Who we'll eat in space. Or, what to do with all those Throgs, Buggers and Skinnies the Space Cowboys mow down.

Space-and planet-colonizing humans will likely desire to eat animals as much as any Terran anthropoid, but almost every animal subject to human consumption has so many complicated life requirements that the amount of energy invested in production can outweighs the nutritional values of the critters. This whether the organisms being raised are mammals, poultry or seafood.

The question has sent humanity looking to its dietary beginnings. Back to when animal food was plentiful for the taking. Not feathered, or furred, not reptilian. No. For its dietary flesh fix, as paleoanthropologists examine coprolites have discerned, Homo sapiens sapiens wisely bellied up to the most successful, most adaptable and easily consumed animals of all. The insects.

The creatures of Class Insecta—the most diverse group of animals on the Earth, with over a million described species claiming 20 to 30% or all planetary animal biomass—are also the most adaptable of animals to all air-breather environments. Spacefolk of the future will, quite sensibly, raise select insect types for food and recycling purposes, for textiles and pharmameuticals, and may ultimately make them as integral a part of their ecology as insects are back on Terra, if not more.

This according to "Entomophagy; a key to space agriculture" (pdf) wherein Researcher N. Katayama from Nagoya Women’s University, and her team of six other scientists came to this conclusion as the logical solution to the challenge of feeding off-planet humans:

"Among many candidate group and species of animal to breed in space agriculture, insects are of great interest since they have a number of advantages over mammals and other vertebrates or invertebrates. About 70-75% of animal species is insects, and they play an important role in materials recycle loop of terrestrial biosphere at their various niche. "

The researchers suggest the optimum start up space farm to include the following mix:
rice, soybean, sweet potato, green-yellow vegetable, silkworms, termites and small fishes. Such a mix would meet space colonists nutritional requirements.

In a sort of reverse engineering, space bugs may show the way to solving world hunger according to the optimistic scientists, who wrote:

"The design of systems for space agriculture will also provide insight into improving the management of Earth's biosphere for its sustainable civilization. Entomophagy may be very well proven as a key idea in solving the world's food problems, to which we are facing now."

Insects are actually a familar human food in some southern Asia and Mesoamerican cultures. For the more squeamish American types, marketing strides have been taken seeking a breakthrough to the western palate by - how else?- appealing to the vast American sweet tooth.