They kill millions every year, as a species they are the no. 1 enemy in human history. But where I (and likely OP) grew up, they didn’t spread disease so it seems kind if stupid to call mosquitoes deadly animals.
But where I (and likely OP) grew up, they didn’t spread disease
That got me interested. They do/did spread disease in the whole Northern hemisphere, too. According to wikipedia it used to be mostly Malaria, but according to articles in Nature etc. various mosquito-spread diseases are on the rise again.
The deadliness is the difference, I guess - with proper healthcare they don’t have to be.
PS: just found this in a Finnish article:
“Although there are no common tropical diseases spread by mosquitoes in Finland, individual cases of, for example, pogostan disease (Ockelbo virus) and rabbit plague (tularemia) have been reported. Climate warming can increase the risk of new diseases, such as the dengue or Zika virus, also spreading to the Nordic countries.”I’m in the north of Scotland, never seen a mosquito in my decades here, not once. That is, until this year, loads of the buggers!
Climate change is truly upon us, and it’s terrifying.
But the average person just won’t look up!
how did you not grow up with an instinctual hatred of mosquitos? i know what it would do to ecology and shit and i would still wipe every last one off the planet
I’ll deal with mosquitoes if we can wipe out bedbugs. I can smell those fuckers.
see i don’t get why people get mad at other people when we got a full on bug genocide we got to perpetrate
i know what it would do to ecology and shit and i would still wipe every last one off the planet
So, a lot of people say this because it makes a lot of logical sense, I thought the same, but if you actually ask people who are qualified, a lot of them are fairly sure that other insects/etc would likely fill the niche. Obviously still theory, but mosquitoes are usually not a cornerstone and likely mostly replacable.
Vibes of when some nature show was picking the best season and they spent half an hour talking about summer, fall, winter, and spring, and then in the end they picked monsoon season, which had not been mentioned even once the entire episode.
I was looking Stamets up just 2 days ago like where did this guy who is responsible for 10% of lemmy content go
Depression
Also, coconuts kill far more people than sharks.
That’s not true. It was an exaggeration by a shark attack expert some years ago trying to downplay the dangers of sharks.
Now I wonder if you are a coconut incident expert trying to downplay the dangers of coconuts.
Big Coconut is raiding the lemmy comments
We’re driving so many species to extinction inadvertently through climate change. Why can’t we just do one more but intentionally, just, as a treat. Bats eat other bugs too, it’ll be fine.
Isn’t man the deadliest animal?
IIRC, we were in the top 3.
I still think that mosquitos don’t ring in the next great extinction.
I never like calling mosquitoes the deadliest animal. They’re a disease vector, not the actual death-cause.
That’s like saying that guns don’t kill people, bullets do.
If mosquitoes are a major vector for the disease, then they should definitely share the responsibility for the death toll.
I’m not entirely sure how accurate that comparison would be, the mosquito isn’t designed to spread disease, it’s just a byproduct. Contrary to the bullet which is designed to kill and isn’t just coincidentally deadly
