Let’s face it mosquitos are fuc*ing irritating and they Suck (literally). I want to know what would happen if mosquitoes went extinct, how would it change the nature.
PS: If you have any LiFe HaCk to getting invisible to mosquitos please share (in a group of 10 people and 10 mosquitos, I’ll get 10 bites and others none)
In: Biology
Mosquitos are food for other things. Bigger things. And face it, there’s a fuckton of them. So if that food source goes away and there isn’t a ready replacement (very likely) there are ripple effects up and down the food chain. Because everything is connected to everything else. The point is that you can have all kinds of unintended consequences on an ecosystem by wiping out a particular species if you do not have a complete understanding of how that species relates with others in that ecosystem.
There’s actually a **embellished** **story** (with many versions) that illustrates this point nicely. It focuses on DDT (an insecticide) being used to wipe out mosquitos in which spread malaria in Borneo.
1)The WHO sprayed DDT indiscriminately, which reduced the mosquito population. But it also killed other insects, like a wasp species.
2) The wasp’s food were caterpillars which ate the grasses that the villagers used to cover their homes. Without the wasps, the caterpillars went crazy and roofs started to cave in.
3) The dead wasps were consumed by geckoes, which were not as affected by the DDT and didn’t die immediately, but were a food source for the local feral cat population. The cats which ate the geckoes died from the DDT poisoning.
4) The drop in the cat population allowed rats to multiply out of control, which lead to spread of infectious disease via rats.
The solution was to airdrop a new population of cats onto the island — “operation Cat drop”
[https://youtu.be/17BP9n6g1F0](https://youtu.be/17BP9n6g1F0)
Latest Answers