Splat! Cars kill 2tr insects

Brussels: Almost two trillion insects are killed by being splattered on Dutch cars every year, research has found. Arnold van Vliet, a biologist at the University of Wageningen in central Netherlands, last month enlisted the help of motorists in tracking the numbers and behaviour of insects.

The researchers asked Dutch drivers to clean their front number plate, to go for a drive and then to count the number of squashed insects for recording on a website, Splashteller.nl.

"There is great concern that the number of insects is decreasing," Dr van Vliet said. "The collisions between cars and insects may be unexpectedly interesting for biologists.

"On just the plates 3.3 billion bugs are killed. The front of the car is at least 40 times as large as the surface of the plate. So over a month the cars hit 133 billion insects. In six months that is 800 billion insects," he said.