I read once that ironically one of the most important ecological niches for mosquitos is that they keep humans out of a bunch of places that allow those habitats to be preserved. It’s their annoyance and medical danger to people that makes them so valuable to the ecosystem.
Cool well we can put up some do not trespass signs
KILL ALL MOSQUITOS
It doesn’t matter how many “no trespassing” signs we put up because mosquitos can’t read
Yeah… signs don’t really work on all humans.
5 blokes with big guns
Thanks for the rainforests, mosquitos.
Shit, as a Floridian, you may have just convinced me we should let them live. We already have too many people moving here.
No takesy-backies!
Smartest argument that I’ve heard for their existence!
Its sort of ironic how mosquitoes are at the very bottom of the food chain for most of the ecologies they inhabit… But at the same time, is the biggest killer (through the transmission of malaria and other diseases) of humans, who see themselves at the top of the food chain.
In reality, the food chain is more like a food cycle.
…humans, who see themselves…
y-you mean ourselves, right?
Their username makes this joke even funnier.
i didnt realise …
Wait, you guys are still meatbags?
Its calles food web sometimes
Hear me out. Mosquito laser fence. I think we have a few years before the patent expires.
https://hackaday.com/2021/03/08/laser-zap-that-mosquito/
I was thinking this too, apparently not a new idea.
That’s a new article. Sweet! Thanks for sharing
This is one gamble I am willing to make.
As much as I hate mosquitoes, I must admit that without them, entire ecological systems would collapse…
Are we sure about that though? There are a lot of other small insects that fill the same niche without biting humans (including other mosquito species).
I remember people used to complain, “what about the bats?” until we found that mosquitos make up at most 2% of a bat’s diet.
I wonder what face would ticks pull in this case where we already know there is no drawback for 100% annihilating them.
tick dont have anything on the horror of bedbugs.
I think its unethical to cause an animal to go extinct on purpose. Like it seems a very nuclear option to me.
On the other hand I hate these mosquitoes tho… And they are a medical threat to humans
I think its unethical to cause an animal to go extinct on purpose.
Counterpoint: guinea worm, a nightmarish human parasite with possible mentions back to ancient Egypt. As of the mid 1980’s, it infected millions every year. Now it is on the verge of extinction due to a very concerted international effort. All those little worms were doing was causing intense physical suffering for humans and other animals.
Is it unethical to make smallpox go extinct?
I guess we humans have a different code of ethics for diseases and bacteria… Team DNA mixing vs team DNA cloning… A fight as old as life itself
Team preoccupied with whether or not they can vs team thinking if they should
Seems like we could somehow try to genetically engineer their bites to not itch at least
I still don’t want those disease vectors biting me and giving me space Zika.
Yeah, if we let them live, people suffer and die. If we make them extinct some bugs will die ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll go with mosquitoes after and just after getting done of all the fucking cockroaches
Same, I fucking despise and fear cockroaches, so much, I hate them, I cannot live in a place with even a few cockroaches, I pray every day they die out
deleted by creator
I take it the answer is that we still (unfortunately) need them?
Last I checked, the only niche they fill in nature is being food for predators like dragonflies and bats.
Untrue.
https://www.britannica.com/story/what-purposes-do-mosquitoes-serve-in-ecosystems
https://blog.nwf.org/2020/09/what-purpose-do-mosquitoes-serve/
https://www.mosquitoreviews.com/learn/mosquitoes-pollination
There’s different species that serve different purposes in the ecosystem.
https://www.lukerchocolate.com/en/innovation/meet-the-mosquito-behind-cocoa-tree-pollination/
https://www.nps.gov/articles/chocolate-midge.htm
All that being said, I can’t stand them lol
okay, but what happens if those die out? Will there be more?
They have varied enough diets to be mostly fine without them.
I read that only a few species bite humans. If this is correct, we can exterminate just those, and leave the rest for the dragonflies and the bats
I think there’s a little stick of some kind of medicine or another you can buy to rub on a bite as well as not touch it, scratching makes it a lot worse. Other than that, try not to have a lot of sweat on you and don’t stay still for a long time outside.
Pressing the back of a hot spoon firmly does wonders to stop the itch. Like tap water hot… not crack rock hot.
I use a hair dryer to blow on the bites until they don’t itch anymore (can feel a bit painful when doing it), but it stops the itching for about 4 to 5 hours.
Since 1990, 90% of the insexts dissapeared. So yeah let exterminate more.
Source?
90% PERCENT OF THE INSEXTS
Not exactly how OP put it, but still pretty alarming stuff here
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GLOBAL-ENVIRONMENT/INSECT-APOCALYPSE/egpbykdxjvq/
Bonus doom & gloom
That sounds odd to me, since that’s about when the DDT ban was really going into force worldwide. The resurgence of bedbugs in the US has been linked to our no longer using DDT.
Unfortunately, we probably can’t. A LOT of things eat mosquitos.
I’ll settle for a repellent that works or better yet something that makes me no longer react to bites.
There is some promising research with gene drives, which are essentially genes that when passed on to offspring, overwrite the other copy of the gene from the other parent.
It may be possible to introduce non disease spreading mosquitoes with gene drives into the wild and within an extremely short time all mosquitoes in the population would be non disease carrying.
Of course, this is something that you may not be able to reverse once done, so it’s a pretty drastic step to take after very intense scrutiny.
I’d be more than fine with this, I just don’t want us to hate mosquitoes into a four pests scenario.
True, the issue of being bitten would not go away. Perhaps a gene that makes them not attracted to biting humans somehow, but that would be a lot harder to implement
