Killing Mosquitoes With a Flip of a Gene 

So, they're in the process of murdering bats? I'm not a legal boy, but that's 2nd degree maybe 3rd degree genocide. As far as I know, that's illegal.

Hell yeah

Here in southern California the same species is an invasive species also. They are sooo annoying, but our dry, desert climate (Los Angeles and surrounding areas) kind of nerf their reproductive abilities. We don't get swarms, but we will get dozens through the course of an all day barbecue, for example. I just started using an electric tennis-racket style to zap them. They still come around, but killing them is much easier.

Wow, wish this could be done with Tiger mosquitoes in Georgia, as they are super ferocious here,too.

@@patpierce4854 yeah im not sure why theyre not doing that in other states, it seems like a no brainer.

Damn that's str8 up Nightmare fuel.

yes they are.

I think it was a PBS Eon episode. But that can't be right. They don't make that kind of content.

That wouldn't prevent them from biting us. Females would stille need blood for reproduction

@@Bhatakti_Hawas the point is to eradicate malaria

@@meepmoop2308 and the biting too. Mosquito bites suck 😭

Just wipe out the ones that carry the diseases or find a way to make them avoid humans as a food source

Please get the ones that carry EEE and West Nile too pls thx

It's inside all COVID vaccines

“To err is human”

Why would it be a paradox? It's way easier to blow up a nuke in a city than it is to snipe three people in a crowded open-air concert without injuring anyone else. Provided the materials. It's always easier to cause massive havoc than to surgically remove something.

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could.... they didn't stop to think why they didn't do it sooner.

How is it a paradox?

Not paradox its obvious, mosquito is hard to kill.

Maybe. Dragonflies eat misquito larvae as well. I think you would want those if you have a mosquito problem.

Well, he's the Some Guy of the Mosquito Control Board. He doesn't require your permission.

Yeah youre right, they're eating the larvae! It's a great short term solution

@@lonestarr1490 don't ask questions, just accept it

I'm guessing they're "mosquito fish."

It's going to be scary how life finds away around being wiped out by having the entire population turned into dudes...

Jurasic Park 1 😁

SpongeBob

Pretty sure that's a bible quote

@@frotwithdanger the book of raptors book 1, written by the prophet crighton and adapted for the screen by the prophet spielburg

Mullet guy is pretty good too

@@craigh5236 long haired guy? It mullet guy?

yeah, gift of gab

I have to disagree with you. I think everyone here has top notch presentation skills. I don't even think hank has improved dramatically because he was always good

@@craigh5236 Easy on the eye too, which is a bit distracting.

As Hank points out, there are thousands of species of mosquito and only a few that carry deadly human diseases. Wiping out just _Aedes_ and _Anopheles_ spp. is not gonna collapse any food chains.

life isn't a movie man nothing would fill its "niche" they aren't actively spreading malaria on purpose

On the bright side that would mean we could meet aliens faster 😝 plus we'd just turn to another species to say they're endangered

@@Joe-- watch as the galactic counsel deems humanity as some kind of threat and just wipes them out

@@namikosai9466 And so they should .. we do not have our act together.

@@Joe-- See, the thing about extraterrestrial life is that you DON'T want them to know you're there. The risks reduce all potential benefit to nothing. One reason we might not have found a level 2 civilization out there yet is because they're hiding. And if a level 2 civilization needs to hide, then we DEFINITELY need to hide our level 0 civilization.

@@namikosai9466 Lol 😆👍

Didn't work for AIDS in the 1980's though.

When I heard it I thought some right wing group is going to use that for sure. 'See even the scientists agree with us'

@@Brad729 ok brad

@@justayoutuber1906 lol ignorant comment right here, plenty of women got it as well.

Yeah same, I don't quite get it. Wouldn't these methods be naturally selected against? If they're going to make the population reproduce less then there'd be fewer of them, so you'd think the population would just select for normal mosquitoes.

he's shooting blanks, but she doesn't know that

From what I have read, you require 9 sterile males for every fertile one to make the autocidal control method work. So its an ongoing effort.

They don't live a long time. It isn't like there is dating and courtship. They mate, then die soon after.

@@justayoutuber1906 That's kind of the point. You would think that the female would mate with different male after different male until she lost interest due to the hormonal signals she'd get from starting the process of actually reproducing.

?????

@@captainjames4649 most sprays here are of the repellent variety, not kill bugs variety

yes where is it

my finger.

Ohohohh bonjour, so we cross paths once again

The kill switch is your palm of hand. It works very well, it's messy though!

@@EverythingButSorted my dad as experienced the messy part

Science ☝️

That’s the first quote that came to my mind also! Chaos theory!

TO MAKE ME VOMIT

By FL you mean Florida? Sometimes it's good to make a slight clarification, at first I thought you had moved to Finland but then again the facts didn't match, so Florida it must be.

@@koraptd6085 yes, Florida. My apologies.

Mosquitoes(the garmfull one) need to go extinct!!! 🥳🥳🥳 Wasps/hornets are also good contesters 🤔🥳

Yeah, and the mosquitoes that bite us aren't even key species for ecosystems. If we could exterminate them without killing anything else at the same time, the ecosystems would go along just fine. We could literally treat them like an invasive species to the planet and nothing of value would be lost. That's extremely rare in ecology.

they are, lol

"Watch closely as Grandpa topples an empire by changing a 1.. to a 0."

They kill 1 million people a year, shut up

insects dont have an adaptive immune system they have an inate one that functions differently. so the possibility to make it so their immune system kills of the diseases may have already been thought of before and ruled out.

@@Boomrainbownuke9608 RNAi doesn't rely on the adaptive immune system, it could be implemented as an additional layer of innate cellular immunity.

RNAi doesn't really work as viral defense in mosquitos and fast replicating viruses, because the fast generational cycle and high mutation rate of the virus would inactivate the interfering RNA pretty quickly, as it is dependent on almost perfect base pairing (max of 2 mismatches, I believe) and the mosquito has actually no evolutionary advantage in not spreading the disease, so there is no selective pressure to further a gene-for-gene immunity mechanism.

The thing is mosquitos have no interest in "fighting off the disease". It doesn't affect them at all so they have no incentive to eliminate it.

Keystone species where? The articles (mainly Nature's 2010 July article on them) I've read about eradicating mosquitos seem to indicate that there are no animals that solely rely on mosquitos as food. Other animals would fill that niche.

From what I understand not every mosquito that bites humans carries diseases we’re worried about. With thousands of mosquitoes and the relative simplicity of the basic mosquito template, I also suspect that re-introducing non-human biting mosquitos that fill the niche of extinct mosquitos without any noticeable differences is likely probable in most cases. Also we’ve been slowly eradicating mosquitos in parts of Florida for over a decade now, keeping their numbers artificially low, like 1% as many low kind of low. I generally have yet to hear of environmentalists warning of the unforeseen effects this has been causing on the Floridian swamps (though that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any), so we have at least some areas that can work as beta tests to tell us if things would go catastrophically wrong. Certainly caution is warranted given the lessons of the past on other similar attempts (though it should be noted that outside of a few apex-predators our ancestors have generally been pretty abysmal at actually succeeding in wiping out undesired species, more often we just introduced a new pest or accidentally ended up with more of them that were more resistant to our techniques, only apex-predators which reliably breed slowly, have low numbers, and are usually easily comparatively easily tracked by hunters, have been able to be wiped out when a concerted effort was made). Any effort to eradicate mosquitos should be deliberate and incredibly well-thought out and demonstrated on small scales successfully before brought to large scales. Each biome will need its own testing and solution as one solution may not work in another place without undesired consequences. Damage on ecosystems will need to be minimized, both by limiting what species we eradicate (for now sticking to those that transmit deadly diseases, later perhaps we may decide to remove all human-biting mosquitos but we should definitely have more experience managing large biospheres than we do now before we start making quality of life changes as opposed to large-scale death prevention ones), and likely reintroducing replacement species where needed, perhaps with the replacement being modified if necessary to better fit the role they are replacing. Finally small lab populations of the mosquitos removed should be kept around so if consequences start biting us in the butt despite our best efforts we at least have a way to undo the damage. With all that in mind, given that each species tends to specialized for a certain type of host, and that there’s more than one type of animal in a given range of mosquitos, and that most mosquitos are likely equivalently delicious to their prey, it seems quite probably that a non-destructive way of eradicating the truly harmful species is achievable, and given that an estimated 5% of humans ever existing have died to mosquitos, well worth the effort.

The mosquitoes that are responsible for spreading human diseases will most likely be the target of attempted eradication. Many human populated areas are infested with invasive mosquitoes that can be carriers of human disease. Wiping out invasive will likely not have any negative effects on natural environments in the nearby areas.

Fortunately he's not talking about all mosquitoes, just those specific species that are immediately and actively detrimental to humans. This is particularly relevant to those regions like the Pacific where biting mosquitoes are an invasive species, following humans to areas they aren't native to. As late as the 1950s French Polynesia had 'no mosquitoes' as an advertising point as they hadn't reached there yet. As for those species that take advantage of those same mosquitoes there will indeed be some disruption but the processes mentioned in the video are slow enough for alternatives to be found without some kind of crash die-off. A new equilibrium will be found just like how it was found when the biting mosquitoes rose in numbers by feeding on humans and livestock. Your point is valid and people _do_ think about this sort of thing, so you can be confident that if you have concerns, so have other people with direct input into the programs being talked about. The ethics of science are a long way from the 'lets just do it' of the last generation.

Exactly - my first thought was, 'but the species that feed on THOSE species of mosquito larvae and adults can just go eff off, huh? Like baby fish and bats and such...'

im afraid that's a memetic pathogen.

I don't think human stupidity will ever go away unfortunately

Unfortunately, Fox News makes it grow

Oversimplifying a bit, but yeah, gene crossover between human X and Y chromosomes (along with a number of other things) really is yet another case of when the universe just looks at silly humans trying to stick things into binary categories because we like simple answers, and is like "yeah, about that...." One day maybe we'll realize things are basically _never_ that simple when you look close.

Yeah. The standard for evolutionary 'design' is just it works well enough most of the time. I like saying that sex determination (especially secondary traits) is more like a Rube Goldberg machine than a switch. Interestingly, it also varies quite a bit across animals, especially within insects.

@@travcollier yeah, evolution is just one long process of endless blindfolded MacGyvering ontop of MacGyvering that's been going on longer than we're able to wrap our brains around. Assuming any part of the results to be simple is absurd on its face. Everything is cobbled together into a state of "eh, probably good enough, and if it's not, there will be a lot more, so don't waste too much time on QC" If it was any different, our retinas wouldn't be in backwards.

Indeed. This post was made by anti-gender ideology gang.

@@panchor no-one here was talking about gender, though...

Only a handful of mosquito species out of the ~3000 we got even bites humans, so even if we got rid of all of those, not a single species would die out because they couldn't find anymore food... Just another species of mosquito is gonna take their ecological niché and it's business as usual.

a band-aid

Because with out crazy people are someone will try and do it to humans as well

@@mugenokami2201 Well, we are both the ultimate invasive species and a walking mass extinction; if any species needs to go for the greater good, it would be ours. Leave the mosquitos alone.

It's being conducted by well-intentioned German scientists. They have experience.

They can and will adapt

My thoughts too, plus mosquitoes help with pollination. Thought I get how it could save human lives. Just hope there won't be any negative repercussions

That's why we should only focus on the moskito species that transmit diseases to humans. That way the 99% other species would be fine and the bats will still have enough to eat.

@@khenricx and therein in the root of a lot of misconceptions.. its only a handful of the thousands species of mosquito that actually spread human diseases. Even within a large population of mosquitos there can be a large number of species present, so only killing the bad species doesn't actually impact the overall mosquito population and the other species grow to fill the gap etc.. The first thing people (rightfully) think when hearing 'kill all mosquitos' is 'thats a seriously bad idea'.... but thats not actually the aim, or end goal... its to kill all mosquitos of a singular species within the given population.

It can also fail in XY individuals, with the expected inverse effect. And without some other obvious X/Y-bound indicator like colorblindness, nobody will ever know without explicit testing. _Plenty_ of people don't have the genes they assume they do.

What, "No more stinky bug spray"? That doesn't seem all that outrageous to me.

@@CyberiusT thanks .. I was wondering too, maybe osmia has wee chillun tho

There is more than one species of mosquitoe, they would simply fill the void.

I think they would have thought about it

3:00

Some scientists have and are considering the consequences of wiping out some populations of mosquitoes, it is mentioned in the video. As always, they weigh the good and bad consequences and determine what the best scenario would be. Should we protect human lives or protect a species that could keep a natural balance in certain ecosystems? Whatever the decision, someone or something will get the short end of the stick.

I mean, not to denigrate the experience of someone who has just seen a 5-minute RU-vid video ... but _most of the time,_ anything the RU-vid viewer thinks of within 10 minutes of hearing about a topic, the scientists who have spent a whole career in that subject have indeed already thought of. Sorry.

Something even worse may soon emerge to fill up the ecological niche.

Dafuq? Who told you that? The biggest redistribution of nutrients from large vertebrates to small ones? That would be the large ones dying and the small ones eating their carcass. Blood sucking insects only play a minor role in distributing nutrients, as long as their bite doesn't kill their host. And humans are also not necessarily a large source of nutrients to small vertebrates once they're dead, given how we bury dead people or burn them alltogether.

Yeah... that was my first thought, too...

Marvel: *"WRITE THAT DOWN, WRITE THAT DOWN"*

Source?

@@melanieortiz712 yes, many species feed on the 3000 (!) species of mosquitos, where only a handful (!) even bite humans and not all of those (!!) transmit diseases. Not every mosquito you see out there is the same species, you know... 🤦‍♂️

A lot of species. But do you know how many species of mosquito bite humans? About a dozen. And how many do not bite humans? About 3000. There are plenty of mosquitos around as food, even if we erradicate ALL that bug us, even the ones that don't carry diseases... Jeez, just google some numbers the next time before posting...

they'll be okay

They literally address that at the end. They talk about only targeting those that are a threat to human, not the thousands of other mosquitos that don't bother us. This leaves majority of maquitos untouched.

@@cameoshadowness7757 but the species that feed on THOSE species of mosquito larvae and adults can just go eff off, huh? Like baby fish and bats and such ...

@@MaryAnnNytowl the ones who feed on those, feed on other kinds of mosquitos as well. They aren't dependent on ONLY those types and thus will still have other mosquitos to eat.

You are so wrong i despise having to share the same air as you

Kill off some bird species, frogs, spiders, some fish that feed on the larva.. And then create a chain reaction like that.. Or maybe, not.. who knows.

Or get more hawks