Hey, most bugs are cool and an important part of their ecosystem.
Mosquitoes tho ? Yeah, fuck them.
We have suffered for millions of years under mosquitos are they are likely the biggest killer of humans in history. Maybe us evolving big brains and developing genetic engineering is an evolutionary necessity?
Or as Harbinger said: “We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.”
I get the feeling of discomfort but it's basically the same feeling we get when someone breaks a pencil
There is no evidence that a mosquito is capable of feeling the kind of despair or horror that a human would feel in a similar situation. It's unlikely that mosquitos can form emotions at all.
At the same time, a huge portion of human-animal interactions involve the human controlling the animal in ways that they animal can't even comprehend. A dog has no idea you're doing operant conditioning to change their behavior. Pigs have no idea they're being fed just so they and their children can be eaten.
The only way to avoid this kind of thing is to turn off your big human brain and go back to ape tier. We might need to go farther down the tier list than that though https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
Do vegans support this because it prevents mosquitoes from consuming animal flesh, or do they oppose it because it denies the mosquitoes their nature?
Why not just eradicate them? Genuine question. I don't think they serve any purpose in nature and are just pissing off every living being.
Eradication is really hard. If you just kill mosquitoes in a certain area, what's gonna stop them from coming back? You're just not gonna get all of them.
This way you introduce a mutation that can actually propagate through the gene pool, disabling the undesired trait for future generations. It's also highly selective, so that you don't accidentally get rid of other species or poison an area with pesticides.
Also living beings have no "purpose". They fill an evolutionary niche and shape the ecological system around them. The piss off us, so we play a little god, but nature has no opinions or morals whatsoever.
Many species of mosquitos are reliant on blood for reproduction. The females utilize a "blood meal" for the nutrients for laying eggs to be fertilized. Additionally, it is the female mosquito bite that transmits diseases like malaria.
I'd like to see any scientific study that reassures at least a little that this won't have terrible ramifications for ecosystems and the food chain.
We know too little, we are shortsighted and we have a bad record of intervening with nature.
I get the caution about unintended consequences but damnit of all the crazy planetary issues we're dealing with right now, I'd rank
"oops, got rid of West Nile and Malaria as well as annoying little red bumps from wandering too far from big cities"
As a win, the consequences of which we can probably figure out how to deal with when we come to it.
I know it doesn't work that way but I'd trade all the world's mosquitoes to keep the polar bears or pangolins or something any day.
Mosquitoes are the bottom of the food chain. There's reason to be worried about this getting out of hand
Surely this won't have any knock on effects with the food chain...
On the one hand this is creepy as hell
On the other fuck mosquitoes
Great. First science was making the frogs gay. Now it's turning the mosquitos trans.
What's next? Lesbian amoebas? Pansexual algae? Non-binary seahorses?
Has science gone too far?
This is what vegans want. They want to take your virile bloodsucking proboscus and replace it with a limp dick fruit licker.
BAN ALL VEGANS
(Small /s)
Yeah but those little bastards started it. People call what's happening in Gaza a genocide but that's nothing compared with the mozzie kill count.
It's a nice idea. But I wonder what the long term ramifications might be. What ripple effects might happen that we can't see today that end up being problems in the future.
Human history is littered with such problems.
