this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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They kill millions every year, as a species they are the no. 1 enemy in human history. But where I (and likely OP) grew up, they didn't spread disease so it seems kind if stupid to call mosquitoes deadly animals.
That got me interested. They do/did spread disease in the whole Northern hemisphere, too. According to wikipedia it used to be mostly Malaria, but according to articles in Nature etc. various mosquito-spread diseases are on the rise again.
The deadliness is the difference, I guess - with proper healthcare they don't have to be.
PS: just found this in a Finnish article:
"Although there are no common tropical diseases spread by mosquitoes in Finland, individual cases of, for example, pogostan disease (Ockelbo virus) and rabbit plague (tularemia) have been reported. Climate warming can increase the risk of new diseases, such as the dengue or Zika virus, also spreading to the Nordic countries."
I'm in the north of Scotland, never seen a mosquito in my decades here, not once. That is, until this year, loads of the buggers!
Climate change is truly upon us, and it's terrifying.
But the average person just won't look up!
Surely you have gnats and midgies and the like?
The term mosquito is global btw, which stumped me at first because it sounds kinda (sub)tropical.
Aye, we famously have high concentrations of midgies, but we always have done. There's even a map!
https://www.smidgeup.com/midge-forecast/
Mosquitoes on the other hand are not the norm. There are some species which are native but they don't have large populations. I explore the wilds regularly, from mountain to sea, and haven't experienced them until this year. They were in cities as well!
This is a good article about mosquitoes in Scotland: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyq59r8x7ro
Thanks for clarifying that. In Finland there's moquitoes everywhere, from the South Coast to the North of Lapland. Maybe it has something to do with the geography - All of Finland is fairly flat and protected from wind and high seas. And moist.
how did you not grow up with an instinctual hatred of mosquitos? i know what it would do to ecology and shit and i would still wipe every last one off the planet
I'll deal with mosquitoes if we can wipe out bedbugs. I can smell those fuckers.
see i don't get why people get mad at other people when we got a full on bug genocide we got to perpetrate
So, a lot of people say this because it makes a lot of logical sense, I thought the same, but if you actually ask people who are qualified, a lot of them are fairly sure that other insects/etc would likely fill the niche. Obviously still theory, but mosquitoes are usually not a cornerstone and likely mostly replacable.
And it's only a single species of mosquito that's response
I haven't dug too deep into the results, but there have been eradication campaigns using things like genetically modified mosquitos that would produce sterile offspring.
And I thought it was humans.