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Comment by wglb | Hacker News Reader

I don't particularly like mosquitoes either. But I wonder, despite the claim of no downside, if there isn't some co-evolutionary relationship between mosquitoes and those that they draw blood from.

Just wondering.

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Mosquitoes strike me as in interesting way in which nature turns mammal blood into food for birds.

My main fear was that removal of mosquitoes would give rise to another blood-sucking, biting insect to fill it's place. One that wasn't so slow, noisy and easy to repel with nets, repellant and clothing. A smaller, silent, insect would be far worse. Mosquitoes are the b52 bombers of the flying insect world - slow and easy to hit.

I get bad reaction to sandflies. If sandflies replaced mosquitoes, my world would be severely negatively impacted.

or Phlebotomus papatasi

The large biting flies are a crazy phenomenon. They'll actually chase you, persistently. And they're HUGE. I was attacked by one a couple of years ago on Lake Michigan, and it just wouldn't leave me alone! I was diving, splashing it with water, running on the beach (it could fly about as fast as I could run) and no luck. I finally had to swat the vile beast.

If we kill the mosquitoes, and it leads to our downfall, then something will just evolve to fill our place since clearly we weren't well adapted enough...

That's my favourite part of being Human: we're pretty awesome at adaptation.

I believe that is an understatement - we are properly the single best species at that.

That's a self-deceptive way of looking at evolution. Every species currently in existence is equally good at adaptation.

Not really - only humans have been able to adapt from walking 7 miles an hour to flying faster than the speed of sound in less than 100 years.

... and only humans have managed to kill off hundreds of millions of our kind in the same amount of time via war and genocide.

The point is, evolution has only one measure for success: continued existence. Everything else is irrelevant.

Ants have done the same. http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/clvea/ants/c0thznv

Not the ones that are on their way out soon...

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