Saturday, June 16, 2012

Mosquitoes are Beneficial to Humanity


There seems to be a war on the mosquitoes. Some people have erroneously referred to them as the most dangerous animal in the world, the leading killer of humans. In general you will find very little love or sympathy for mosquitoes.

I want to clear up the misconception that mosquitoes are dangerous killers. Female mosquitoes bite to get blood to raise her young. Not all mosquito females do this, and not all bite humans; some prefer birds, her goal is not to kill the animals she bites, her goal is to raise her young. Humans kill pigs, cattle, chickens, and so on to feed themselves, and feed their young, with the intention of killing. If we are to think of the diseases spread by mosquitoes we must remember it is the diseases that kill, not the mosquito who happens to be the carrier, it simply picked up the organism that causes the disease from an infected source.

People need to be honest, the mosquito is not a killer, the things it carries is.

Mosquitoes are very valuable to our planet, the are a food source to many animals (and even a few plants if you think about the carnivorous plants). Frogs, birds, bats, and even other insects, eat millions of mosquitoes every day (brown bats eat hundreds every night). These species will struggle without mosquitoes and many are dying even now, the result of toxins use on mosquitoes.

One animal which we must realize depends on mosquitoes for its survival is the fish! We eat fish. Fish eat mosquitoes, particularly mosquito larvae. Young lake fish feed on mosquito larvae (so do tadpoles which fish also eat), take away mosquitoes and you take away their larvae and what do fish feed on then? 

Mosquitoes are part of our food chain, we need them, so why are we so determined to kill them?

We can protect ourselves from mosquito bites, or from diseases (in many cases there are shots we can take if going into a risky area). Some people, like myself, are lucky, we can get bit and not get a reaction, and I do have sympathy for those who do get itchy bumps, but this is no reason to hate an animal that is basically doing the same thing we do; just trying to survive and raise its young.

If we must control (not eliminate) mosquitoes, we need to do it naturally without pesticides or chemicals which could harm the animals which eat mosquitoes.