The only ones concerned about malaria deaths are also concerned about the ecosystem. The people who are not concerned about the ecosystem are also not concerned about malaria deaths.
Comment on We're coming for you
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
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.
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 5 months ago
ssj2marx@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
600,000 people die of malaria every year
Yeah but what countries are they from. The ones with money do not care about them.
FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi 5 months ago
There’s quite a huge domino effect in the food chain if we would cause mass extinction to mosquitoes as they are the food for many species of birds which are then food for the next thing and so on.
BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
I’m no expert but what I’ve heard is that there are lots of mosquitoes that don’t bite which are more important for the food chain, but the ones that do bite make up a super small part so if we only eliminated the biting species there would still be plenty of other non-malaria-carrying mosquitoes for the food chain.
At least that’s the theory.
Toes@ani.social 5 months ago
Surely something else could be encouraged to fill in the gap? Would love to see more fireflies.
ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Well in theory yes. However there are billions upon billions of mosquitos and therefore, despite their small size, they are a large bio-mass.
If we try and remove a large bio-mass like that from the ecosystem there’s bound to be knock-on effects in the food chain. We need to be sure that gap does get filled and what would fill that gap doesn’t have any effects that could be worse than Malaria i.e. an insect that could swarm and cause famine.
Toes@ani.social 5 months ago
Oh like a plague of locus? Interesting, so the people that are introducing infertile mates into the swarm have they evaluated such risk?
KillerTofu@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Are there species of birds that their sole source of food is mosquitos?