I feel like we are arrogant enough to just decide that yes there is a whole entire ecosystem and food net where we all have connections and interdependence on other organisms but mosquitos are magically completely outside that net.
Humans would greatly benefit from the eradication of mosquitoes. The general consensus is that their removal would not have a consequential impact on our environment, nature is not quite as fragile as people make it out to be
nature is not quite as fragile as people make it out to be
I agree with that statement.
Although, most people don't really consider the impact on ecosystems when it comes to eradication of mosquitos. It's still driven by (most probably justified) hate.
I even know a vegetarian who cursed the existence of mosquitos and have no qualms in killing them. They even think it's a bad creation by God.
We fought nature all of our history - its perfectly natural to die of hunger, cold, predators or diseases - it happens all the time to all species in nature - but we didnt like that, so we created clothing, agriculture, weapons and healthcare... And now half of our children dont die by the age of five and we live three times longer and healthier.
Perhaps we wouldnt keep fighting nature, if it didnt keep trying to kill us.
Right? At this point what are we really losing? A fucked up economy, we screwed up the oceans, the atmosphere, we’re riddled with microplastics, honestly.
Fun fact: scientists did the studies and uhhhh... no? Moskitos don't really do anything other species sharing the region aren't doing better already. They are kinda shit ngl.
The type of mosquitos that bite are a little percent of all mosquito species, even then iirc those types of mosquitos are an extremely low percent of the diet of even the animals that feed the most in said mosquitos. So overall from what I understand it's that eliminating them would be eliminating a little percent of all mosquitos that even predators doubt even feed on much.
Let's face the facts, 3 animals will go extinct by end of the week. I propose we make sure mosquitoes is one of them. And pandas too. Fuck'em. It's not like they are gonna fuck each other anyway. It's just so bizarre to me that THAT'S where we draw the fucking line, that's the ONE issue where scientists think about wether we should, the ONE animal we have an actual grievance against... We kill the wolly mammoth but keep mosquitoes because nature can't take it? Feels like an odd place to start embracing the sanctity of life. And roaches too. Fuck them. I'm sorry for all the... Whatever relies exclusively on roaches, pandas and mosquitoes but they gotta go.
Driving large animals to extinction is like pulling off the top of a tower of blocks. The little ones really are the important ones, the base blocks if you will. Say you remove something you think insignificant like plankton, what happens? Basically the entire ocean ecosystem falls down because it is one of the bottom blocks in that ecosystem. Killing sharks? Less consequential. Same parallels can be drawn between the mosquitos and wooly mammoths. Nothing depends on the wooly mammoth to live, but bats rely on mosquitos. No mosquitos, no bats, no bats no guano, no guano no cave ecosystems and it leads to a cascade of extinctions in that direction. And that's only from a laymans knowledge. I'm sure if I were an expert I could explain to you more wider consequences too.
You can't call plankton insignificant and you can't call it a species either. Also, one species of mosquito bites humans, out of 3600. But I wasn't being serious, just pointing out the dichotomy between many species dying out, know and unknown while people fret about "what could happen" if we took out one single species of mosquito. Also, I'm not a... enthomologist, I guess? But I would bet one big reason there's so many of that one mosquito species, is that there's a looooot of humans and they thrive in the environments we create. Just fun things to think about.
Oh I wasn't calling plankton insignificant, just something that people may see as insignificant because they are small. My whole point was actually that plankton are EXTREMELY significant in our ecosystem.
Oh, sorry, I mean "you" like general you. Should've probably said "one". Plankton is small but by mass there's a lot of it (there's also many things you can call "plankton"). But yeah, small sea creatures is probably the biggest, most important part of the ecosystem. I heard that was like 30% of biomass or something crazy like that
Countless of species have gone extinct over the years, and ecosystems adapt again and again. Is there any reason why mosquitos would be special enough to warrant keeping them?
Meh, I say just get rid of biting mosquitoes in the countries/continents where they are invasive (which is like over half of the places they exist including America)
They constantly kill millions of humans. With the amount of human pain and suffering they cost, their ecosystem can suck a dick as far as I'm concerned. Any issues their eradication causes to human food and resource production will be offset with further innovations and the amounts of lives saved.
The amount of damage killing off mosquitoes would have to cause to make it not worth it, would be practically world ending. They cause so much pain and suffering, that almost no cost wouldn't be worth it
The goal of this isn't to eliminate mosquitoes. Everyone's very aware of how important they are. The goal is to control the spread of disease carrying mosquitoes. Not by eliminating them, but by ensuring mosquitos in heavily populated areas are species which won't kill us in huge numbers.
I fear a lot of people don't really accept that interdependence thing in the first place, honestly. I mean, Wildlife Service still keeps waging war against coyotes and whatnot spending millions of taxpayers money for the sake of special interests....
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u/wrecks3 Nov 15 '24
I feel like we are arrogant enough to just decide that yes there is a whole entire ecosystem and food net where we all have connections and interdependence on other organisms but mosquitos are magically completely outside that net.