Hey there and welcome to Life Noggin. Wait, that wasn't my voice? Who was that? I don’t know about you, but mosquitoes are
the bane of my digital existence. My animator thought it would be a good idea
to simulate a bunch of real-world problems down here in the Life Noggin world in order
to help us see what it’s like to be human, and wow, I gotta say, mosquitoes are just
the worst. No matter how much bug spray I lather all
over me, I always come back from a night in the woods looking worse than Grandma Blocko’s
favorite pincushion. Aww, c’mon Grandma. Not again! Ow! Ow! All morality and environmental-impact questions
aside, how could we kill off all of the mosquitoes? The first thought is probably pesticides. While various pesticides have had a decent
amount of success in controlling mosquito populations in the past, the problem here
is that pesticides can be dangerous for people too. Basically, to provide a bit of an oversimplification,
the more effective a pesticide is and the more of it you use, the more you put people
at risk. Pesticides are still used around the globe
today levels that have been deemed safe by local governments, but to use enough pesticides
to kill off all of the mosquitoes just wouldn’t be a safe bet. Hmm. Okay, well then maybe we could go a more natural
route and get a bunch of animals together that eat mosquitoes, like bats, to wipe them
out. I mean, one study back in the day said that
a single bat could catch up to 10 mosquitoes in a minute. Extrapolate that out and a group of 1,000
bats could catch a million mosquitoes in under 2 hours. Now that’s a battle of the bloodsuckers! Sounds like it would work, right? Well, while that does sound like an awesome
movie, reality would likely be far more disappointing. Even though you can pull some impressive numbers
from that study, that was with hungry bats essentially locked up in a room with only
mosquitoes to feed on. In the wild, while bats do sometimes feed
on mosquitoes, they tend to prefer munching on other things like moths or even spiders. So that idea is probably out. Now you might be thinking, well Blocko, what
if we just got a bunch of big bug zappers to kill all of the mosquitoes? Again, not such a great idea, sorry! That’s because bug zappers aren’t really
that amazing at killing mosquitoes, but they do end up killing a bunch of beneficial insects
and that aren’t seen as pests. Well there goes my idea for a new tower defense
game. So, if all that stuff is out, then what will
work? Some research that’s gained traction recently
involves genetically modifying mosquitoes so that they wouldn’t be able to properly
reproduce or that they would effectively kill any other mosquitoes that they mated with. Yeah. That's brutal. Beyond that, a new study that came out just
this year may have the answer. Starting back in 2016, scientists were able
to nearly eliminate disease-carrying Asian tiger mosquitoes on two small islands in China. The researcher’s battle plan? Infect the mosquitoes with a virus-fighting
bacterium and then zap them with a small dose of radiation to help sterilize them. This caused the number of female mosquitoes
responsible for spreading disease to drastically plummet, with some periods of time showing
no signs of disease-carrying mosquitoes at all. Promising results for sure, but these methods
probably aren’t very practical for larger areas. Researchers had to release up to 4 million
mosquitoes /each week/ to achieve these results, not even factoring in all of the cost. But hey, at least this might be a decent tactic
for certain smaller applications. Now animator, can you please get rid of these
digital mosquitoes. Some of them there bites are causes pop up
pimples! So do you have any ideas of how we should
kill off all the mosquitoes? How attractive to mosquitoes are you? Let me know in the comment section below,
or tell me, what should I talk about next? Did you know that there are tiny creatures
hiding in your water? You should probably check out this video! Yeah, there are millions upon millions of
tiny little communities that you probably have even thought about! While not all microbes are harmful, there
are definitely some to watch out for that cause foodborne illnesses, and infectious
diseases. As always, my name is Blocko, this has been
Life Noggin, don't forget to keep on thinking!
