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Just make mosquitoes disappear. The rest of the insects can be managed, but mosquitoes are the worst of them.
by meerita 6y ago
Just make mosquitoes disappear. The rest of the insects can be managed, but mosquitoes are the worst of them.
- h_anna_h 6y agoCockroaches too please.
- sohkamyung 6y agoEliminating 4000 over species of cockroaches because 30 are associated with humans and 5 are pests is extreme, I think [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach > Cockroaches (or roaches) are insects of the order Blattodea, which also includes termites. About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. About five species are well known as pests.
- azernik 6y agoAs scavengers, cockroaches actually fill a useful economic niche. Mosquitos are just pure shared-needle disease spreaders.
- enriquto 6y agoLots of animals (fish, amphibians, birds, spiders, other insects) depend on mosquitoes as a source of food. Also, lots of plants are pollinated by mosquitoes.
- 0xbkt 6y agoI live in a Mediterranean city, and in summers (hell-hole hot and humid) they're my nightmare. The big ones! They swarm the entire city. I get along well with smaller ones lighter in color though. I freak out the moment I notice one on the wall to the bathroom. Poor me.
- enriquto 6y agoWe can make all mammals disappear and mosquitos will follow.
- bzb6 6y agoStart with yourself.
- MildlySerious 6y agoThe diseases they transmit notwithstanding, I would take 10x the mosquitoes if it meant ticks, bot flies, intestinal worms, brain eating amoeba and any other parasitic creepy crawlies were gone for good.
- choeger 6y agoYeah, some of these parasites really wouldn't be missed at all.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoTo be fair, ticks, intestinal worms, and amoebae are not insects.
- naringas 6y agoI thought that ticks are insects? however the diseases they cause are caused by bacteria and other non-insects which they carry around, which I think is the point
- jfim 6y agoThere is some research that shows that done of these parasites may have the beneficial action of preventing autoimmune disease by modulating the immune system response. See the layman version [0] or a more scholarly version [1]. [0] https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00032 https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00032 [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1618732/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1618732/
- gchamonlive 6y agoI am no biologist, but my guess is that if mosquitoes were extinct, some spider species would too, birds would also be affected, and so on.
- chr1 6y agoThere are many species of mosquitos, only a few of them bite people, even fewer live in cities and less than a handful transmit disease. We could start by killing the latter group.
- Chris2048 6y agoOr breed biteless versions of the biting mozzies? Are there any mosquitos that live entirely on blood?
- 8fingerlouie 6y agoOnly female mosquitos suck blood, and they only suck blood when developing eggs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito#Egg_development_and_blood_digestion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito#Egg_development_and_b...
- zeristor 6y agoAnd bats
- stjo 6y agoYeah, they can go extinct too. That would have saved us a global pandemic or two.
- klodolph 6y agoWhy not wipe out pigs and birds, too? That will take care of some more pandemics. Hope you are not too attached to any of the following crops, which would die off without bats: cacao, peaches, bananas, guava, mango, dates, and figs.
- OneGuy123 6y agoWe cannot do this in isolation because we never know if that would eg affect bird population or if we geneticaly modify mosquitos that can have unintendend consequences that no study can predict. Do not fool yourself that you can "make a study" for everything: you cannot. You can never predict what will happen if you mess with nature on a genetic level. This was already proven to be true when they released some GMO mosquitos which were not being able to reproduce. BUT WAIT! They were able to reproduce sooner or later again! How shocking! Who would have thought! And those scientists then said "this was not supposed to happen". These scientists got the problem completely wrong, up-side-down: they believed that they "studied" the problem enough. The believed that they "knew enough" that this "should not have happened". But they won't ever learn that complex system (which is pretty much everything in nature) cannot be "studied and come to a conclusion with a high degree of confidence". "High degree of confidence" and "complex system" are opposites that cannot appear in the same sentence.
- throwanem 6y agoI'd be interested to read a paper discussing what appears to be a previously unsuspected failure mode of sterile insect technique. Granted, I have to assume that that's what you're talking about under all the absurd hyperbole, because all the absurd hyperbole gets in the way. But if that is what you're trying to get at, do you have a cite?
- OneGuy123 6y agoThe hyperbole is not absurd and is there for a reason: it is meant to show people the arrogance of scientists and their inability to comprehend that messing with complex systems has unpredictable consequences that cannot be studied.
- Jon_Lowtek 6y agoCreating a caricature and insulting it is a fallacy, not an argument.
- 6y ago
- gadders 6y agoIt's only about 10 species of mosquito out of thousands that spread malaria. It would be better to wipe out the plasmodium that spreads it. This was a recent podcast on the subject, if you like your science more lighthearted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rcpf https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rcpf
- bottled_poe 6y agoInteresting ethical dilemma. If we do ever encounter extraterrestrial life, I sure hope they are less brutal in their judgement of the species here on earth.
- h_anna_h 6y agoIf humans start injecting them with diseases then they would be in the right to get rid of us.
- jedimastert 6y agoI mean, we almost certainly will? What's the difference when every breath is teeming with a colony of completely foreign diseases?
- hutzlibu 6y agoBecause life - at least hear on earth - is pretty much made up by all kinds of bacteria and virus. So aliens might wipe us out, because their system can't handle it. But parent spoke about the right to fight, when we would attack, like ticks do attack us, like other parsites.
- curryst 6y agoYou presume that their biological processes are similar to us, which isn't necessarily true. It almost seems unlikely to be true. If most of those diseases can't make the jump from a human to a fish or a bird that's from the same planet and even the same evolutionary line, it seems unlikely that we would be susceptible to each other's diseases. This isn't like when Europeans brought Small Pox to the New World; those were still humans.
- jedimastert 6y agoTrue, but every once in a blue moon you get a virus that's completely harmless to the host that by pure random luck can make that jump and...gestures broadly
- vincnetas 6y agoI was really hoping that this was sarcasm, but from replies i see that lots of people take it seriously. Wow, i'm shocked, hope we never will have such ability to eliminate a species on demand when someone got annoyed during camping, without even thinking about the consequences of such action and alternatives how desired outcome could be achieved.
- baxtr 6y agoAFAIK, mosquitos are the animals that take the most human lives per annum. It is not only about "getting annoyed" during camping. EDIT, I found a source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_h...
- alfanick 6y agoLet's have humans evolve instead of killing things that were here before us.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y agoNatural history is full of examples of "lets kill things that were here before us". So your argument can't be a reference and a call to a natural state of being. What is it about then?
- refurb 6y agoYou’re against killing the plague? That’s silly.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI'm trying to remember where I read it, but someone once penned an article, crying about the crime of exterminating smallpox. They were serious about it, too. I wouldn't worry. I'm sure that both Russia and the US have some saved up...just in case.
- macspoofing 6y agoAre we really really sure there won't be any unintended consequences to removing mosquitoes?
- jbob2000 6y agoHave you looked around you lately? What about the unintended consequences of... all of human technology and civilization? Please, get rid of the mosquitos! I don’t want to have to douse myself in chemicals just to go for a hike or enjoy a weekend of camping.
- throwanem 6y agoOf course not, but when has that ever stopped anyone?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoPlenty of animals make mosquitoes (and their eggs) a big part of their diets (fish, birbs, spiders, and usually involuntarily, humans).
- b0rsuk 6y agoMosquitos eat mostly flower nectar. Males never bite. Females still eat nectar but need blood to produce eggs. Mosquito larvae are very good for filtering water.