As long as they can still get blood from other creatures too, I’m okay with it. If not, than that could have wild implications to the food chain assuming it leads to massive population degradation.
Not all species of mosquitos feed on blood, like how only some bats feed on blood. As long as we only mess with the ones that feed on blood, it is a lot more likely that species that feed on mosquitos will have time to adapt to population changes.
Even the ones that do feed on mosquitos don’t feed exclusively on mosquitoes.
I actually love seeing mosquitoes struggle to survive. I don’t care if they’re incapable of morality, they’re evil and I hate them.
I hate them too but they are just trying to eat and breed, just like us. So kill them with mercy.
Why not just eradicate them? Genuine question. I don’t think they serve any purpose in nature and are just pissing off every living being.
Well, they actually do have their ecological roles and it is always a hard decision if one should interfere on such a large scale with biological systems. We might think that we understand it, but it could be totally wrong. Really hard to predict. Mosquitoes are an important food source for other animals and are also pollinators.
Putting aside questions of ecosystems etc, I think the main reason is that we just can’t - ironic since we seem to be extint-ing all the other animals
In South America they tried in the 50s and 60s, and more kept cropping up. They breed so quickly, if you miss an area they can just rebound. Then more can come in on ships and stuff
So you couldn’t really localise it, it would have to be a huge global undertaking. And it would likely require widespread use of pesticides that are at best tricksy and at worst illegal, not to mention environmentally shitty
Most modern plans for eradication involve creating a virus that handles it, rather than a pesticide.
Have the virus introduce a gene that takes a few generations of breeding in the impacted population before it starts to debilitate or sterilize the mosquitoes. That way your virus can start to kill the population even as it spreads to areas that were missed.
Also significant politics within the field preventing integrated approaches to control. It’s possible we could target specific species of mosquito that are vectors for deadly disease, with the intent of eradicating the disease by suppressing the vector. It would be the greatest collective undertaking of human kind. We’d have to shelf things like international borders and profits.
We’re stuck with being annoyed in any case.
Mosquitoes have killed more humans than every disease ever (edit: when you obviously exclude malaria) along with every war ever, combined.
Fuck those little shits. Let them all die, it will literally change nothing on this planet because nothing solely survives off predation on mosquitoes or their larvae.
If those creatures that also eat mosquitoes cannot eat them anymore, that means they would have to eat other bugs more frequently, and possibly fucking up all the ecosystem.
That said, fuck mosquitoes, they can take blood from other places.
If we were to somehow magically remove mosquitos from existence in an instant, we’d better hope something fills their ecological niche quickly
That niche being flying bloodsucker? I’m not sure the alternative will be any better
All of our best data on the impact says that it really wouldn’t matter. Sometimes a species is a linchpin for the ecosystem, and sometimes it isn’t.
Sucks for mosquitoes, but there’s a very real chance that we’ll smallpox them, and the biggest concern will be our confidence that the virus we use doesn’t impact other species unintentionally.
Haven’t read closely on it, but I’ve seen plenty of articles about the lack of effect we’d see over killing off mosquitoes. I have a feeling that, along with what you said, it’s because they’re tiny.
Consider the dragonfly. They hunt mosquitoes efficiently. But relative to their size, a mosquito is like us eating a candy bar, or even less. Meanwhile, they could snatch about anything else and it would be like a 3-pound steak.
Hopefully we can do the same for bedbugs. Fuck bedbugs. I can smell the little fuckers
I understand what you’re saying here, but the set of people killed by “every disease ever” includes the entire set of people killed by mosquito-borne diseases. Mosquitoes can’t have killed more people than every disease ever because mosquitoes’ kill count is part of every disease ever.
Mosquitoes have killed more humans than every disease ever
How do they kill us outside of spreading disease?
They manipulate the weather using space lasers from their fake hollow moon above our flat earth.
But what will happen when the humans lose their natural predators, we might destroy our habita- ah, right. Nevermind
Here’s a Venn diagram:
O Humans getting killed by mosquitos
O Humans at fault for habitat destruction
VEM
Vegan
Except
Mosquitos
I know what you meant but I just imagined someone grimly eating mosquitoes out of pure spite
I saw a video of Africans scooping up pounds of them with nets, mashing 'em up and frying bug patties.
