/ Moth

With the help of the driving public, a Dutch biologist has calculated that cars hit around 133 billion insects every month.

In May, Arnold van Vliet set up the aptly, and honestly named, SplashTeller and asked around 250 drivers to clean their front number plate, go for a drive and then count the number of squashed insects. They were urged to upload this figure to the website along with the beginning and end point of the drive plus time and date.

Reports Treehugger: "Over the course of six weeks and 19,184 miles of travel, the smooshed bodies of no less than 17,836 insects were discovered. That averages to two insects killed (in that particular area of the vehicle) for every 6.2 miles travelled."

With a little simplified maths, the biologist from the University of Wageningen calculated that 3.3 billion bugs are killed per month just by car's license plates. Guesstimating the front of the car to be "at least forty times as large as the surface of the plate", this equates to 133 billion insect fatalities per month.

The researcher told Expatica that, along with rousing a little guilt, the data will also give a unique insight into insect populations in different areas of the country. He said: "This information will give us an idea of the amount of insect presence in certain locations and also about their flight patterns. So far we have never been able to chart insect behaviour in this manner." As well as geographical variations in insect density, Van Vliet has been able to chart variations between different times of the day; and the influence of weather conditions. As the data continues to come in, he hopes to be able to document seasonal changes.

But in the meantime, if I were a British bug, I'd move to Holland. According to the Dutch Daily News, there are around 8 million cars in Holland, whereas the UK had 31 million on the road in 2009.


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