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I mean, have you ever seen a pug? They’re fighting for air their entire life. Or chihuahua’s? Awful personality and bred out of usefulness.
I am a hippy nature person who tries to be merciful and kind to plants or insects. The sole exception is mosquitoes. Those fuckers want to take my blood and dont settle for one serving if they get the chance. Were in a biological armrace and so far we’ve been loosing. Let’s see how they like being fucked with.
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.
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
Many species of mosquitos are reliant on blood for reproduction. The females utilize a “blood meal” for the nutrients for laying eggs to be fertilized. Additionally, it is the female mosquito bite that transmits diseases like malaria.
Bats eat mosquitoes so we be killing off bats food supply. So just get bats and solve your mosquitoe problem.
They absolutely serve purpose in nature, they are a significant food source for bats and many other insects and males are pollinators.
I find the compromise acceptable. Please roll out the mosquito killing technology asap.
Harbor freight sells an electric flyswatter. The time is now!
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.
No to that entire comment.
Yes to that entire comment.
Yeah they’re not like wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets, who know nothing but hate and malice in their yellow and black striped hearts.
Yeah but those little bastards started it. People call what’s happening in Gaza a genocide but that’s nothing compared with the mozzie kill count.
This is a crime against nature and god and decency, and mosquitos are probably the only place I’d be absolutely, completely for it.
There are probably a few handfuls of other parasites that would count too.
Fuck bedbugs!
Yeah, do ticks next!
Then, landlords!
Uh, that’s what he said wasn’t it?
And toll road authorities!
Why are people just repeating the same thing over and over?
Up next on Info Wars: “They’re turning the mosquitoes gay!”
Sounds more like they are turning them trans than gay. So like a test run of the leftist plan for Republicans. Oh wait, are we allowed to talk about this outside of the secret meetings yet?
Which is actually what happened to the frogs
Ha ha! He’s just joking 😁 !
Horrible and unethical idea: We modify the mosquito to strongly prefer the blood of some specific animal species. Said species will then be raised in captivity only for it to be sacrificed to the mosquitos. This way they get to procreate and spread the modified gene to new generations, and keep them alive for the ecosystem to feed on.
It’s already happened, we’re the sacrifice…
Mosquitoes are the new Gods.
It’s a bit like watching a pug dog try to breath.
I had a fruit fly problem over the summer and felt guilty about the cruelty of the glue traps. But when it comes to mosquitos, roaches, and wasps, I’m Hitler. I would favor genetic alterations that expanded their capacity for suffering.
Roaches? Those don’t attack us right?
They do with the many diseases they carry.
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.
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
Yep. I was trying to be funny but the reality is brutally bad.
Mosquitos are just trying to save the planet by murdering as many humans as possible
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.
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.
Hopefully we can do the same for bedbugs. Fuck bedbugs. I can smell the little fuckers
Hey, at least pubic lice are going extinct!
I read that as public. I was pretty confused as to what you were talking about
Oh no! My patriotic merkin startup plans are ruined! I guess 'MericaMerkins was never meant to be…
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.
They’re largely applying this technique to invasive species of mosquitoes, eg Aedes aegypti, which is a potent vector of disease and native of Africa that has spread worldwide only within the past 200 years
If we were to somehow magically remove mosquitos from existence in an instant, we’d better hope something fills their ecological niche quickly
Nothing eats them exclusively, that I know of. And they’re tiny. Any insectivore is getting far more nutrition out of about anything else.
Maybe I’m wrong, but biologists seem to think eradication is a non-issue.
I think the purpose of the original genetic modification is to make them unable to bite humans (and spread malaria) but to otherwise leave them capable of feeding, thus not wiping them out and upsetting the ecosystem they’re part of
That niche being flying bloodsucker? I’m not sure the alternative will be any better
The niche being food for fish that share their ecosystem in larval stages, and birds/bats/frogs that share their ecosystem in their adult stage.
They also eat nectar and are pollinators of various plants.
There’s no way we could simply remove a creature as numerous and widespread as mosquitoes without any consequences.
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.
Edit: when excluding malaria.
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.
Jew mosquitos or mosquito Jews?
By distracting drivers into causing accidents? Statistically speaking… probably.
I know it’s not that deep but if you type a whole ass paragraph in all caps I want to beat you with a shoe.
what about all lowercase? is that fine to you? do you just want to easily ignore me? am i small potatoes to you?
nah, ricky, you’re no potatoes at all. 🔫
I KNOW. It’s like PICK your BATTLES people
👏 THANK 👏 YOU 👏
👟
Tbh I wouldn’t be sad if we genetically modified mosquitoes to breed them out of existence like we’ve done with screw worm.
I think it’s a genius solution to the explicit problem, but a terrible solution in a larger scope. There are many animals that feed on mosquitos, and they would suffer from massive decreases in mosquito population. This includes birds, frogs, bats, fish, and other insects (many aquatic animals eat mosquito larvae). I would hate to see a cascading reduction in animal populations as a result of these tactics.
I get the concern, and it’s a good concern to have when you’re talking about what would be such a huge shift in so many ecosystems…
…buuuuuut…
I have to believe this change would happen slowly… mosquitoes wouldn’t just go extinct over a holiday weekend. It’d take years, if not decades, of dedication to the eradication strategy and even then, certain populations may prove immune to the best efforts of science.
That being said, even if it did execute as planned, I feel like the gradual decline of the mosquito would coincide with a gradual increase in other invertebrate species that would fill that niche. So as mosquito populations slowly declined in a local pond or creek, you’d see things like say chironomids (midges) thriving with the reduced competition for habitat, and the fish that ate mosquito larvae replacing that part of their diet with more midges.
Not saying there couldn’t be other complications, but I don’t think we’d see results fast enough that we’d end up with a broken link of the food chain leading to ecosystem collapse.
The Aedes Aegypt can go fuck itself with all the diseases it spreads to us. Also, anywhere where it showed up as an unwanted guest, like all Americas, nature will just roll back 3 centuries or so.
My only problem with it is the fact that you’re taking a major insect class out of the ecosystem and later on down the line it might have serious implications. There will never be enough research on the effects of it until it’s too late to reverse. I hate mosquitoes (I live in Southern LA.) but I don’t think this is the answer.
I think there was a campaign in china in the mid 20th century that tried to exterminate a bunch of pests like this and it lead to catastrophic famines or something.
“The Four Evils Campaign” I think it was called.
Sparrows. China killed them all then freaked when locust are all the crops. Millions died from famine. They had to import and reintroduce sparrows.
Not sure about that, but there was an account of something similar in India, I believe, where there was a chemical agent involved that buzzards were extremely susceptible to and wound up killing off most, if not all of the population. This led to carcasses being left to rot and then became vectors for disease and basically led to a chain reaction of events that caused a few million people to die.
I don’t know if killing off mosquitos would have quite as a profound effect as this, but there are so many things I feel like we have almost no understanding of when it comes to the natural world to say either way.
I’ve read in a few comments here that there are studies saying that it wouldn’t have a crazy effect - if anyone could link them so I can give them a read, I would appreciate it.
I would not want to see things like this done to the overwhelming majority of living things. But mosquitoes, I say let them starve.
- ticks, too
Most dangerous animal in our forests
Isn’t the blood only needed for procreation?
Yes. Some (not all species) female mosquitoes drink blood for the protein, which they need for egg production. Their actual diet is nectar from flowers.
I mean, I hate mosquitoes as much as the next guy, but that sounds like a great way to destroy whole ecosystems that rely on mosquitoes as a food source.
Of all the creatures big and small we’ve driven extinct, mosquitoes will not likely be the one that breaks the camel’s back.
But keep in mind there are a lot of invasive populations of mosquitoes and some of them are disease carrying species. Since they’re invasive, by definition they’re not vital to the natural ecosystem and those populations could be safely wiped out.
