What If All Mosquitoes Disappeared? The Pros and Cons of Eradicating Them
Sunday, 16 August 2026
This video about mosquitoes poses an interesting question to
the viewer. If you could push a button,
and by that action eradicate all the mosquitoes on the planet at once, would
you? Any kind of extinction event should
warrant thought and reflection and to be sure, the mighty mosquito doesn’t have
much going for it. Despite its tiny
size, the death toll every year is still around 700,000 as the insect transmits
diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever – as well as others. That’s an awful lot of people (even though
the dint it makes in our population is scarcely noticeable).
So, would you press that button? Find out the pros and cons by watching the
video, which is also full of random but interesting facts about
mosquitoes. For example, I wasn’t aware
that it was only the female that bites us – and that discovery has led to some
developments in trying to reduce the number of “deaths by mosquito” each
year. The video also shows measures
which do not involve killing the insect, so perhaps there is room for the
mosquito and the human to cohabit the planet after all? My own take on this situation is not an
extinction level event (as it were) for a number of reasons. First and foremost, nature has a nasty habit
of filling in any gaps, and if we get rid of every mosquito on the planet, I am
convinced that something far nastier might eventually discover the empty niche
and fill it... Watch the intriguing
video by BBC Ideas below.
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