It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do for a living or where you live, there is one pest that many, if not all, people will agree is nothing more than a nuisance. Capable of not only ruining your BBQ, but also choking a caribou as a swarm in the arctic, the mosquito is an annoyance that cannot be contained by borders.
Here’s where humans come in.
Mosquitoes need us to create the next generation of tenacious blood suckers. They spend the first four to six weeks of their lives under water, and when they mature, they go out into the world to hunt for blood to fertilize their eggs, according to Nature World News.
So what is it about us that makes for the best targets?
Certain characteristics attract mosquitoes more than others. The amount of carbon dioxide given off while breathing and the sweat produced both do the trick—as does movement and body temperature, which, a mosquito can detect from 164 feet away because of their maxillary palp.
When it comes down to it, it all depends on you and your body. Uric acid and lactic acid activates their sense of smell. People with type O blood tend to be bitten twice as often as someone with a type B blood because of the blood type indicator chemicals residing on the skin.
As carriers of diseases such as malaria and West Nile virus, many would like to get rid of mosquitoes to slow down the spread of disease, but wiping out mosquitoes may not be the wisest move. It’s in the things we can’t predict, the collateral damage, where the danger lies. Look at what happened in Yellowstone National Park when grey wolves were eliminated from the area. A world without mosquitoes could be better or worse, we have no way of knowing for sure.
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