Everything in the ecosystem has value, that’s why it exists.
Many creatures eat mosquitos and ants and the like. They also help to spread disease that keeps the population of the species they, in turn, prey on in check.
The problem is when the species they spread diseases to are human.
And "being useless" doesn't mean mosquitoes don't have a place in the ecosystem. Everything does. What it means is that other species don't rely mosquitoes exclusively. For example, birds that feed on mosquitoes can also eat other insects, and these insects are likely to become more prolific to fill the void created by the destruction of mosquitoes.
In fact, the objections to eradicating mosquitoes are usually along the lines of:
- It is morally wrong. It is not a scientific argument but it is not without merit.
- The mosquito is really good at preventing humans from doing bad things. For example by making tropical rain forests inhospitable, or even by controlling human population through diseases.
I have an issue with the second argument. Saying that something is good because it makes the lives of some people miserable. It sounds a bit like an argument of the kind "it is a good thing that people are dying from malaria right now, it will make the world a better place for my children".
So for me, there is no scientific argument against eradicating mosquitoes, though I can be wrong. It is more about the moral argument about the importance of nature vs our well-being. In many cases, preserving nature is good for our long term well-being, but it appears not to be the case when it comes to mosquitoes.
I’ll be honest, that seems remarkably ignorant and short-sighted.
Do we need Tigers at this point? Of course not. Anything they hunted has now been hunted way more by man. That doesn’t mean we don’t recognize value in having them.
Just because you don’t see the value in mosquitoes doesn’t mean there is none. Sure, maybe they killed off people by transmitting disease in the past. They still do. They also kill off other animals, and if the mosquitos disappeared we could have a huge overgrowth if wombats next and no way to get rid of them.
I thought we had agreed that killing off any species was a bad thing. Maybe we don’t know how or why, but it’s going to bite us in the ass eventually. In the case of mosquitos quite literally.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that the intersection of the set of people who are at risk of dying of malaria and the set of people who make that second argument is very small. It’s a pretty easy argument to make from your armchair in London or New York, and a harder one to make in Bangui or Kinshasa.
And "being useless" doesn't mean mosquitoes don't have a place in the ecosystem. Everything does. What it means is that other species don't rely mosquitoes exclusively. For example, birds that feed on mosquitoes can also eat other insects, and these insects are likely to become more prolific to fill the void created by the destruction of mosquitoes.
In fact, the objections to eradicating mosquitoes are usually along the lines of:
- It is morally wrong. It is not a scientific argument but it is not without merit.
- The mosquito is really good at preventing humans from doing bad things. For example by making tropical rain forests inhospitable, or even by controlling human population through diseases.
I have an issue with the second argument. Saying that something is good because it makes the lives of some people miserable. It sounds a bit like an argument of the kind "it is a good thing that people are dying from malaria right now, it will make the world a better place for my children".
So for me, there is no scientific argument against eradicating mosquitoes, though I can be wrong. It is more about the moral argument about the importance of nature vs our well-being. In many cases, preserving nature is good for our long term well-being, but it appears not to be the case when it comes to mosquitoes.