Comment on Horrors We've Unleashed

BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  But what will happen when the humans lose their natural predators, we might destroy our habita- ah, right. Nevermind

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  • Assman@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Mosquitos are just trying to save the planet by murdering as many people as possible

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  • explodicle@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Here’s a Venn diagram:

    Humans getting killed by mosquitos O

      O
    

    Humans at fault for habitat destruction

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    • Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yep. I was trying to be funny but the reality is brutally bad.

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• Wild_Mastic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If those creatures that also eat mosquitoes cannot eat them anymore, that means they would have to eat other bugs, possibly fucking up all the ecosystem.

  That said, fuck mosquitoes, they can take blood from other places

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  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    All of our best data on the impact says that it really wouldn’t matter. Sometimes a species is a linchpin for the ecosystem, and sometimes it isn’t.

    Sucks for mosquitoes, but there’s a very real chance that we’ll smallpox them, and the biggest concern will be our confidence that the virus we use doesn’t impact other species unintentionally.

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    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Hopefully we can do the same for bedbugs. Fuck bedbugs. I can smell the little fuckers

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      • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Hey, at least pubic lice are going extinct!

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    • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Haven’t read closely on it, but I’ve seen plenty of articles about the lack of effect we’d see over killing off mosquitoes. I have a feeling that, along with what you said, it’s because they’re tiny.

      Consider the dragonfly. They hunt mosquitoes efficiently. But relative to their size, a mosquito is like us eating a candy bar, or even less. Meanwhile, they could snatch about anything else and it would be like a 3-pound steak.

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      • Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Now that you say that, average us candy bar has 200…250 kcal a piece on average. That’s about 1/7th of BMR of an average healthy male.

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  • protist@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They’re largely applying this technique to invasive species of mosquitoes, eg Aedes aegypti, which is a potent vector of disease and native of Africa that has spread worldwide only within the past 200 years

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  • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They also eat nectar and are pollinators of various plants.

    There’s no way we could simply remove a creature as numerous and widespread as mosquitoes without any consequences.

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  • Dabundis@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If we were to somehow magically remove mosquitos from existence in an instant, we’d better hope something fills their ecological niche quickly

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    • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Nothing eats them exclusively, that I know of. And they’re tiny. Any insectivore is getting far more nutrition out of about anything else.

      Maybe I’m wrong, but biologists seem to think eradication is a non-issue.

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    • smeg@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I think the purpose of the original genetic modification is to make them unable to bite humans (and spread malaria) but to otherwise leave them capable of feeding, thus not wiping them out and upsetting the ecosystem they’re part of

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    • MelastSB@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That niche being flying bloodsucker? I’m not sure the alternative will be any better

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      • Dabundis@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The niche being food for fish that share their ecosystem in larval stages, and birds/bats/frogs that share their ecosystem in their adult stage.

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  • mihor@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Found the mosquito.

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• Dabundis@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I understand what you’re saying here, but the set of people killed by “every disease ever” includes the entire set of people killed by mosquito-borne diseases. Mosquitoes can’t have killed more people than every disease ever because mosquitoes’ kill count is part of every disease ever.

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  • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Edit: when excluding malaria.

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• TheRedSpade@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Mosquitoes have killed more humans than every disease ever

  How do they kill us outside of spreading disease?

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  • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They manipulate the weather using space lasers from their fake hollow moon above our flat earth.

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    • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Jew mosquitos or mosquito Jews?

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  • OpenStars@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    By distracting drivers into causing accidents? Statistically speaking… probably.

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