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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.
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.
Of all the creatures big and small we’ve driven extinct, mosquitoes will not likely be the one that breaks the camel’s back.
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.
👏 THANK 👏 YOU 👏
👟
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. 🔫
This is a crime against nature and god and decency, and mosquitos are probably the only place I’d be absolutely, completely for it.
Animal farming is a crime against nature, god and decency and we’re completely for that too, don’t forget
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?
Ha ha! He’s just joking 😁 !
Which is actually what happened to the frogs
I think you’re asking for a kind of nuance that most Info Warriors are unable to provide.
Tbh I wouldn’t be sad if we genetically modified mosquitoes to breed them out of existence like we’ve done with screw worm.
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 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.
- What screw worm??
- Exactly.
what frost giants?
Vote odin
Ok but mosquitoes historically are the #1 killers of humans, by an order of magnitude. This could be argued as a form of evolution. We simply engineered them out as a threat. GG get gud scrub, see you in 3 million years when you have your own AI generated bioengineering.
Ok but mosquitoes historically are the #1 killers of humans, by an order of magnitude
Homo sapien: am I a joke to you?
I’m pretty sure over history mosquitoes have killed far more people than people have.
Probably. But it’s also a bit of a difficult question to compare the two.
One prominent estimate is that about half of all humans who have ever lived died from mosquito-related illness, about 50 billion of the 100 billion humans who have ever lived.
For humans, it’s estimated that about 3-4% of paleolithic humans died from violence at the hands of another person, and that number may have risen to about 12% during medieval history, before plummetting in the modern age.
But that’s the comparison of direct violence versus illness. Humans have a strong capacity to indirectly cause death, including by starvation, illness, indirect trauma. How do we count deaths from being intentionally starved as part of a siege? Or biological weapons, including the time the Nazis intentionally flooded Italian marshes to increase malaria? Do we double count those as both human and mosquito deaths?
And then there’s unintentional deaths, caused by indifference or recklessness or negligence. Humans have caused famines, floods, fires, etc.
So yeah, mosquitoes probably win. But don’t sleep on humans. And remember that the count is still going on, and humans can theoretically take the lead in the future.
According to google, yeah. Mosquito-borne diseases are responsible for 52 billion deaths. I was extremely surprised myself.
I am a hippy nature person who tries to be merciful and kind to plants or insects. The exceptions are mosquitoes and ticks. 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.
Also ticks.
I would take 100 mosquito bites over one tick. One of the only creatures in nature to scare the hell out of me. And I own snakes.
Ahh, someone else who views the risks correctly. Spent a lot of time in the swamps in Alabama. Wore snake gaiters for the giant cotton mouths. Soaked my clothes in permethrin. Still way more scared of the ticks than the snakes. Especially that Alphagal stuff.
I find the compromise acceptable. Please roll out the mosquito killing technology asap.
Harbor freight sells an electric flyswatter. The time is now!
As a Brazilian, I won’t feel sorry for these fuckers.
I’m from Buenos Aires and I say kill 'em all!
The only good bug is a dead bug.
We have suffered for millions of years under mosquitos are they are likely the biggest killer of humans in history. Maybe us evolving big brains and developing genetic engineering is an evolutionary necessity?
Or as Harbinger said: “We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.”
Is that mass effect?
Yep :)
Drew Karpyshyn really knocked that conversation out of the park. One of the very best scenes in gaming history.
See, that is why you’d want actual authors to do your game’s story for you…
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.
Maybe to that entire comment.
Yes to that entire comment.
VEM
Vegan
Except MosquitosI 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.
I mean it’s cheap easy protein. I’m not gonna judge.
Mosquito paste is delicious
Yeah agreed, all life is sacred except the ones we don’t like.
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.
“You see what we do to the things we love???”
“What the fuck do you think we’re going to do to you?!”
Or the chickens you eat? They can’t even stand up out of their own feces
Yeah they’re my soul animals
In pretty much every other context, yeah. But for real, fuck mosquitoes.
I get the feeling of discomfort but it’s basically the same feeling we get when someone breaks a pencil
There is no evidence that a mosquito is capable of feeling the kind of despair or horror that a human would feel in a similar situation. It’s unlikely that mosquitos can form emotions at all.
At the same time, a huge portion of human-animal interactions involve the human controlling the animal in ways that they animal can’t even comprehend. A dog has no idea you’re doing operant conditioning to change their behavior. Pigs have no idea they’re being fed just so they and their children can be eaten.
The only way to avoid this kind of thing is to turn off your big human brain and go back to ape tier. We might need to go farther down the tier list than that though https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
