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Comment by chasil | Hacker News Reader

Why don't we do with (problem) snakes what we do with the mosquito, specifically releasing either a) irradiated males who are sterile that produce offspring that do not hatch, or b) males with an installed gene drive that can only sire males for all future generations?

Either case results in a population crash. I don't know if gene drives have been used against wild populations as yet (although there is great interest and substantial justification).

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Mosquitos inhabit an ecological niche that is much safer to eradicate than snakes. Mosquitos' predators have many other sources of food so they're not critical to any species and they're not predators that keep prey populations in check. They're just a deadly nuisance to humans without access to plentiful modern medicine.

Snakes on the other hand as mid-level predators are likely keystone species [1] and killing them would wreck their ecosystems by letting rodent populations grow out of control. In California they keep ground squirrel populations in check and provide a source of food for all kinds of raptors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species

But mosquitos pollinate plants so eliminating them would not be a harmless act. They are clearly far more deadly than snakes though. The number of deaths per year they are responsible for always impresses me.

Do they pollinate any plant types that only rely on mosquitos, or would mosquitos going away just allow other insects/moths/etc to grow in population size thanks to more available pollen?

Aside from being carriers of disease, mosquitoes have been identified as fulfilling an insignificant biological niche. My knee jerk suspicion is that snakes are more important to an ecosystem.

From a human vulnerability perspective, there is minimal human threat in North America's poisonous snakes, compared to the areas of India, China, Australia, and other nations in this area. Driving down the population for reasons of human risk seems reasonable there, by reversible means.

With Florida's problem of invasive snakes, extreme removal efforts seem likewise warranted as non-native species should be completely removed from the local environment, especially considering their profound negative impact on biodiversity.

It depends. e.g. In Australia, the snake most people worry about (the eastern brown - world's second most venomous and common in cities) is native, so yes it's important to an ecosystem in the broader sense. But its numbers around cities have gone up because of mice, most of which are introduced, so it's a non-native part of the ecosystem that's pushing the numbers up. Doing something to bring the numbers back down around urban centres wouldn't seem like such a bad idea. Brown snakes aren't a threatened or endangered species and though cities are large human centres, they're not a large portion of the Australian geography. (And are largely artificially maintained ecosystems anyway - those houses and roads didn't appear naturally.) There are probably other ways for dealing with mice than having the world's second deadliest snake hanging around town.

99 times out of 100, snakes leave you alone if you leave them alone. Most snake bites occur on the hands or face because they happen when people are messing with them. It's extremely unethical to kill snakes. If you have a venomous snake somewhere on your property that you cannot tolerate it, you should call an expert to come move it for you.

It is not unethical to kill an invasive species. The invasive snakes in Florida would better serve their local biosphere if they ceased to exist, no question.

For the 50k annual human fatalities from snakes, that is a matter of personal opinion.

https://digg.com/data-viz/link/deadly-animals-kill-most-huma...

The invasive snakes in Florida aren't venomous. I'm not aware of any invasive snakes with medically significant venom anywhere in the world, but killing invasive snakes is fine.

The snakes which kill people virtually always fall into one of two categories; native species and pets. These shouldn't be killed except in the most dire of contrived circumstances (e.g. "what if there is a cobra poised to strike my child who cannot run away?"). Leaving the snake alone is always a better choice.

In Arizona snakebites happen on average to 50+, not really a demographic known to fuck with snakes.

Snake shot should definitely not be carried in rattlesnake territory. Definitely not.

Most of them are men with old fashioned attitudes towards snakes who aren't as young and spry as they used to be, who fuck with the snakes and get rewarded with a bite.

Rattlesnakes are perhaps the most courteous of all venomous snakes; they are named for their instinctual habit of making a lot of noise to warn you away. Unfortunately their rattling often gets them killed by ignorant people (particularly those old people) and so some populations of rattlesnakes are now less inclined to rattle. This puts humans at greater risk, so particularly in the case of rattlesnakes you should leave them alone.

If you step on one that didn't rattle and you kill it after getting bitten then I could forgive you, but killing any random rattlesnake you happen across is an asshole move.

I don't care about ethics nor being an asshole. Curious what remaining methods of shame are incoming.

No further need, you've done my work and neatly discredited yourself and the premise of needlessly killing snakes.

An ad hominem, even against myself, would be fallacious when used to discredit factual statements. You're also inventing a strawman of 'needless' killing.

In any case I've seen small children playing in places I 'formerly' saw a snake, and I'm willing to take all the 'discredit' in the world to not live with the guilt of finding out they were bit not long after I encountered the venomous snake. I don't give a shit about some snake off the beaten path far from where the vulnerable roam, and indeed I leave those alone.

Snakes kill and injure vastly, incomprehensibly fewer people than mosquitos. I’m not clear why we would try to destroy them or why that would be remotely desirable.

Let's go over the numbers.

Snakes: 50,000.

Seems fair game to me. How would you feel if you had lost a loved one to a viper, even if they engaged in rock climbing or another dangerous activity? Convictions crumble before personal adversity.

https://digg.com/data-viz/link/deadly-animals-kill-most-huma...

To 1 million deaths by mosquito and exponentially more infected by Malaria. Again, it’s just not close, and it’s going to be vastly fewer when you think about rattlesnakes in the US or whatever in Australia.

And, as above, mosquitoes are largely eco-irrelevant. Snakes are not. Anti-venom seems like the better solution.

Notice first the text from the original article:

"The World Health Organization estimates that 138,000 people are killed by venomous snakes annually."

While that may be irrelevant to you (even in the face of personal affliction), the cost of surviving this interaction is also high:

"During that time, he was administered 28 vials of antivenom intravenously at a cost of $3,400 per vial... They are also species-specific, meaning selecting proper antivenom requires knowing which type of snake bit you... As a result, survivors of rattlesnake bites in Southern California, for instance, get a second painful surprise when presented with hospital bills totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars."

I applaud you for your willingness to undertake this burden for yourself, but I am afraid that I am not.

Since you mention rattlesnakes, you should know that there is only an average of a single rattlesnake fatality a year in America.

The issue of medical debt is a problem that should be addressed head on, not indirectly by exterminating snakes which only rarely kill anybody.

Car related deaths worldwide in 2018: 1.35 million (Source: https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index...)

How would you feel if you had lost a loved one to a car, even if they engaged in walking around at night or another dangerous activity ?

I don't see any one rushing to eradicate cars...

I don't drive a snake to work. I don't use a snake for my livelihood. I don't take my snake down the hill for groceries. I can't load all my kids and their stuff in the snake to go see family.

Your comparison is lazy and ridiculous. Nonetheless, there are people trying to get cars out of cities (and I wish them luck).

> I don't drive a snake to work.

I mean, it would be cooler if you did.

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