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About time Humans eradicated mosquitoes - they are by far the number 1 animal, that kills humans and are responsible for untold misery and suffering to humans,
by garyclarke27 6y ago
About time Humans eradicated mosquitoes - they are by far the number 1 animal, that kills humans and are responsible for untold misery and suffering to humans, livestock and wildlife. Of course their predators may decline somewhat but that’s a price worth paying. Humans have decimated so many ecosystems - eg in Great Britain were no large beneficial predators remain - that this change pails in comparison.
- RamRodification 6y ago> somewhat Can you back these numbers up?
- jjk166 6y agoThere are 3000 species of mosquito. Only a few dozen transmit diseases to humans, and of those just 3 are the primary spreaders. No predator feeds exclusively on the disease spreading species.
- williamtwild 6y agoWhat about the impact of this food source on other animals? You are not concerned about that at all?
- FredPret 6y agoI read somewhere that all the lethal-mosquito-eaters already also eat the non-lethal kinds, as well as other insects
- BitwiseFool 6y agoEven the "Mosquito Fish" doesn't exclusively eat mosquito larvae and tends to prefer other food sources. I don't know of any species that exclusively prey on Mosquitoes.
- soperj 6y agoMosquitoes are a major pollinator.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoWe can always re-introduce them if it becomes a problem.
- throwaway823882 6y agoI'm sure the rest of the ecosystem will just wait around for a few decades while we begin to repopulate them...
- BitwiseFool 6y agoI'm not sure it would be so bad. Mosquitoes breed prodigiously and I'm sure they'd be back in no time.
- jjk166 6y agoThere are thousands of mosquito species and only a few dozen spread diseases to humans, of which only 3 make up the vast majority. Eradicating the disease carriers would have minimal effects on the ecosystems.
- awb 6y ago> Eradicating the disease carriers would have minimal effects on the ecosystems. I'm not going to ask you to prove a negative, but it sure sounds like it's going against all the advice I've heard about ecology. Namely that ecosystems are far more complex than we understand and that even small changes can compound into larger changes. Basically: don't play God. If this is safe and it does work, then it might be helpful to have some new messaging about when and where we can start actively designing ecosystems. "Don't mess with mother nature" is easy to understand. So, how would you create a new maxim that preserve that general rules but also accommodates eliminating undesirable subspecies?
- kewrkewm53 6y agoMost mosquitoes are harmless, so getting rid of all of them would be incredibly stupid. Getting rid of only species which carry malaria is another matter entirely. Also, the fact humans have destroyed a lot of biodiversity already is no excuse to do so in the future.
- aeternum 6y agoMosquitos can transmit diseases that can negatively affect other animals. Perhaps we would have more biodiversity without mosquitoes.
- kodah 6y agoCan this not also easily be stated as, "mosquitos keep populations in check?"
- filoleg 6y agoI mean, so do wars and pandemics, and yet we are not quite thinking of those as good things.
- kodah 6y agoWars are not biological, unless you subscribe to some very meta-thought on population control. Pandemics could be argued to be a biological control on population, but I think mosquitos would be of more naturally-recurring consequence that make it a "normal" form of population control.
- BugsJustFindMe 6y agoIt sounds like you're engaging in an appeal to nature fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
- 6y ago
- _rpd 6y agoMy understanding is that it is quite difficult for a disease to be spread by mosquitoes. There's an aspect of co-evolution that limits significant spread to particular species. Of thousands of species of mosquito, there are just a handful that cause the vast majority of suffering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito-borne_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito-borne_disease
- throwaway823882 6y agoI don't think it is possible to "accidentally" decline the number of predators without it rippling into a potential ecological collapse.
- IncRnd 6y agoJust introduce European Rabbits. What could go wrong? /s
- laurent92 6y agoFor those who don’t know, it’s a story worth telling: Rabbits on my grandma’s fields (France) have red eyes. All because of Australia ;) Rabbits were introduced to Australia to get rid of other pests. Then myxomatosis was engineered circa 1950 to get rid of rabbits. It killed 95% of them in 5 years. The 5% reproduced and now all rabbits in Australia have myxomatosis. The researcher wanted to get rid of rabbits in his garden in UK. He brought myxomatosis back and 95% UK rabbits were killed in 2 years. The 5% regrew and all UK rabbits are myxo-resistant. It spread to France. But I guess, by now, you know the story ;) Hence the story of the red-eyed rabbits.
- IncRnd 6y agoIndeed! Thank you. I was quite surprised that people here chose to downvote my comment, apparently not knowing what it referenced.
- IncRnd 6y agoThis targets a particular mosquito in the Keys. There are over 80 types of mosquitoes in Florida, so this isn't expected to eradicate mosquitoes.
- laurent92 6y agoThe problem with GMO Mosquitoes is, it’s auto-scaling. We want to code one behavior and let it grow by itself better than autochtone species.
- exabrial 6y agoOoof. Believe it or not, the balance of nature depends on them. What would dragon flies eat? What would endangered birds that eat dragonflies eat? Some animal populations are _only_ constrained by their food supply and disease vectors in the environment. For instance, local deer populations, where human's have eradicated their predators, quickly spiral out of control unless hunting permits can be issued in number to keep the populations in check. Eradication isn't a good goal, but perhaps rebalancing is and removing those that spread deadly cross-species diseases.
- tmountain 6y agoI believe this argument has been mostly refuted in the scientific community. Here's an excerpt from a Forbes article on the topic: What are the risks of eradicating mosquitoes? As you noticed, there are no keystone species in mosquitoes. No ecosystem depends on any mosquito to the point that it would collapse if they were to disappear. An exception may be the Arctic, but the species there are non-vectors and thus can be left alone. https://tinyurl.com/5bmksuf4 https://tinyurl.com/5bmksuf4
- asymmetric 6y agoFYI, this is an “article” copy-pasted from Quora.
- tmountain 6y agoDidn't know that, but there's far more out there on the topic if you go looking for the info. Bill Gates had some commentary on the topic regarding the ecological impacts not being what people believe them to be (under the umbrella of public health in Africa).
- mullingitover 6y ago> Believe it or not, the balance of nature depends on them. What would dragon flies eat? What would endangered birds that eat dragonflies eat? Aedes aegypti are an invasive species in most of the world. It's a pure win to eradicate them, they have zero benefits to the ecosystem.
- _Microft 6y agoWith all due respect but the role of the "number 1 animal, that [...] is responsible for untold misery and suffering to humans, livestock and wildlife" clearly falls to humans.
- Koliakis 6y agoLook, we simply can't accept any competition.
- zestyping 6y agoMosquito-borne diseases have killed far more humans than all wars in history. I don't have an estimate for how many other creatures they have killed, nor how much suffering they have caused, but on the whole I suspect mosquitoes are still the winner by a wide margin.
- vlan0 6y agoThe comment you're replying to is comparing the suffering humans cause to animals vs mosquitos and their diseases. It's pretty hard for it not to be us when you look at livestock numbers. We slaughter 10s of billions of animals _yearly_ in the name of food.
- m0llusk 6y agoLast I checked the animal most deadly to humans was the white tailed deer which have an unfortunate habit of leaping in front of speeding vehicles and then freezing there until struck.
- ericbarrett 6y agoMosquito-borne diseases are estimated to have killed 50 billion humans throughout history: https://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Human-History-Deadliest-Predator-ebook/dp/B07QQLX11D https://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Human-History-Deadliest-Pred...
- m0llusk 6y agoI was talking about yearly numbers in North America. Sorry I made you angry, but honestly I think I was contributing positively to the conversation such that the downvote--yes, I am commenting about the downvote--was unwarranted. Good luck with your pet issue I guess.
- ericbarrett 6y agoSorry friend, I wasn't angry and wasn't the one who downvoted you, I'm just very passionate about mosquitos...!
- rirze 6y agoI agree with your statement's intent, but it not quite right to compare the eradication of higher level creatures in the food chain to ones that are quite lower. The eradication of insects and bugs can potentially be more disruptive than removing an apex predator species. As others have stated however, mosquitoes have been studied to not have a significant impact if they were to go extinct.