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Okay, I'll bite and try to outmax your pedantry: If a mosquito bite can infect and kill, why isn't a mosquito dangerous? Alternately, if I take your logic tha

by r0h1n 13y ago

Okay, I'll bite and try to outmax your pedantry: If a mosquito bite can infect and kill, why isn't a mosquito dangerous? Alternately, if I take your logic that "mosquitoes themselves are not dangerous", why can I not extend that to humans and say human beings themselves are not dangerous?

masklinn 13y ago
> If a mosquito bite can infect and kill, why isn't a mosquito dangerous? Because it's not the mosquito itself doing that (as opposed to, say, a rattlesnake), it's a parasite hitching a ride on an "innocent" (of that anyway) mosquito. Much like e.g. bats and henipaviruses, bats are a resevoir species but nobody in their right mind would say that Mark Preston was killed by a fruitbat.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Is there a difference though? A snake is a vehicle for delivering poison, which is a chemical compound disrupting your biological machinery. A mosquito is a vehicle for delivering pieces of biological machinery that disrupt your own biological machinery. The snake kills in the same way the mosquito does. The snake's poison kills in the same way malaria parasites do. Both statements are true, they're just operating on different abstraction levels.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    > Is there a difference though? Yes. > A snake is a vehicle for delivering poison, which is a chemical compound disrupting your biological machinery. The poison is the snake's own weapon and defence, not a hitch-hiker, and poison delivery is part of a snake's normal bite process (if the snake is poisonous). > A mosquito is a vehicle for delivering pieces of biological machinery that disrupt your own biological machinery. No, the mosquito itself delivers some saliva and draws blood, that somebody else takes advantage of this can hardly be ascribed to the mosquito's fault. Again, compare to other reservoirs, or to a dog giving you rabies. The dog didn't kill you, rabies did, the dog was the unwitting carrier of the infection rabies is not a weaponised dog secretion.

by r0h1n 13y ago

masklinn 13y ago

> If a mosquito bite can infect and kill, why isn't a mosquito dangerous? Because it's not the mosquito itself doing that (as opposed to, say, a rattlesnake), it's a parasite hitching a ride on an "innocent" (of that anyway) mosquito. Much like e.g. bats and henipaviruses, bats are a resevoir species but nobody in their right mind would say that Mark Preston was killed by a fruitbat.

TeMPOraL 13y ago
Is there a difference though? A snake is a vehicle for delivering poison, which is a chemical compound disrupting your biological machinery. A mosquito is a vehicle for delivering pieces of biological machinery that disrupt your own biological machinery. The snake kills in the same way the mosquito does. The snake's poison kills in the same way malaria parasites do. Both statements are true, they're just operating on different abstraction levels.
- masklinn 13y ago
  > Is there a difference though? Yes. > A snake is a vehicle for delivering poison, which is a chemical compound disrupting your biological machinery. The poison is the snake's own weapon and defence, not a hitch-hiker, and poison delivery is part of a snake's normal bite process (if the snake is poisonous). > A mosquito is a vehicle for delivering pieces of biological machinery that disrupt your own biological machinery. No, the mosquito itself delivers some saliva and draws blood, that somebody else takes advantage of this can hardly be ascribed to the mosquito's fault. Again, compare to other reservoirs, or to a dog giving you rabies. The dog didn't kill you, rabies did, the dog was the unwitting carrier of the infection rabies is not a weaponised dog secretion.