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April 3 - April 12, 2020
Last year she slaughtered only 830,000 people. We sensible and wise Homo sapiens occupied the runner-up #2 spot, slaying 580,000 of our own species.
Since 2000, the annual average number of human deaths caused by the mosquito has hovered around 2 million.
In plain numbers, the mosquito has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief 200,000-year existence.*
“It is perhaps a rude blow to the amour propre of our species,” writes acclaimed University of Georgetown history professor J. R. McNeill, “to think that lowly mosquitoes and mindless viruses can shape our international affairs. But they can.”
Although you heard her droning arrival, she gently lands on your ankle without detection, as she usually bites close to the ground.
The anticoagulant causes an allergic reaction, leaving an itchy bump as her parting gift.
Blood type O seems to be the vintage of choice over types A and B or their blend. People with blood type O get bitten twice as often as those with type A, with type B falling somewhere in between.
Those who have higher natural levels of certain chemicals in their skin, particularly lactic acid, also seem to be more attractive. From these elements she can analyze which blood type you are.
Cleanliness is not next to godliness, except for stinky feet, which emit a bacterium (the same one that ripens and rinds certain cheeses) that is a mosquito aphrodisiac. Mosquitoes are also enticed by deodorants, perfumes, soap, and other applied fragrances.
Wearing bright colors is also not a wise choice,
She can smell carbon dioxide from over 200 feet away.
Unlike their female counterparts, male mosquitoes do not bite.
Our mosquito will continue to bite and lay eggs during her short life span of an average one to three weeks to an infrequent maximum longevity of five months.
The two oldest fossilized mosquitoes on record are those preserved in amber from Canada and Myanmar dating from 105 to 80 million years ago.
The human body contains one hundred times as many bacterial cells as it does human cells.
Currently, over one million microbes have been identified, yet only 1,400 have the potential to cause harm to humans.*
the common cold, the twenty-four-hour flu, and true influenza, are passed on through coughing and sneezing.
a vector (an organism that transmits disease) such as fleas, mites, flies, ticks, and our darling mosquito.
First appearing some 350 million years ago, insects quickly attracted a toxic army of diseases, creating an unprecedented lethal alliance.
Insects remain the most prolific and diverse catalogue of creatures on our planet, accounting for 57% of all living organisms, and an astounding 76% of all animal life.
The natural transmission of diseases from animals to humans is termed zoonosis (“animal sickness” in Greek) or more commonly referred to as “spillover.” Currently, zoonosis accounts for 75% of all human diseases, and is on the rise.
James Webb in Humanity’s Burden,
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”*
Mosquitoes can evolve and adapt quickly to their changing environments within a few generations.
As the apex predator throughout our odyssey, it appears that her role in our relationship is to act as a countermeasure against uncontrolled human population growth.
Throughout our existence, the mosquito’s toxic twins of malaria and yellow fever have been the prevailing agents of death and historical change and will largely play the role of antagonists in the protracted chronological war between man and mosquito.
Mosquito-borne pathogens can be separated into three groupings: viruses, worms, and protozoans (parasites).
In 1883, Scottish biologist Henry Drummond called parasites “a breach in the laws of Evolution and the greatest crime against humanity.”
Malaria is the unsurpassed scourge of humankind.
There are over 450 different types of malaria parasites vexing animals across the world, with five of them afflicting humans.
Malaria takes a life every thirty seconds. Sadly, 75% of the deceased are children under five years of age.
if you are lucky enough to have contracted vivax, you probably will not die. Vivax is the most common form of malaria, especially outside of Africa, and is responsible for 80% of all malaria cases, but it is not generally a killer. Its mortality rate hovers around 5% in Africa, with an even lower 1–2% in the rest of the world.
Mosquitoes are generally at their prime health and peak performance in temperatures above 75 degrees.
Cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, basil, and onions all soften malaria’s symptoms, which may explain why, for millennia, people have added these nutritionally hollow flavorings to their diets.
Coffee is the world’s second most valuable (legal) commodity after petroleum, and the most widely used psychoactive drug, with Americans consuming 25% of the market share.
Yams release chemicals that inhibit the reproduction of falciparum malaria in the blood.
“The past 200 years, during which ever increasing numbers of Sapiens have obtained their daily bread as urban labourers and office workers, and the preceding 10,000 years, during which most Sapiens lived as farmers and herders,” explains Yuval Noah Harari in his bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, “are a blink of an eye compared to the tens of thousands of years during which our ancestors hunted and gathered.”
horses conveyed the common cold virus; from chickens came “bird flu,” chickenpox, and shingles; pigs and ducks donated influenza; and from cattle arose measles, tuberculosis, and smallpox.
Human domestication of plants and animals accelerated the mosquito’s ascent to global domination and presented her diseases with beckoning untapped frontiers and unblemished horizons of opportunity.
Statistically, throughout history, societies that were engaged in elevated trade also had a higher propensity for war.
Most illnesses are accompanied by a fever, including cholera and typhoid, both of which were relatively generic.
All malarial attacks also produce a visibly distended spleen.
“We are not makers of history,” conceded the esteemed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “We are made by history.”
Plato is considered the most pivotal figure in the development of Western philosophy and science. His most famous student, Aristotle, who studied under his mentor for twenty years, left his mark on every modern academic field from zoology and biology, including the study of insects, to physics, music, and theater, to political science and the collective and individual psychoanalysis of human beings.
The famed Greek physician Hippocrates (460–370 BCE), for example, likened the deadly malaria season of summer and early fall to the nightly arrival of Sirius the Dog Star, a period of sickness he branded the “dog days of summer.”
malaria—literally “bad air” in Italian—discordant
Zoology professor Dr. J. L. Cloudsley-Thompson goes one step further, recognizing that “Hippocrates knew malaria well: this insidious disease was afterwards to sap and rot the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome.”
“The fate of Rome was played out by emperors and barbarians, senators and generals, soldiers and slaves,” emphasizes Kyle Harper in his acclaimed 2017 work, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire. “But it was equally decided by bacteria and viruses. . . . The fate of Rome might serve to remind us that nature is cunning and capricious.”
Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy, Robert Sallares affirms that wetlands across Italy, including the notorious Pontine Marshes of the Campagna, “were being seized by malaria.”
Another popular Roman malaria remedy was to wear a piece of papyrus or amulet inscribed with the powerful incantation “abracadabra.” While the origin of the word is unclear, it appears to be borrowed from the Aramaic, meaning “I will create what I speak,” essentially summoning a cure.*