I horrified my friends by telling them I’d had an alligator-tail sausage in New Orleans. It was tasty! And came with fries. Who doesn’t like fries? Grim, joyless people, that’s who.
Is it anything like a lemony snickett?
Sorry…
Alligator sausage is all right, but I like chunx-o-gator. Café Tu Tu Tango at The Block at Orange used to have ‘Gator Bites’. Those were battered-and-deep fired chunks of alligator, served with Pick-A-Peppa Sauce and a raspberry sauce (I think). Last time I looked at the menu for the Orange, CA restaurant, the Gator Bites weren’t on it.
When I was in New Orleans last June, I took some friends out for a belated wedding dinner. The waiter recommended against oysters for an appetizer, so we got blackened alligator. (I think it came with ranch dressing.) That was really good. If I could find alligator meat in Seattle I’d make blackened alligator. The funny thing is that my friend’s new wife speaks virtually no English. I’m sure my friend told her in Spanish that the appie was alligator, but it apparently didn’t sink in until much later. She stopped eating and asked (something to the effect of) 'Wait. This is alligator? :eek: ’ My friend told her yes. She must have paused for a full second, then she gave a barely perceptible shrug and got another piece of gator.
I did, in the question. I just wanted to know where you found it. 
Sausage doesn’t count. Sausage made from snakes or beetles or spiders or whatever can’t be any more inherently disgusting than any other kind of sausage. I, too, have had sausage containing alligator (along with rattlesnake and crawfish) in New Orleans, and it didn’t taste any different from any other sausage.
You’ve voluntarily eaten maggots yet were put off by eating a wood louse? What is it that makes one bug more disgusting than another?
I’m not a fan of looking at or touching either and I highly doubt I’d eat them. But, I don’t think either would be more of an ick than the other for me.
I know. Upon rereading I saw that it was a question, not a questioning of where I ate dog. Apologies.
I know, it doesn’t make sense. But maggots are just tiny wriggling worms, whereas with the wood louse (mind you, it was the size of a bumblebee) it was more personal. Can’t explain it. Didn’t stop me from chewing on the bastard though.
No.
In New Zealand they have huhu grubs, which are dealt with in a similar way. Not eaten one of them, either.
I’m happy not eating any insects or arachnids, thanks, be they larvae or adult.
Frankly, insects are a pretty inefficient source of human food. For one thing, they are small-you have to eat a lot of them. Plus, they are clad in indigestible chiton.
I have heard that the Chinese like silkworms-but these are only available where there is silk production. Locusts are said to taste OK-but they are only around rarely.
Much easier to raise chickens or fish-higher quality protein, and much easier to raise.
I’ve never even seen a witchetty grub - if you can get them in the northern hemisphere I’d like to know where - but have had assorted other insects and arachnids. I wouldn’t eat them uncooked (always a chance of some parasite) but most taste great properly cooked. I happen to know David Gordon the bug chef, and he’s prepared tarantula, scorpion, crickets, and a few other things for me. Grasshoppers or bee pupae are delicious in sweet and sour sauce. Termites are good in cookies. Most parts of the U.S. you can get insect-derived junk food from this company.
A lot of the insects have little flavor of their own but taste like the sauces they are cooked with. Crickets and grasshoppers are tasty in their own right, pretty much like crispy vegetables. Never tried one yet that tasted like chicken. 
Same can be said for nuts and berries, but that didn’t stop Australopithecus from gathering them.
I’ve never knowingly eaten witchetty grubs. My butcher in Brisbane used to stock crocodile tails.
I’ve eaten them. Dug them up with my own fair sculptured nails. Tasted like scrambled egg with peanuts.
Cite?
Mopane worms are about 3 times more efficient than cows at converting plants to meat (1 kg of worm meat for 3 kilos of feed). And they don’t require maintenance like stock does. There’s a reason they’re a sort-after protein source.
They’re actually astonishingly efficient.
The corrollary of which is that they are small so you have a lot of them to eat. An ecosystem supports a given a mount of animal biomass, not a given amount of animals.
As opposed to what? Highly digestible structures such as hair, feathers, scales hide and bones. The things that fill the same role in vertebrates?
Silkworms are found wild right across China.
If by rarely you mean for at least six months of every single year.
Can we possibly have a reference for this claim? In what way is chicken higher quality? Not in terms of amino acids I’m sure, and not in terms of economic value either.
How do you figure?
Orphan?
Sorry. Couldn’t resist. 
That one statement happens to be in error. The domestic silkworm moth Bombyx mori does not exist in the wild - anywhere. They have been domesticated right out of their ability to survive without human care. But of course there are plenty of more or less distant relatives, perfectly edible, living in the wild.
Other than that, I strongly endorse your statements. Insects are good food, growing them for food is more sustainable than growing edible vertebrates, and besides that they taste good!
Current consensus amongst taxonomists is that any non-hybrid domesticate is placed in the same species as its progenitor (or vice versa). Since silkworms are direct, non-hybrid descendants of silk moths they are considered the same species by the vast majority of taxonomists.
So yeah, there are wild silkworms across most of China. No error, simple fact.
If that were the case then entomologists would call both species by the same name (using the older name, Bombyx mori, rather than Bombyx mandarina, name of the hypothetical wild ancestor). Such is not the case. While I haven’t read each and every one of the 2000-odd scientific papers on these species presently online, I did a spot check of 100 or so and found none that use the name B. mori for wild silkmoths.