You must log in or register to comment.
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
Right, but consider:
Fuck them bugs
Ironclad reasoning. Flawless execution. Give this person a doctorate
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?
According to google, yeah. Mosquito-borne diseases are responsible for 52 billion deaths. I was extremely surprised myself.
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.
I find the compromise acceptable. Please roll out the mosquito killing technology asap.
Harbor freight sells an electric flyswatter. The time is now!
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.
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 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 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.
Chihuahuas can have a not completely closed cranial bone (is this the right word?), which means if you pet them at the wrong place you literally can touch the brain and potentially kill them. My mood would be bad, too, if this was the case for my body.
Pugs also can have their eyes popping out if you handle them wrong (e.g. gripping them at their neck).
The head of King Charles Spaniels are to small, meaning their brain does not have enough room. This can lead to brain fluids getting stuck in the head, which increases pressure on the brain, leading to infathomable headaches, hallucinations, motor deficits, etc, pp.
Breeding some dog breeds should really be prohibited.
. This can lead to brain fluids getting stuck in the head, which increases pressure on the brain, leading to infathomable headaches, hallucinations, motor deficits, etc, pp.
Oh man I can never enjoy their derpy look again, knowing it’s because their brain doesn’t have room.
Breeding some dog breeds should really be prohibited.
Strong agree. Although there are also breeders doing “healthy” versions of pugs, German sheperds (their hips are awful for them, but the back “sliding down” to low hips was considered an essential characteristic for the race), French bulldogs, etc.
For pugs they’re calling it “retro pug” and essentially theyre trying to get to what the breeds was before fancy European dog breeders started valuing aesthetics more than say, the dog being able to breathe.
The AKC and other “dog standards” organizations should be labelled as animal abusers for their rigid requirements in dog breeds. If PETA wants to do good in this world, that’s who they should be targeting.
“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
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.
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
It’s a bit like watching a pug dog try to breath.
That seems mild.
Could we try to convince the males that they are the ugliest things on earth so they find large animals that can step on them?
Maybe come up with a liquid that you put in standing water that makes the mosquitoes grow very tiny legs and a very large left wing? You know, so they have to fly to move and they can only fly spinning like crazy.
I got a better one! Make them neon bright and glow in the dark. Make those fuckers be the center of attention. I’m talking kids with nets and old guys with cameras and microscopes with single mosquito flashes (like 1 mosquitoes per photo). And of course sugar sweet flavor? Everything under the sun trying to find them and eat them as snacks. I kinda like this one the best.
And this is it. This is how we arrived where we are now.
Nature? KILL IT! EXTERMINATE IT!
We’ve spend 2000 years slowly beeting nature to our wims. It has destroyed the planets ecosystem on a scale only seen by planet wide desasters in the past. We have driven countless species into extinction, and still counting. We take without any regard or resecpt for anything then our own needs.
That is exactly the mindset the comment I am replying to has to me.
Neon bright mosquitoes that glow in the dark? Heck yeah! I’ll keep some in a jar for Halloween 🎃😄!
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.
They absolutely serve purpose in nature, they are a significant food source for bats and many other insects and males are pollinators.
They need blood to procreate so the method in the post does exactly what you are asking for
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.
Genetically engineer them to grow to the size of Cessna. Ride them to battle
We genetically engineered mosquitoes to have gender dysmorphia - weird times.
They are turning the
frogs gaymosquitoes trans!
I get the caution about unintended consequences but damnit of all the crazy planetary issues we’re dealing with right now, I’d rank
“oops, got rid of West Nile and Malaria as well as annoying little red bumps from wandering too far from big cities”
As a win, the consequences of which we can probably figure out how to deal with when we come to it.
I know it doesn’t work that way but I’d trade all the world’s mosquitoes to keep the polar bears or pangolins or something any day.
Mosquitoes are the bottom of the food chain. There’s reason to be worried about this getting out of hand
