional forays into other areas in search of ants. The rate of food clear-up was measured by putting out potato chips, cookies and hot dogs and seeing how much was left the following day.

Some of the food was protected by wire mesh, others not – so that larger creatures such as rats and pigeons could get in too, to allow for their impact. The precise brands of crisp, cookie and hot dog are detailed, each cut up into more appetising chunks. …

The speed with which food was removed proved startling. In the first run of the experiment using small chunks of food, 59% was gone within 24 hours. A second run using larger portions resulted in a 32% loss within a day. Whole cookies and chips … gone, chunks of hot dog … vanished.

The insect life on the traffic islands consumed supplies two to three times faster than the inhabitants of the parks. Life in the fast lane perhaps, or maybe the park life was more used to ice creams and sandwiches. In either locality, hot dogs were preferred to the light snacks.

In total the insects from the medians and traffic islands of two long Manhattan streets – Broadway and West St – could remove the equivalent of 600,000 potato chips per year. This could become a standard measure of invertebrate junk food ecosystem services.”