This checks out with my anecdata, though. When I’m out with my spouse the mosquitoes seem to prefer only me. I run hotter, sweat more and have painful allergic reactions to every bite. Kid got my genes here and has it even worse.
Stopping illegal logging is worth the death of hundreds of thousands of children every year? That is a low ball estimate of the death due to mosquito borne illnesses.
Yes, the rainforests are irreplaceable and a key part of the biosphere. Making them vulnerable to removal could easily be worse than the deaths due to mosquito borne illnesses.
Protecting the rainforest is fine, but relying on loggers being scared of mosquitoes isn’t an effective way to do it. What if they find good repellents? Or start spraying the forest before logging? We can kill the mosquitoes and work to save the forest, they’re not exclusive.
What about species which use mosquitos as food? History shows that killing off entire species is a very questionable thing to do, no matter how good the cause.
I think a much better idea would be developing medicine and vaccines for diseases spread by mosquitos.
We shouldn't work to eradicate a worldwide pest that causes hundreds of thousands (millions?) of annual deaths because it might encourage more logging?
The solution to every big problem humanity faces will inevitably create other smaller problems for us to solve. Two steps forward...
Mosquito larvae are very important in aquatic ecology (1). While they are annoying as F they are important to our overall ecosystem.
Bees sting and kill people each year but no one would ever attempt to sterilize all of the bees. They are different, yes, but each play an important part on our planet.
>Bees sting and kill people each year but no one would ever attempt to sterilize all of the bees.
I don’t think bee stings kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. The death toll from malaria alone is over 400,000 people every year mostly children.
I think that the benefits from wiping out disease causing mosquitoes are worth the risk.
You would immediately save hundreds of thousands of lives every year as well as keep millions of people from being sick and disabled.
You can disrupt ecosystems without ending the world ("life finds a way").
The logic in your linked article is a bit specious; certain species eat mosquito larvae, so without mosquitoes they won't have food, and the species eating them won't have food, and so on. But nothing is actually static, there would be some dynamic adjustment (arguably, hard to predict). Species will find something else to snack on.
In fact you could argue that those species eating mosquito larvae are detrimental to mosquitoes! Maybe they're preventing something else from happening by eating them before they develop.
I'm a Kiwi, and whether gorse is a problem is a matter of perspective. It's not causing any harm to almost anyone at all. It's not what's native, so people don't like it - that's fine, but it's mostly aesthetics at the end of the day. I love our native plants and birds, but I also think gorse is really pretty when it's all in flower.
But that's not the point: gorse in NZ is not even slightly comparable to mosquito-borne illnesses. No-one ever died because of gorse in New Zealand. According to Unicef malaria kills 1,000,000 people every year. This is something we might want to disrupt.
In NZ, gorse is actually a fairly good nursery for native trees/bush that will eventually shade it out and take over from it. The main problem gorse caused was taking over grassy farmland.
Pine trees are another matter though, they make it very difficult for native plants.
"Eradicating any organism would have serious consequences for ecosystems — wouldn't it? Not when it comes to mosquitoes, finds Janet Fang."
Some ecosystems would be altered for sure but it doesn't appear to be widely believed that there would be serious disruption.
"There are 3,500 named species of mosquito, of which only a couple of hundred bite or bother humans."
We know we don't need them and we don't believe that the earth needs them, but we could start with eradicating the couple hundred species that pester us.
I spend much of my time in Florida wetlands, aka swamp. The mosquitoes are perennially surreal on all but the coolest nights and simply bellicose throughout the summer. One can bathe in repellant, but must then wear earplugs to mute the bloodletting frenzy. Imagine exceedingly libidinous and hyper fecund GMO California raisins with fangs, ...on bathsalts and antigravity. Then give them 2-stroke weedwackers and encephalitis. Against my better judgement, I often pray that some rogue scientist will destroy them, earth be damned.
In the meantime, I use picaridin. Picaridin, in contrast to DEET, does not destroy plastics, isn't greasy, and is more effective at preventing the bastards from actually making contact. DEET, is more effective at preventing bites - but not contact. I prefer to remain less molested while incurring a few bites rather than function as a mosquito stadium. Other than deet and picaridin, nothing works. Ultrasound, lights, oils, permethrin, gasses - they are useless for me. My type comprises a potential gold mine for anyone who discovers an eco-friendly, dry, more effective solution. Please do!
Neem oil works 100% (and is a single-source natural plant oil), but it's a smelly oil (strong nutty smell) and, being oil, means you have to get all slicky in order to be effective.
With neem, they may fly around you, but they never land on you. They hate its smell, and also, the oil's compound kills them / makes them and all other small insects sterile.
So yeah if you're wearing clothes then they have to be ones you're prepared to get oil on and then wash it out using hot water and baking soda or whatever.
Burning neem-tree [0] leaves is in regular practice in most non-urban Indian neighborhoods, to stave off insects and flies, including mosquitoes. Not sure how effective it is, though.
I must point out that Wikipedia has a page on neem oil and warns of toxicity if consumed raw [1].
> "I often pray that some rogue scientist will destroy them, earth be damned."
Do you think eliminating mosquitos per se would have dire consequences for the planet, or is it more of a "slippery slope" concern about the idea and potential consequences of deliberate extinction?
Observing them in the abundance I do (harvest lbs per hour with a cricket bat), it seems obvious that they're a rich food source for wildlife, from ground to sky. Wildlife and ecology are uncommon concerns in Florida, unfortunately. Such can be clearly deduced from the repugnant new developments scourging the state, which are basically micro Epcot centers stripped of all aesthetics, ie fantasy villages divorced from indigenous reality. The Everglades, for example, is a keystone system, for the planet, and undoubtedly a geiser of mosquitoes. Eliminating any non invasive species, but notably the mosquito, would imo, have negative consequences despite brief anthropic jubilee. My brutal loathing aside, I'd be very reluctant to fulfill my prayer. I don't think it's a slippery slope, but it's one that through means intenional or not, we'll probably see as populations grow under current practices.
This is one of those topics where people should really learn from human history rather than jump to conclusions because they sound good at first thought:
The Four Pests Campaign, was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows....[The resulting] ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 15–45 million people died of starvation.[1]
The full quote (and the rest of the article), when including the parts you omitted, implies that it was the campaign against sparrows, not mosquitos, that was the main problem:
> The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows is also known as Smash Sparrows Campaign (Chinese: 打麻雀运动; pinyin: Dǎ Máquè Yùndòng) or Eliminate Sparrows Campaign (Chinese: 消灭麻雀运动; pinyin: Xiāomiè Máquè Yùndòng), which resulted in severe ecological imbalance, being one of the causes of the Great Chinese Famine. In 1960, Mao Zedong ended the campaign against sparrows and redirected the fourth focus to bed bugs.
There's no suggestion in the article you referenced that attempting to eliminate mosquitos had anything to do with the famine.
>There's no suggestion in the article you referenced that attempting to eliminate mosquitos had anything to do with the famine.
Not directly, but assuming that what humans regard as pests don't have a function in the ecosystem, so I'd say his point is valid. Mess with the ecosystem in an extreme way and you might suffer dire consequences.
> Mess with the ecosystem in an extreme way and you might suffer dire consequences.
This was exactly my main point.
Apparently the elimination of sparrows also led to a dramatic increase in mosquitos (since sparrows eat mosquitoes), so it had a domino effect of negative impacts. They didn't have the technology to obliterate mosquitoes at the time, and that's essentially what we're talking about here...so I'm saying there will likely be unforeseen consequences if people mess with this. (coming from a guy who hates mosquitoes - i actually bought mosquito pants last year bc they are so bad in the summer when I'm doing yard work)
If something hot is placed in the room, mosquitoes should have a preference for that over the humans. Why would such a simple set up to avoid mosquito bites would not work (I do not think it does)? Genuinely looking to enhance my understanding.
46 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 92.8 ms ] threadMany areas of rainforest are only protected against illegal logging operations because they are dense with malarial mosquitos.
I think a much better idea would be developing medicine and vaccines for diseases spread by mosquitos.
You are saying we should make that happen as soon as possible.
Killing the mosquitos is not exclusive with working to save the forest only if you have another way to save the forest.
Nothing has been able to prevent the illegal logging except mosquitoes. What is your suggestion?
We shouldn't work to eradicate a worldwide pest that causes hundreds of thousands (millions?) of annual deaths because it might encourage more logging?
The solution to every big problem humanity faces will inevitably create other smaller problems for us to solve. Two steps forward...
Don’t straw man. Steel man if you are serious about debating this.
A low cost, low tech method to kill mosquitoes in a room guaranteed:
A (foldable?) 6x6 foot mosquito zapper powered by a small lead acid battery (should last a few days?) will do wonders world wide right NOW.
The current must be safe enough for babies to touch. Cos people will zap themselves guaranteed.
I'll love it if someone could create one using those dc high voltage generator kits from eBay or AliExpress. And make tutorial for it.
The large size increases the probability that the mosquito will electrocute itself while running around.
Bees sting and kill people each year but no one would ever attempt to sterilize all of the bees. They are different, yes, but each play an important part on our planet.
(1) https://www.google.com/amp/s/io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-m...
I don’t think bee stings kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. The death toll from malaria alone is over 400,000 people every year mostly children.
I think that the benefits from wiping out disease causing mosquitoes are worth the risk.
You would immediately save hundreds of thousands of lives every year as well as keep millions of people from being sick and disabled.
The logic in your linked article is a bit specious; certain species eat mosquito larvae, so without mosquitoes they won't have food, and the species eating them won't have food, and so on. But nothing is actually static, there would be some dynamic adjustment (arguably, hard to predict). Species will find something else to snack on.
In fact you could argue that those species eating mosquito larvae are detrimental to mosquitoes! Maybe they're preventing something else from happening by eating them before they develop.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170516-when-wolves-return-t...
https://www.gorgeouscreatures.com.au/blogs/news/the-history-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorse_in_New_Zealand
But that's not the point: gorse in NZ is not even slightly comparable to mosquito-borne illnesses. No-one ever died because of gorse in New Zealand. According to Unicef malaria kills 1,000,000 people every year. This is something we might want to disrupt.
Pine trees are another matter though, they make it very difficult for native plants.
Some ecosystems would be altered for sure but it doesn't appear to be widely believed that there would be serious disruption.
"There are 3,500 named species of mosquito, of which only a couple of hundred bite or bother humans."
We know we don't need them and we don't believe that the earth needs them, but we could start with eradicating the couple hundred species that pester us.
https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a
In the meantime, I use picaridin. Picaridin, in contrast to DEET, does not destroy plastics, isn't greasy, and is more effective at preventing the bastards from actually making contact. DEET, is more effective at preventing bites - but not contact. I prefer to remain less molested while incurring a few bites rather than function as a mosquito stadium. Other than deet and picaridin, nothing works. Ultrasound, lights, oils, permethrin, gasses - they are useless for me. My type comprises a potential gold mine for anyone who discovers an eco-friendly, dry, more effective solution. Please do!
With neem, they may fly around you, but they never land on you. They hate its smell, and also, the oil's compound kills them / makes them and all other small insects sterile.
So yeah if you're wearing clothes then they have to be ones you're prepared to get oil on and then wash it out using hot water and baking soda or whatever.
I must point out that Wikipedia has a page on neem oil and warns of toxicity if consumed raw [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azadirachta_indica
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neem_oil
Do you think eliminating mosquitos per se would have dire consequences for the planet, or is it more of a "slippery slope" concern about the idea and potential consequences of deliberate extinction?
The Four Pests Campaign, was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows....[The resulting] ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 15–45 million people died of starvation.[1]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
> The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows is also known as Smash Sparrows Campaign (Chinese: 打麻雀运动; pinyin: Dǎ Máquè Yùndòng) or Eliminate Sparrows Campaign (Chinese: 消灭麻雀运动; pinyin: Xiāomiè Máquè Yùndòng), which resulted in severe ecological imbalance, being one of the causes of the Great Chinese Famine. In 1960, Mao Zedong ended the campaign against sparrows and redirected the fourth focus to bed bugs.
There's no suggestion in the article you referenced that attempting to eliminate mosquitos had anything to do with the famine.
Not directly, but assuming that what humans regard as pests don't have a function in the ecosystem, so I'd say his point is valid. Mess with the ecosystem in an extreme way and you might suffer dire consequences.
This was exactly my main point.
Apparently the elimination of sparrows also led to a dramatic increase in mosquitos (since sparrows eat mosquitoes), so it had a domino effect of negative impacts. They didn't have the technology to obliterate mosquitoes at the time, and that's essentially what we're talking about here...so I'm saying there will likely be unforeseen consequences if people mess with this. (coming from a guy who hates mosquitoes - i actually bought mosquito pants last year bc they are so bad in the summer when I'm doing yard work)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hU1GezJo79M