New research on how mosquitoes find humans to bite
phys.org
phys.org
In the meantime, I use picaridin. Picaridin, in contrast to DEET, does not destroy plastics, isn't greasy, and is more effective at preventing the bastards from actually making contact. DEET, is more effective at preventing bites - but not contact. I prefer to remain less molested while incurring a few bites rather than function as a mosquito stadium. Other than deet and picaridin, nothing works. Ultrasound, lights, oils, permethrin, gasses - they are useless for me. My type comprises a potential gold mine for anyone who discovers an eco-friendly, dry, more effective solution. Please do!
With neem, they may fly around you, but they never land on you. They hate its smell, and also, the oil's compound kills them / makes them and all other small insects sterile.
So yeah if you're wearing clothes then they have to be ones you're prepared to get oil on and then wash it out using hot water and baking soda or whatever.
I must point out that Wikipedia has a page on neem oil and warns of toxicity if consumed raw [1].
Do you think eliminating mosquitos per se would have dire consequences for the planet, or is it more of a "slippery slope" concern about the idea and potential consequences of deliberate extinction?
The Four Pests Campaign, was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows....[The resulting] ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 15–45 million people died of starvation.[1]
> The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows is also known as Smash Sparrows Campaign (Chinese: 打麻雀运动; pinyin: Dǎ Máquè Yùndòng) or Eliminate Sparrows Campaign (Chinese: 消灭麻雀运动; pinyin: Xiāomiè Máquè Yùndòng), which resulted in severe ecological imbalance, being one of the causes of the Great Chinese Famine. In 1960, Mao Zedong ended the campaign against sparrows and redirected the fourth focus to bed bugs.
There's no suggestion in the article you referenced that attempting to eliminate mosquitos had anything to do with the famine.
Not directly, but assuming that what humans regard as pests don't have a function in the ecosystem, so I'd say his point is valid. Mess with the ecosystem in an extreme way and you might suffer dire consequences.
This was exactly my main point.
Apparently the elimination of sparrows also led to a dramatic increase in mosquitos (since sparrows eat mosquitoes), so it had a domino effect of negative impacts. They didn't have the technology to obliterate mosquitoes at the time, and that's essentially what we're talking about here...so I'm saying there will likely be unforeseen consequences if people mess with this. (coming from a guy who hates mosquitoes - i actually bought mosquito pants last year bc they are so bad in the summer when I'm doing yard work)
Many areas of rainforest are only protected against illegal logging operations because they are dense with malarial mosquitos.
You are saying we should make that happen as soon as possible.
Killing the mosquitos is not exclusive with working to save the forest only if you have another way to save the forest.
Nothing has been able to prevent the illegal logging except mosquitoes. What is your suggestion?
We shouldn't work to eradicate a worldwide pest that causes hundreds of thousands (millions?) of annual deaths because it might encourage more logging?
The solution to every big problem humanity faces will inevitably create other smaller problems for us to solve. Two steps forward...
Don’t straw man. Steel man if you are serious about debating this.
A low cost, low tech method to kill mosquitoes in a room guaranteed:
A (foldable?) 6x6 foot mosquito zapper powered by a small lead acid battery (should last a few days?) will do wonders world wide right NOW.
The current must be safe enough for babies to touch. Cos people will zap themselves guaranteed.
I'll love it if someone could create one using those dc high voltage generator kits from eBay or AliExpress. And make tutorial for it.
The large size increases the probability that the mosquito will electrocute itself while running around.
Bees sting and kill people each year but no one would ever attempt to sterilize all of the bees. They are different, yes, but each play an important part on our planet.
(1) https://www.google.com/amp/s/io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-m...
I don’t think bee stings kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. The death toll from malaria alone is over 400,000 people every year mostly children.
I think that the benefits from wiping out disease causing mosquitoes are worth the risk.
You would immediately save hundreds of thousands of lives every year as well as keep millions of people from being sick and disabled.
The logic in your linked article is a bit specious; certain species eat mosquito larvae, so without mosquitoes they won't have food, and the species eating them won't have food, and so on. But nothing is actually static, there would be some dynamic adjustment (arguably, hard to predict). Species will find something else to snack on.
In fact you could argue that those species eating mosquito larvae are detrimental to mosquitoes! Maybe they're preventing something else from happening by eating them before they develop.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170516-when-wolves-return-t...
https://www.gorgeouscreatures.com.au/blogs/news/the-history-...
But that's not the point: gorse in NZ is not even slightly comparable to mosquito-borne illnesses. No-one ever died because of gorse in New Zealand. According to Unicef malaria kills 1,000,000 people every year. This is something we might want to disrupt.
Pine trees are another matter though, they make it very difficult for native plants.
Some ecosystems would be altered for sure but it doesn't appear to be widely believed that there would be serious disruption.
"There are 3,500 named species of mosquito, of which only a couple of hundred bite or bother humans."
We know we don't need them and we don't believe that the earth needs them, but we could start with eradicating the couple hundred species that pester us.