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Athens Breeding "Super Mosquitoes"
Chemisor writes "Air pollution and cramped housing conditions in Athens, Greece, are creating a new breed of mosquitoes which are bigger, faster, and can smell humans from farther away. The super insects have color vision and detect humans from 25-30 meters, which is about 50% farther than the ordinary mosquitoe. Beating their wing 500 times a second provides them with extra speed, and the larger bodies (by 0.3ug) presumably allow larger bloodsucking capacity." And in a similar vein (har har) New Scientist had a piece about what mosquitoes like or hate about people.
Growing up, I was ravaged by mosquitoes daily in the summers. There were years when they were particularly bad and they would literally swarm you. They were huge too. If you think it's cold in Minnesota and we don't have mosquitoes, you're wrong. They just had to be that much bigger and drink that much more blood to survive. You would be out playing baseball and three of them would hold you down while another worked his proboscis through your breastplate directly into your heart. Often times there wouldn't be much left of me but skin and bones when I got home. And that was if you were lucky. If there were six or more, oftentimes they'd just grab your shoulders and carry you back to their nest and you'd never be seen again.
If you have someone that loves "all of God's creatures" then you should throw them in pond filled with mosquitoes and see how long it takes them to become a killing machine. Not very long I'd wager. In fact, mosquitoes are pretty good proof that there is no god. Why would a being of infinite good unleash such a horrible plague upon man?
It seemed that the people who produced the most sweat and breathed the hardest were the most attractive. These features seem to come hand in hand with being overweight but I never really bought the idea that overweight people's blood tasted better. If that were true, all the mosquitoes would have moved to Wisconsin.
Instead, you'd have mosquitoes buzzing around your mouth & ears. Why? Because I guess they are attracted to carbon dioxide big time. You accumulate natural carbon dioxide in the wells of your ears and it pours out of your mouth. They also somehow detect lactic acid which you'll find about large animals.
For those of you who don't know, mosquitoes breed in water (when the eggs hatch, they look like this). Not moving water, but standing water. One of the tasks I used to have was laying silage down, putting a tarp over it and weighting the tarp down with old tires. Invariably, rainfall would fill the insides of the tires with just enough water to make them each a breeding well for mosquitoes. It's not a fun job but you have to make sure that all that old scummy water is emptied out otherwise you'd find yourself engulfed with mosquitoes at the end of the summer.
I've never underestimated mosquitoes, I think they need to be very good at detecting carbon dioxide, scents, heat & water vapor in order to successfully find food for their eggs and lay them. This is quite a task considering what they've got and I think that it's amazing they manage to reproduce at all. I dream of the day when mosquitoes are endangered organisms.
*mental note* Do not hold Olympic summer games in Athens, Greece.
My work here is dung.
Did Dan Quayle write this summary?
The super insects have color vision and detect humans from 25-30 meters, which is about 50% farther than the ordinary mosquitoe.
Your name is strikingly apropos to the subject, my friend.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
...live in the city. The air quality is so bad here I'd be amazed if any mosquitoe could survive long term.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
This speaks nothing to the possiblity that Athenians are getting smaller, slower, and smellier.
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
Duh, because in cramped spaces full of humans, it only makes sense that insects with better vision and smell will evolve. Nothing like bumping into food every few meters to make good eyesight an evolutionary necessity.
I'm not sure how big they are exactly, but you should bring your baseball bat.
...so I have to.
I, for one, welcome our new giant color-seeing long-distance mosquito overlords.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Uhhh....
Too late.
Mansquito
http://www.scifi.com/mansquito/
Welcome to the puss-y inflamed itching-to-all-hell scabbed-over mosquito-bite reality that many of the rest of us have to endure.
Time to join the normals, I guess... Natural Mosquito Repelling is a pretty lame Super-power, anyway.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Well one big factor with evolution is having the energy to run your body. Humans spends a vast percentage of the energy we generate on keeping are brain's ticking over - which we can only maintain because the brain allows to us generate enough food to make that reasonable. Where most animals have as stupid a brain as they can get away with - as it's cheaper to run.
These insects already had color vision, the ability to smell humans from a distance, and bodies - but the greater population of humans created a situation where they can afford to grow bigger, afford to run more powerful noses and afford better vision- as there is enough food to support the greater level of energy these "improved" bodies require to be sustained.
Likewise - if food becomes scarce for these animals evolution will lead to them becoming more fuel efficient again.
This is analogous to the situation facing Americans and their SUVs.
http://skeptobot.blogspot.com/ - A site for the Renaissance man and woman
Lack of food?
Enhanced hunting capabilities often REQUIRES more energy to keep the organism alive, so if Athens wasn't such a fertile feeding ground they wouldn't have had the resources to get bigger/better.
But don't worry, pretty soon people will be complaining about the glut of birds feeding on the skeeters followed by the glut of cats eating the birds, followed by....
That's got to be doing something to the humans as well. Might we be breeding people who need air pollution to live? If so, then cleaning up the environment could be like genocide!
To mosquitos in Greece those two would be indistinguishable.
Welcome our new greek killing, buzzing overlords!
Hell, I can tell you that without reading the article.
Mosquitoes like:
-that humans have blood
Mosquitoes hate:
-that humans squash them
There you go.
I can imagine they'd be a pain in the ass. Or thigh. Or hand. Or practically anywhere, for that matter.
*rimshot*
Ne Cede Malis.
Athenian Scientists get so focused on creating "Super Mosquitoes", that they never stop and ask themselves "should we do this". We can only hope Spartan Scientists don't escalate the situation by bio-engineering "MegaFrogs".
Next time one jabs you, don't squish it, tense up that part of the body rapidly and repetitively. If the mozzie is on a vein that happens to suddenly get an influx of blood flowing through... pop!
Te Quiero, Puta!
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møsquitøe
with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given
her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and
star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo
Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst
Nordfink".
Mynd you, møsquitøe bites Kan be pretty nasti...
This is evolution on equal terms. Unfortunately, the mosquito has used the traits it has developed. We have developed the ability to change their genome. For instance, cross the mosquito with the firefly. Release a few breaders into the world and we could see them at 30 meters. Got a blinking bug on your ass? BAM! Dead. We must be holding back due to some stupid british style fair play type logic.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Mosquito 2.0 - Ah, screw it, I'm not upgrading until the "point one" release. You know the round numbers are always unstable.
These so-called midges are a marketing ploy. Ever noticed they are only around when the pubs are open? As long as you stay inside and drink beer you're ok - and who's benefiting from that? The brewers! My guess is they grow them in these huge containers you see at breweries and distribute them with their delivery trucks, pouring them out all over city's villages and countryside through the exhaust pipe, masking as diesel fumes.
Mosquitos do not have venom.
Yet.