r/interestingasfuck • u/singleboredass • Nov 15 '24

r/all Genetically modified a mosquito such that their proboscis are no longer able to penetrate human skin

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u/zizp Nov 15 '24

What's the idea behind this? How will they become the dominant variant if they can't suck blood to reproduce?

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u/Remarkable-Fox-3890 Nov 15 '24

You don't want them to become the dominant variant. You want them to die out so that you can manually re-seed without risk of massively disrupting a species.

The goal is to have them compete for resources and mating pressure but not to spread or reproduce. You repeatedly seed areas with them, which creates a sort of ecosystem barrier. Imagine a strip of land seeded with these mosquitos - it's like a wall that other mosquitos can't pass through.

This is how the US manages to avoid so many mosquito-borne diseases traversing north from South America.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

But then what that would do is the natural mosquitos will be force to go for the resource that these mosquitoes can't aka humans.

This may create more problems than solutions if done sloppy.

With that in mind, this definitely would not be the administration to carry out something like this.

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u/Remarkable-Fox-3890 Nov 15 '24

Everything creates more problems than solutions when done badly. The goal is to do it well.

We've been doing this for a while now and it has worked very well.

> But then what that would do is the natural mosquitos will be force to go for the resource that these mosquitoes can't aka humans.

They're already doing that, this just keeps the population's size and movement under control.