Hey there and welcome to Life Noggin.
Wait, that wasn't my voice?
Who was that?
I don’t know about you, but mosquitoes are the bane of my digital existence.
My animator thought it would be a good idea to simulate a bunch of real-world problems
down here in the Life Noggin world in order to help us see what it’s like to be human,
and wow, I gotta say, mosquitoes are just the worst.
No matter how much bug spray I lather all over me, I always come back from a night in
the woods looking worse than Grandma Blocko’s favorite pincushion.
Aww, c’mon Grandma.
Not again!
Ow!
All morality and environmental-impact questions aside, how could we kill off all of the mosquitoes?
The first thought is probably pesticides.
While various pesticides have had a decent amount of success in controlling mosquito
populations in the past, the problem here is that pesticides can be dangerous for people
too.
Basically, to provide a bit of an oversimplification, the more effective a pesticide is and the
more of it you use, the more you put people at risk.
Pesticides are still used around the globe today levels that have been deemed safe by
local governments, but to use enough pesticides to kill off all of the mosquitoes just wouldn’t
be a safe bet.
Hmm.
Okay, well then maybe we could go a more natural route and get a bunch of animals together
that eat mosquitoes, like bats, to wipe them out.
I mean, one study back in the day said that a single bat could catch up to 10 mosquitoes
in a minute.
Extrapolate that out and a group of 1,000 bats could catch a million mosquitoes in under
2 hours.
Now that’s a battle of the bloodsuckers!
Sounds like it would work, right?
Well, while that does sound like an awesome movie, reality would likely be far more disappointing.
Even though you can pull some impressive numbers from that study, that was with hungry bats
essentially locked up in a room with only mosquitoes to feed on.
In the wild, while bats do sometimes feed on mosquitoes, they tend to prefer munching
on other things like moths or even spiders.
So that idea is probably out.
Now you might be thinking, well Blocko, what if we just got a bunch of big bug zappers
to kill all of the mosquitoes?
Again, not such a great idea, sorry!
That’s because bug zappers aren’t really that amazing at killing mosquitoes, but they
do end up killing a bunch of beneficial insects and that aren’t seen as pests.
Well there goes my idea for a new tower defense game.
So, if all that stuff is out, then what will work?
Some research that’s gained traction recently involves genetically modifying mosquitoes
so that they wouldn’t be able to properly reproduce or that they would effectively kill
any other mosquitoes that they mated with.
Yeah.
That's brutal.
Beyond that, a new study that came out just this year may have the answer.
Starting back in 2016, scientists were able to nearly eliminate disease-carrying Asian
tiger mosquitoes on two small islands in China.
The researcher’s battle plan?
Infect the mosquitoes with a virus-fighting bacterium and then zap them with a small dose
of radiation to help sterilize them.
This caused the number of female mosquitoes responsible for spreading disease to drastically
plummet, with some periods of time showing no signs of disease-carrying mosquitoes at
all.
Promising results for sure, but these methods probably aren’t very practical for larger
areas.
Researchers had to release up to 4 million mosquitoes /each week/ to achieve these results,
not even factoring in all of the cost.
But hey, at least this might be a decent tactic for certain smaller applications.
Now animator, can you please get rid of these digital mosquitoes.
Some of them there bites are causes pop up pimples!
So do you have any ideas of how we should kill off all the mosquitoes?
How attractive to mosquitoes are you?
Let me know in the comment section below, or tell me, what should I talk about next?
Did you know that there are tiny creatures hiding in your water?
You should probably check out this video!
Yeah, there are millions upon millions of tiny little communities that you probably
have even thought about!
While not all microbes are harmful, there are definitely some to watch out for that
cause foodborne illnesses, and infectious diseases.
As always, my name is Blocko, this has been Life Noggin, don't forget to keep on thinking!