Written by | Steve Mirsky
Translate | Porco Rosso
Historically, about half of the population was killed by mosquitoes.
On a wet late night in November 1997, two scientists and I, wearing high-barrel waterproof boots, walked into a test pond about 30 kilometers west of West Palm Beach, Florida. The two researchers made the trip to place a model of an egret so that it could attract real egrets at dawn. I was writing a story about their latest research. They warned me before I set out that I might encounter a snake, and our flashlights shone into the eyes of alligators not far away. While there are reptiles of one kind or another that could poison or chew us to pieces, the most pressing safety needs are reflected in the mesh covers and long sleeves on our heads. We need to guard against mosquitoes' poisonous needles, as well as the encephalitis virus they carry.
I think back to the 4 a.m. trip to the water because of a new book called A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator. In the eyes of most people, mosquitoes are probably not as terrible as sharks - it is difficult to make people palpitate in the east direction that can be slapped to death with a slap. But, as author Timothy Winegard puts it, sharks kill less than 10 people a year, and over the past 20 years, mosquitoes have been able to kill an average of about 2 million people per year. On this planet, mosquitoes are the most cruel murderers of human beings.
Mosquitoes are the most cruel murderers of humans | pixabay
The human killers who came after the mosquitoes – as you might guess – are the humans themselves. Wyangard noted that in the same past 20 years, the average number of people killed by humans themselves was as high as 475,000 people per year. Of course, it is very difficult for humans to kill more people than mosquitoes, after all, there are only 7.7 billion people in total, and at any one time, the total number of mosquitoes is as high as 110 trillion, an average of more than 14,000 per person. In the summer of the Arctic Circle, in the blink of an eye, they can be paved with anything they can eat (or people). Wyangard writes: "Greedy mosquitoes strike in swarms, biting 9,000 times a minute, causing young reindeer to die of blood on the spot, which translates to sucking half of an adult's blood in two hours." ”
Of course, it is rare for a person to be bitten by a mosquito and lose blood. "They spread toxic and highly developing diseases, which are the cause of endless grief and death." Wyangard writes that "they" are said because only female mosquitoes bite, and they are mainly attracted to the carbon dioxide we exhale, and can smell us from more than 60 meters away. In addition, female mosquitoes also like a strong foot odor. So if you think you can hide under their noses by holding your breath, you must remember to wash your feet before you faint.
Mosquitoes are accomplices to malaria | pixabay
Mosquitoes transmit more than 15 diseases, the most vicious of which is malaria, which has sickened various animals for a long time. Wyangard writes: "Scientists have found mosquitoes wrapped in amber that contain dinosaur blood. This blood is infected with various diseases carried by mosquitoes, including malaria. ”
He pointed out that the 1993 movie "Jurassic Park" also made a mistake, that the mosquitoes mentioned in the film, that is, mosquitoes that provide blood and DNA samples of dinosaurs, are actually one of the few mosquitoes that can breed without sucking blood. To be honest, this obvious mistake shattered the realism of the film in my eyes.
The book also claims that mosquito-borne diseases were also a key factor in the defeat of the British Empire in the American colonies during the War of Independence of 1783. Washington himself is a malaria patient, "and he is particularly good at commanding armies that are adapted to the soil and water and are familiar with malaria." Many British soldiers, who had never been exposed to malaria, were knocked down by the buzzing plague gods.
According to Wyangard, Washington fought America's first war, won its first peace, and was the first of eight presidents to have malaria. The other seven are Lincoln, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, Garfield, Roosevelt and Kennedy. Roosevelt had malaria in the Amazon, Kennedy in the South Pacific, and the six before them were all diseases on American soil, when malaria and yellow fever were still common in the United States.
In 2018, Climate Central said rising temperatures could lead to more "disease-threatening days" because the temperatures on these days are exactly what disease-carrying mosquitoes love. But cheer up, the Climate Center also acknowledges: "Climate change may also cause some areas to overheat, making mosquitoes unable to survive and spread disease." "That might be good news.
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