Posted on 07/29/2019 9:19:05 AM PDT by C19fan
It has been one of the most aggravating sounds on earth for more than 100 million years — the humming buzz of a mosquito.
She gently lands on your ankle and inserts two serrated mandible cutting blades and saws into your skin, while two other retractors open a passage for the proboscis. With this straw she sucks your blood, while a sixth needle pumps in saliva that contains an anticoagulant that prevents that blood from clotting. This shortens her feeding time, lessening the likelihood that you splat her across your ankle.
The female mosquito needs your blood to grow her eggs. Please don’t feel singled out. She bites everyone. There is no truth to the myths that mosquitoes prefer women over men or blondes and redheads over those with darker hair. She does, however, play favorites. Type O blood seems to be the vintage of choice. Stinky feet emit a bacterium that woos famished females, as do perfumes. As a parting gift, she leaves behind an itchy bump (an allergic reaction to her saliva) and potentially something far worse: infection with one of several deadly diseases, including malaria, Zika, West Nile, dengue and yellow fever.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
As the article is from the NY Slimes, do they say that Trump is also an “apex predator?”
Probably tourists. I had on a long sleeved, Columbia shirt plus a full upper mosquito net and still got nailed. Nasty buggers.
If I lived there I’d go through a lot of permathrin.
“The Alaskan state bird.”
Try camping in the Florida Everglades.
“Skin-So-Soft” by Avon is the best bug repellent there is. Works great on mosquitoes and chiggers.
The Palmetto Bug is the Florida state bird.
Mosquitos have no ecological value besides being on the menu for some birds (Purple Martins, swallows, ducks,a nd geese), and some fish that efficiently cull mosquito larvae populations in open fresh water bodies.
Other than that, I don’t think mosquitoes serve any useful purpose, like say BEES do.
You're right... thanks ...
Floridians say they have some skeeters that are so big, they can stand flat-footed and rape a turkey! :/
Bats eat mosquitos, but they don’t really cull mosquito populations much or rely on mosquitos for most of their food. Brown Bats eat a variety of flying insects up to moths, and will eat beetles. Fruit bats eat... well, fruit.
But then there are 1,200 species of bat, so I can’t say what they all eat.
Yep. I’ve dealt with them a time or two as well. Unsettling when you turn the light on and a big one is just sitting on the table across from you - looking at you..
That’s what my wife says. She swears by it.
dailycaller.com/2017/03/07/bureaucrat-responsible-for-epas-ddt-ban-says-trump-must-beef-up-the-agency/] https://dailycaller.com/2017/03/07/bureaucrat-responsible-for-epas-ddt-ban-says-trump-must-beef-up-the-agency/
Ruckelshaus was responsible for banning DDT, a pesticide that helped kill insects that spread various blood-borne viruses, during his first go-around at the agency in 1972. The first EPA administrator would later admit that the ban had more to do with politics than with the environment or public health.
“The mosquito’s a clever little bastard. You can track him for days and days until you really get to know him like a friend. He knows you’re there, and you know he’s there. It’s a game of wits. You hate him, then you respect him, then you kill him.”
Over the years I’ve developed a allergy to their bites.
It used to be that it only itched for a few hours. Over the years, that gone to days, even weeks of horrible itching.
I’ve tried Ammonia (After Bite, Windex), cortisone, baking soda, lidocaine, aloe; everything, and nothing helps.
I’d be happy to see them ALL gone.
Sorry bats (and my favorite birds, Chimney Swifts).
https://jmvh.org/article/ddt-and-silent-spring-fifty-years-after/
With the war’s end, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), along with the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rockefeller Foundation, began funding the large scale use of DDT for malaria control. Mosquito control officers in the United States used DDT in two ways: as a residual insecticide on the walls of houses and as a larvicide. The results were dramatic. By 1952, there were only 437 cases of malaria transmitted domestically, in contrast to the million of cases just a few years earlier.11
In the early 1950’s the World Health Organization launched the Global Malaria Eradication Program.7 ,11 South Africa was one of the first countries to use the insecticide in 1946 and within several years, malarial areas had decreased.12 India’s malaria control program saw similar decreases. Between 1953 and 1957, morbidity was more than halved from 10.8 percent to 5.3 percent of the total population, and malaria deaths were reduced almost to zero.13 After DDT was introduced in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the number of malaria cases fell from 2.8 million in 1946 to just 110 in 1961.14 Taiwan also adopted DDT for malaria control shortly after World War II; in 1945, there were over 1 million cases of malaria on the island; by 1969, however, there were only nine cases, and shortly thereafter the disease was permanently eradicated from the country. Similarly spectacular decreases in malaria cases and deaths were seen everywhere DDT was used.15
DDT.... a great invention that was foolishly banned, with deadly consequences for many Third World residents.
I’d then tell them about the scientist who ate a pound of the stuff to show how safe it is. They’d ask “What happened to him?” “He died...” I’d tell them, “...climbing a mountain 20 years later in his 80s”.
None here in California in the summer. no rain
Mosquitoes can only survive in stagnant fresh water
Eliminate any stagnant fresh water nearby your residence and you will never have a mosquito problem
Now if you live on the East Coast, in the great Northwest , or Alaska good luck to you!
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