EXPLORING NATURE: MOSQUITO

What is the most dangerous animal in the world?

Well, despite lots of movie and TV coverage, it is not the great white shark. Sharks kill very few people each year. And forget about lions and tigers, they don’t come close to the champion killer.

The champion is the mosquito, specifically the female mosquito which transmits malaria.

One human dies from malaria every 12 seconds. Other diseases carried by female mosquitos include yellow fever, dengue, Zika, filariasis and encephalitis.

The word “malaria” derives from Italian meaning “bad air” and it is a disease that accounts for some 40 deaths per 100,000 population in low-income countries. Researchers have credited mosquitoes with almost half the deaths in human history – about 52 billion out of 108 billion of us.

Mosquitoes sicken about 300 million people each and every year. And not only humans suffer, mosquitoes introduced to Hawaii killed off several native bird species.

Do mosquitoes have any redeeming qualities? Well, bats dine on mosquitoes and a few other birds include them on their daily menu. And some folks would argue that they play a beneficial role in keeping the human population in check so we do not exceed the planet’s human carrying capacity.

Sadly, it sometimes seems the one species the world could most easily get along without is us – the humans. In the meanwhile, I’ll gladly swat any pesky mosquito which tries to make a meal on me.