Meh, the global ecosystem is fucked anyway. Might as well trim out the especially annoying bits and enjoy some relative comfort on our way to extinction. If doing so accelerates our downfall a bit, that’s a fair trade.
I say it’s worth the risk.
But unfortunately, hunting nazis is still illegal.
But not immoral!
Don’t let the law stop you from doing what’s right.
Ah… (Homer Simpson meme) so far.
Just gotta figure out how to turn their proboscis inside out with gene editing, make that an oral med, put it in a “supplement”, and get marketing to sell it to them as a dick enhancer.
Make sure to label it “HOMEOPATHIC” and the government will leave you alone.
Sell in deep web or Nazis groups that “we found how to make a drug to enhance of the most pure of the races” and advertize there
Just do it with a car for the least amont of consequences.
This, we can’t have only the bad parts of mass extinction
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Just a guess… they’re probably a food source low in the chain. Disrupt the food chain and we’re screwed.
https://www.britannica.com/story/what-purposes-do-mosquitoes-serve-in-ecosystems
Well there’s like 30 species and only 4 that hurt humans, so mosquitoes can stay, but those specific 4 can die off.
Even better, there’s thousands of mosquito species, and only 4 that bit humans
Those 4 can fuck right off into extinction
Exactly.
Everything I’ve read suggests that mosquitoes aren’t a primary food source for anything, and that their absence would be relatively easily adusted for by those creatures that do eat them. Still, that’s a hell of a dice roll.
Edit: And apparently that may be wrong anyway.
For other animals—such as lizards, frogs, spiders, and other insects—adult mosquitoes are the primary food source.
I have argued for the same caution every single time this came up on Reddit, because I know of a dozen examples in history where we fucked up something similar.
I got downvoted every single time, across several posts over the years, because obviously the hive mind believes things will be different this time! The thing that males me confident it’ll fail is I’ve never seen, and nobody’s ever provided, an example where this type of ecological engineering has actually succeeded for the better.
The biggest reason it may be different this time is previously we were all like, “let’s exterminate dogs,” and it turns out dogs are important. This time is more like “let’s exterminate pitbulls.” There will still be plenty of mosquitos around if the plan is ever put into motion, we are only targeting a very small slice of them. That doesn’t mean there won’t be issues, it could well be just as big a mistake as all the previous times. But at least it is more likely to work out.
What makes you so confident that this super sophisticated “selective targeting” is 100% guaranteed? What if the species who has killed off 10-100% of every animal population on the planet, in 1 thousandth the time most of them took to evolve, isn’t as smart as they consider themselves to be? What if the talking chimps, with a few decades education, missed something and end up accidentally exterminating all mosquitos? How many animals and ecosystems depend on an animal that’s existed for longer than most terrestrial species? What if our weapon spreads to other arthropods with a similar DNA and “exterminates” insect species around the world, who are already in a historic rate of decline, right after we’ve degraded every habitat on Earth, just as our unplanned terraform irrevocably alters their climate forever?
Are any of these risks worth millions of human lives? Maybe we should focus on altering ourselves? At least then our failures will be contained…
Well, like I said, there is still a chance of collateral damage, which is why there has been so much study to try and make sure that isn’t going to happen. We’ve been sitting on the ability to do this for a long time. As for chances of killing other species, I don’t think that is a risk from the method. They basically just breed mosquitoes of the targeted breed, and modify their genes so they can only have male offspring which can also only produce male offspring, etc.
I can kill off mosquitoes and spiders in the same go? smashes that mosquito-nuke button so hard that it’s shattered to dust
Mosquitos aren’t some special niche. Take out mosquitos and something else moves in to replace them, something that doesn’t bite.
There’s nothing that solely depends on mosquitos, and wouldn’t prefer to eat other things which mosquitos may be suppressing by existing themselves.
It’s impressive that almost every single sentence that you wrote is incorrect.
“But bitey”
If we could we’d try to kill algae and plankton for turning the oceans green and ruining our pictures. We’re not a smart group, us.
To be fair, mosquitoes are the most dangerous animal to humans because of disease spread. It’s not just annoying, itchy bites.
It’s true and I get that just that we can’t go eradicating one of the bases of most terrestial ecosystems based on that.
Clearly you haven’t tried yet. Where’s Bob the builder at?
Maybe that’s their purpose? Human population control? LOL!
Mosquitoes have killed more humans than every single war ever conducted by humans since the dawn of time, combined.
So will blowing up our already fragile ecosystems.
Kid named Malaria:
Funny how much (actual scientific) debate is around mosquito extinction event whilst we are well into a mass extinction event we caused (not to mention all the direct and systemic ecosystem eradication such as marshlands of all sorts).
If you haven’t seen Puss in Boots 2, do yourself a big favor and go see it.
On the surface this seems like it could be a running joke. A sequel to an 11 year old spinoff from Shrek 2. Ridiculous that they came out with such a good film.
Who is your favorite fearless hero?
PLEASE do cockroaches next. I refuse to believe those monstrosities are capable of good, even tangentially.
I saw three in the past hour. Two while I was in the shower, and one in the kitchen. I will do anything to have these fuckers extinct
You watch naked cock roaches showering?
The mosquito we see around us are invasive species that we humans brought along as we migrate across the continent. Make sense if their extinction bring neglectable impact to the local ecosystem. They aren’t supposed to be there to begin with.
There is a species of mosquito that is a prolific pollinator, one of them for blueberries.
As if human care about future consequences.
Humans have already caused so many species to go extinct.
Doing it on purpose for self defense seems less bad to me than indiscriminately because we want to be more comfortable but maybe that’s a meaningless distinction.
Yeah, this idea scares me.
Mosquitos are pollinators. And in some parts of the world that have extreme seasons that can’t sustain bees, they seem rather important to the ecosystem.
Instead of eradicating them, genetically engineering away the numbing in their saliva that causes the allergic reaction in humans could be a solution.
I’ll trade a couple weeks of itchy bites for a briefly painful bite any day.
Sure, humans would kill them instantly on feeling the bite, but most animals are not capable of that. Their populations would be fine.
You think people want to extinguish mosquitoes because they bite is annoying?!
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Mosquitos kill more humans than any other thing on this planet. Including humans killing humans.
Aww does the wittle baby not want to die of mawaria?
uwu siwwy widdle babies
I want both of you to burn on a pile of burning tires, then I want a furry to nail me to a cross with the other profligates cause I had no problem translating and understanding what you two said.
What about house flies? Can we kill those too?
And Otters
I’m not sure what to make of that
Person you responded to saw otters holding hands and got mad/jealous:
Here is this complex visual to help you understand:
Can’t stand anything that people like. Only I am allowed to like otters. (I need to gatekeep)
Mosquitos feed on apex predators and feed the nearly bottom of the food chain. Imo they’re up there with salmon in terms of nutrient transfer, absolutely would cause chaos at all levels if they were eliminated.
Uninformed take. First of, we are working on killing off only a few, malaria carrying Mosquito species in certain regions. Whatever niche they leave will be filled by another, possibly native species of Mosquito.
2nd, nutrient transfer my butt, they carry like 1ml and that’s mostly water. You definitely transfer more nutrients by having some ants in your compost bin.
