Since when are we concerned with causing mass extinctions?
When CCP did a controlled eradication of pest animals destroying their crops, it caused the great Chinese famine and millions died. Mostly because these pest animals were natural enemies to even worse pests.
Although the sparrow campaign ended in disaster, the other three anti-pest campaigns may have contributed to the improvement in the health statistics in the 1950s.[18]
Seems the birds may have been the only screw up. No harm reported from the mosquitos, flies, and rats.
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Yea, those misquitos are trying to rid us of the human pest, but it’s just too damn tenacious and pernicious!
Since it would drastically affect our ability to survive!
Wait…
Nevermind.
We can’t. There are effective population controls though.
Ticks on the other hand could disappear entirely and nothing would be impacted negatively. They’re useless parasites.
Just exterminate the ones that bite humans. The non-biting ones will fill that ecological niche, and then you’re good to go.
Opossums would be very sad to see ticks go.
That’s been disproven.
Chickens?
Don’t need ticks, chickens will eat just about anything
Including each other
Chickens are vicious lil dinosaurs
It was a sobering moment wandering around the farm supply store and finding chicken “anti-cannibalism spray.”
Ticks are bad, but have utility for scientists in seeing if predators of smaller animals have gone out of control in an area.
Not enough utility. Death to ticks!
At the risk of derailing the conversation, if you haven’t seen The Last Wish, do yourself a favour.
If you’ve seen the first Puss In Boots and was dissuaded, give this a chance.
The animation is Spiderverse tier, the theming and context of the movie is very much not for children.
If you need convincing, take four minutes to watch this clip of Puss meeting >!death!<
Well now I’m intrigued
I’m curious to know what you think after watching.
Seconded.
There are only a few species of mosquitoes that pose a threat to humans (and several thousand that don’t). If we had a way to effectively eradicate those few species, then it probably wouldn’t have major consequences. They don’t fill an important, unique niche in their ecosystems like, say, bees.
But we don’t have a way to do that. Not without huge collateral damage from poisons and the like. There’s been some promising work with genetic engineering, releasing mosquitoes that will mate and produce non-viable offspring. This can greatly reduce a local population in the short-term, but they bounce back.
This can greatly reduce a local population in the short-term, but they bounce back.
Not necessarily, all attempts/experiments done so far have been intentionally limited. If we simply throw the dial to 11 and just absolutely flooded the areas it might have a much more long term impact and possibly eradication
The US entirely eliminated screwworms within its border in a very similar fashion 60 years ago and then wiped them off the whole continent just for good measure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olj8arvfYj4
If we actually directed effort at exterminating harmful mosquitos, they would be gone in a couple years.
It’s bizarre to me. We do so much carelessly, but here we’re being extra careful? 600,000 people die of malaria every year. A delay of one day means 1,600 people die.
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All other mammals: Will you guys hurry up and do something already?! We suffer too!!
“Destroy this nature!”
Humans: you’re about to see what’s called a pro gamer move
Srsly fuck those little demons
I read a journal about a father and son walking through Canada a long time ago and watching a swarm of mosquitoes take down a bull Moose
Last year my bathroom would have 2-3 of them buzzing around every night when I went in there. This year I left a bucket of pine sol water in there a few weeks ago after cleaning and no mosquitoes except the shitload of dead ones in that bucket. Do with that information what you will.
I had them inside too every winter. Finally realized I should drayno the absolute fuck out of my shower and all gone. I hope they had to watch each other die.
There are hundreds of mosquito species, and only a couple dozen decided to evolve into little bastards. Let’s give them hell
Begun… these Mosquito Wars have.
Never used to get bit in the UK but something I can’t quite put my finger on has allowed them to exist now.
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Mosquitos are one of the most prolific pollinators
Human bitting mosquitos are not pollinators.
But are we capable of only wiping out the human biting mosquitos without affecting other mosquitos, or even other insects?
Pollinators of what?
Blood for the blood god…
Biting mosquotes can and do spread diseases. Knowing only a few species are a such, please hurry up trimming a few actually bad leaves from the tree-of-life… But not with “dump forever poison everywhere” method the last gens did… (And are still doing sadly)
