• bad_alloc@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    32·
    3 days ago

    We have suffered for millions of years under mosquitos are they are likely the biggest killer of humans in history. Maybe us evolving big brains and developing genetic engineering is an evolutionary necessity?

    Or as Harbinger said: “We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.”

  • nednobbins@lemm.eeEnglish
    23·
    3 days ago

    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

  • thawed_caveman@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I can’t believe i’m saying this, but… I think mosquitos don’t deserve this. There’s basically no life form that deserves our cruelty more than mosquitoes, but this pushes a boundary i didn’t know was there.

  • CptEnder@lemmy.worldEnglish
    602·
    3 days ago

    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.

    • exasperation@lemm.eeEnglish
      62·
      3 days ago

      Ok but mosquitoes historically are the #1 killers of humans, by an order of magnitude

      Homo sapien: am I a joke to you?

      • nyctre@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        3 days ago

        According to google, yeah. Mosquito-borne diseases are responsible for 52 billion deaths. I was extremely surprised myself.

        • exasperation@lemm.eeEnglish
          21·
          3 days ago

          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.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zipEnglish
      13·
      2 days ago

      Great. First science was making the frogs gay. Now it’s turning the mosquitos trans.

      What’s next? Lesbian amoebas? Pansexual algae? Non-binary seahorses?

      Has science gone too far?

    • loutr@jlai.luEnglish
      34·
      3 days ago

      Hey, most bugs are cool and an important part of their ecosystem.

      Mosquitoes tho ? Yeah, fuck them.

      • shneancy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        104·
        3 days ago

        as much as i’d love to agree with that-

        mosquitos are pollinators and an important food source for quite a few animals. Our eco system would not be fine if we got rid of them

        • BalooWasWahoo@links.hackliberty.orgEnglish
          16·
          3 days ago

          First, they aren’t critical in either of those roles, and second, there are a few thousand species of mosquitoes, and only five of them cause issues with human health. Get rid of those five, and you haven’t caused much ruckus. The others will be fine in their continued parts.

          Now, that being said, nobody knows for certain what will happen if all five are completely eradicated, but the sentiment above seems to be the consensus among people who have studied them.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
          10·
          3 days ago

          The largest type of mosquito in the Americas is an invasive species. There would be no harm done wiping them out.

        • weker01@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          81·
          3 days ago

          That… That is a price I am willing to accept.

          Total mutual destruction is the only way™

          • mycodesucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            3 days ago

            Bees are pollinators because they go to flowers and collect and move pollen.

            Mosquitoes don’t have time to hang out in flowers because they’re busy screaming in your ear at 2 AM.

  • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.oneEnglish
    2406·
    4 days ago

    Mosquitoes have killed more humans than every disease ever (edit: when you obviously exclude malaria) along with every war ever, combined.

    Fuck those little shits. Let them all die, it will literally change nothing on this planet because nothing solely survives off predation on mosquitoes or their larvae.

    • The Snark Urge@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1682·
      4 days ago

      But what will happen when the humans lose their natural predators, we might destroy our habita- ah, right. Nevermind

    • Wild_Mastic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4810·
      4 days ago

      If those creatures that also eat mosquitoes cannot eat them anymore, that means they would have to eat other bugs more frequently, and possibly fucking up all the ecosystem.

      That said, fuck mosquitoes, they can take blood from other places.

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        60·
        4 days ago

        All of our best data on the impact says that it really wouldn’t matter. Sometimes a species is a linchpin for the ecosystem, and sometimes it isn’t.

        Sucks for mosquitoes, but there’s a very real chance that we’ll smallpox them, and the biggest concern will be our confidence that the virus we use doesn’t impact other species unintentionally.

        • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          16·
          4 days ago

          Haven’t read closely on it, but I’ve seen plenty of articles about the lack of effect we’d see over killing off mosquitoes. I have a feeling that, along with what you said, it’s because they’re tiny.

          Consider the dragonfly. They hunt mosquitoes efficiently. But relative to their size, a mosquito is like us eating a candy bar, or even less. Meanwhile, they could snatch about anything else and it would be like a 3-pound steak.

          • Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            3 days ago

            Now that you say that, average us candy bar contains 200…250 kcal a piece. That’s about 1/7th of BMR of an average healthy male.

      • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
        22·
        4 days ago

        They’re largely applying this technique to invasive species of mosquitoes, eg Aedes aegypti, which is a potent vector of disease and native of Africa that has spread worldwide only within the past 200 years

      • OutlierBlue@lemmy.caEnglish
        115·
        4 days ago

        They also eat nectar and are pollinators of various plants.

        There’s no way we could simply remove a creature as numerous and widespread as mosquitoes without any consequences.

      • Dabundis@lemmy.worldEnglish
        104·
        4 days ago

        If we were to somehow magically remove mosquitos from existence in an instant, we’d better hope something fills their ecological niche quickly

        • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          161·
          4 days ago

          Nothing eats them exclusively, that I know of. And they’re tiny. Any insectivore is getting far more nutrition out of about anything else.

          Maybe I’m wrong, but biologists seem to think eradication is a non-issue.

        • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
          61·
          4 days ago

          I think the purpose of the original genetic modification is to make them unable to bite humans (and spread malaria) but to otherwise leave them capable of feeding, thus not wiping them out and upsetting the ecosystem they’re part of

          • Dabundis@lemmy.worldEnglish
            113·
            4 days ago

            The niche being food for fish that share their ecosystem in larval stages, and birds/bats/frogs that share their ecosystem in their adult stage.

    • Dabundis@lemmy.worldEnglish
      249·
      4 days ago

      I understand what you’re saying here, but the set of people killed by “every disease ever” includes the entire set of people killed by mosquito-borne diseases. Mosquitoes can’t have killed more people than every disease ever because mosquitoes’ kill count is part of every disease ever.

    • TheRedSpade@lemmy.worldEnglish
      94·
      4 days ago

      Mosquitoes have killed more humans than every disease ever

      How do they kill us outside of spreading disease?

  • sweetpotato@lemmy.mlEnglish
    10·
    3 days ago

    I’d like to see any scientific study that reassures at least a little that this won’t have terrible ramifications for ecosystems and the food chain.

    We know too little, we are shortsighted and we have a bad record of intervening with nature.

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      It’s a pretty ineffective strategy, but I’m just going off this one photo.

      If it’s genetic, and the females can’t get a blood meal, then they won’t lay any eggs to pass on those genetics and just die.

      Then the ones without that gene will lay all their eggs and the next generation will be unchanged and they have to spend all that money again to do whatever they did which had no effect.

      • general_kitten@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        5·
        2 days ago

        Knowing a bit about crispr my understanding is that crispr is the technology that can be used to circumvent that scenario by making the effects kind of like an genetic time bomb

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1023·
    4 days ago

    This is a crime against nature and god and decency, and mosquitos are probably the only place I’d be absolutely, completely for it.

  • Reddfugee42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    This is as sad as watching the Terminator try to kill people with a broken gun. Alexa, play “in the arms of the angels”