What If Mosquitoes Were the Size of Humans?

attaboy don't be killer good in bed citronella netting DEET all the things we use to arm ourselves against a pesky foe the mosquito there are over 3,000 species of these arthropods in the world if you're in North America you can be bitten by 175 different types these blood-sucking pests carry diseases such as malaria and the West Nile virus and they cause an average of 2 million deaths around the world each year our attempts at curbing the population of mosquitoes has so far failed one of the reasons that this disease-carrying bug is so dangerous is because of its size we usually don't know when a mosquito is biting us and even if we do it's too late but what if mosquitoes were as large as humans how dangerous would they be and is it even possible for a mosquito to survive at that size this is what if and here's what would happen if mosquitoes were the size of humans [Music] like vampires mosquitoes are known for blood sucking but they don't do it for nourishment like many other bugs mosquitoes need sugar from nectar to survive so why do they suck animal blood well female mosquitoes need a particular protein and lipid only found in animal blood in order for them to lay eggs a standard mosquito weighs just two and a half milligrams but they need a sizable 1 milligram of blood just to produce 40 eggs and they can lay up to 300 eggs during their average lifespan of 2 to 6 weeks this is why only female mosquitoes bite and draw blood so what would happen if they were the size of humans well for starters transmitting diseases would be the last thing you'd worry about if a female mosquito were 79 kilograms and still required almost three times her body weight in blood over her lifecycle then she would need 237 kilograms of animal blood to lay those 300 eggs in other words she would need to suck every last drop of blood from your body and from 236 other people - yikes at the very least it could become difficult for female mosquitoes to get enough blood to lay her maximum amount of eggs so the population might begin to decrease quickly and we probably want to kill as many as possible maybe scientists would develop some sort of pesticide that only harmed mosquitoes and not humans or maybe they'd become another big game target to hunt down it's also possible that predators would begin to eat mosquito eggs and larvae further curbing the population a mosquito has an exoskeleton meaning it has to molt as it grows this period of transition would be a vulnerable time and could make killing them much easier human-sized mosquitoes would be bad news and not just because they could easily kill us they would likely target cattle horses and large wild mammals creating chaos in both the meat industry and in nature but would a mosquito even be able to survive at 79 kilograms in our current atmosphere probably not arthropods breathe through openings called spiracles that connect to a branching network of trachea this network of tubes diffuses oxygen throughout their body and because of this system the amount of oxygen in the air limits their growth during the Carboniferous period the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere was almost 35% at that time arthropods were huge but today the oxygen in our atmosphere is only 21% that's not enough for a human sized mosquito even if it was mosquitoes would need to develop a much stronger exoskeleton to support all that extra weight and because they need more nectar to sustain themselves many would likely starve we might not see human sized mosquitoes anytime soon but we could see a rise in giant mosquitoes called gala nippers these mosquitoes are 20 times larger than their cousins and are native to North America they're so large they're able to bite through clothing since mosquitoes are cold-blooded they need temperatures over 26 degrees and with global temperatures on the rise gala nippers could easily expand their range and population another possibility is that the growth of mosquitoes could also spur the growth of their natural predators just imagine giant spiders roaming the earth but that's a story for another what if [Music]

Channel: What If

Views: 1,101,955

Keywords: what if, what happens if, scifi, science documentary, what if scenario, mysteries, what if humanity, what if animals, giant mosquitoes, what if mosquitoes were the size of humans, mosquito, monster mosquito, giant insectes, insects, blood-sucking insects, mosquitoes documentary, monster insects, biology, earth, what if we killed all mosquitoes

Id: gJgSa2rPjwM

Length: 5min 46sec (346 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020