Why haven't mosquitoes been eliminated?

[Zeromaxx]

If we kill off the mosquitoes, where will the spiders get their iron from?

It's been tried. They tried it to eliminate yellow fever in the states.

The only way they'll cure that is by making japanese chicks less hot.

...I'm surprised nobody has touched this post for obvious reasons, isn't that generally referred to as rice fever anyway? Personally I don't know, it is around where I live though.

Anyway yeah, mosquitoes. Vital food source for everything insectivorous, and they recycle everything in a closed system. Unfortunately they recycle from everything, feeding off of basically anything with blood, leading to all the disease. Killing them off (if we could kill them off) leads to all out genocide to higher portions of the insect food chain (I'm no entomologist but I'd guess more iron deprivation and suffocation if the insect circulatory system works anything like ours) which could easily lead to a void (probably caused by overpopulation of lower levels of the food chain) that needs to be filled and cause a greater threat and nuisance, isn't the theory of evolution just great? Before anyone asks how evolution relates to that; this directly relates to evolution as every species must find it's given niche, and what better one to fill than one that's been done before?

A bit wordy and a bit of a retread but it's better to have a reference point for people who don't know much on the subject. To kill such a widespread insect we'd need an extremely detailed system to catalog the general dna sequence of every different species worldwide along with the general dna sequence of everything else and then work for years on an extremely targeted insecticide and delivery system; and by then with our general "luck" a new species would arise and take over or some such thing. Regardless, it's logistically impossible.

Well...at the current time at least, I can't speak for the future.

 

[Volothos]

Weren't some species of mosquitoes sort of a "natural barrier"?

I remember the Tsetse Fly species was one but we went in and messed it all up.

 

[bazookabob]

Humanity has tried. But this is a species that can have hundreds of offspring in I believe a week and all they require is a still pool of water no bigger than than a glass of water to reproduce. Eliminating something like that is nearly impossible.

 

[LewsTherin]

Mosquitoes are an important part of the ecosystem, what's important is to cure the diseases they cary, not to kill all mosquitoes in existence.

QFT. You take out Mosquitoes and you have just killed off most species of bat in NA, dragonflies, frogs, etc.

Druid says: don't screw around with nature

 

[SkinnySlim]

I think a better "cure" is better health care for people in afflicted areas(like Africa). After all, the delegates used to leave the U.S. capitol in order to avoid high rates of mosquito born illness during the summer months. But now, with better nutrition and health care, it's not as much of a problem. Controlled use of DDT would help as well, unfortunately Rachel Carson screwed us on that.

 

[Lazzi]

Nature needs them...Not to sound cruel but people multiply so fast that if nature didn't have SOME way to eliminate us on a mass scale we'd probably kill ourselves(probably will anyway...)

He right, theyre also part of our echo system. with out them we woudl lose damsel flies, dragon flies, bats, alrge amoutn of fish.

Oh and we would end up with even mroe peopel that we cant provid for.

 

[Knight Templar]

Haven't you ever taken biology? They're vital for the ecosystem.

In victoria they are planing to kill off the females with a man-made plague, so not good?

 

[Erana]

And starve these poor sweethearts? I think not!

 

[Fightgarr]

I will say one thing. DDT. That is all you need. Research it and figure out what went wrong. Don't fuck with the environment. Eliminating mosquitoes is a stupid idea. We've tried it before and we fucked up the ENTIRE ecosystem of an island. Honestly, what were you thinking?

 

[Labyrinth]

In terms of ability, Darwin says no. Even if you come up with something that wipes out most of a population, the rest of it will breed more because they don't have competition, and you will get a resistant species. This is a major problem with other things, such as treating HIV.

I don't think we should either. For all they're an irritation, we have ways to kill the little buggers when they bite us, or stay away from them. Wiping out that link in the food web could cause enormous problems. They're both a food source for other species and a pollinator for plants. I would even go so far as to say that it could destabilise many ecosystems if they were removed. Just like flies.

 

[Helmet]

If we kill off the mosquitoes, where will the spiders get their iron from?

It's been tried. They tried it to eliminate yellow fever in the states.

The only way they'll cure that is by making japanese chicks less hot.

I shall fight this "cure" in every way I possibly can.

On topic, though- mosquitoes are an annoyance but removing any single life form entirely from this planet will change it in ways we cannot predict.

As an example, say all the bees on the planet died. There's no telling what would happen! It could be something completely idiotic, like trees start killing people!

....God, that movie was terrible...

 

[bodyklok]

They are small and fast catching them all would be an astronomical task.

 

[joystickjunki3]

Even if they weren't vital to the ecosystem, PETA or some group would get all pissy if we tried to completely knock them out.

 

[hypothetical fact]

Killing off the mosquitoes will have the same impact on the animal kingdom as the disappearing bees are having on the plants.

 

[Jinx_Dragon]

Why haven't roaches been eliminated? They scare the fuck out of me.
Because the ecosystem is not a big truck. It is a series of tubes. You can't just fuck with it.

Hah! They were around before the dinosaurs. If you cut the head of a cockroach it will carry on for a day or two. Tough little bastards that will out-live humans.

They are the pinnacle of evolution! It is a disturbing fact but it is true, evolution created the cockroach to be it's shining gem. It is a creature that, as a race, can survive periods where 95% of all other species are wiped from the face of the earth and has survived several of these periods, holding the title of the only species to ever survive more then one.

Creepy, creepy creatures that will be around long after we are all gone.

 

[JWAN]

It's been tried. They tried it to eliminate yellow fever in the states.

It's harder than it sounds...

they did ok, till they OVER did it

it started thinning birds eggs, but it turns out that they could cut back on what they were doing by 75% and they would have actually done more good than harm.

The trick was moderation and it was the 50's-60's when that word did not apply to unknown side effects.

I think they should bring back fogging for mosquitoes but you can do stuff yourself to help kill them off

1.Electric Bug Zapper I have a good one that gets a ton of them (but it draws them in for about 150 yards, IN a housing development, out in the country you just attract every single one within miles it feels like)
2. Mosquito netting
3. Bat houses (I built 4 that can hold a thousand each for my Eagle Scout project)
4. Propane powered mosquito killers (some REALLY great ones out now)
5. Trim your freaking pine trees 12-18 inches from the ground (mosquitos in my state like pine trees)
6. Remove stagnant water ( OR pour a few cups of 90% alcohol into the stagnant water, or bleach)
7. Use good repellents
8. build large campfire (24-38in in diameter will attract mosquitoes and they go right in and burn up)
9. put up a light frame around your pool built out of 2*6's and window screen then put up 2 bug zappers (one on one side one on the other and the bugs will die by the thousands, sometimes by the tens of thousands)
10. Dawn and Dusk are the worst times, don't go out and you will not give them anything to feed on

 

[mark_n_b]

I mean, they kill millions of people a year. They serve no purpose. They cause misery. I just don't see why scientists devise some method to eliminate them. If you have any ideas on how we could go about doing this, speak up.

millions a year? hyperbolizing a bit aren't we? If you are considering third world tropical climates, the hundreds potentially thousands that die every year from mosquito related ailments are more often the victims of shoddy medical care and living conditions than the mosquito population.

Yeah, those bites are itchy but mosquitoes provide a mechanism of building antibodies to viral conditions, dengue fever for instance. The purpose they must serve within the ecosystem would be more apparent to me if I were a biologist, but go to school or use google to find sites that do more than prove your point of view.

 

[Fatalis67]

Maybe you can join Tibbles the cat and become the second individual to singlehandedly wipe out an entire species.

 

[KeyMaster45]

Scientists haven't been able to find a way to kill them without killing everything else. Anything less than that and they won't kill all of them.

You must not live in the south, down here we got trucks with air compressers duck taped to the back that spray "mosquito begone" every morning from the time it gets warm (right about this time of year) to our winter....week I guess. All to keep west nile virus at bay. And yes, that crap can harm ya, that's why they do it at around 5-6am. and tell people to stay in door at those times. Luckily you would have to jump into the cloud behind the truck to do any damage to yourself, so it all works out.