Why Mosquitoes Are Good for the Environment

It has happened before. You were sitting on your back porch, enjoying the stars on a cloudless night when all of the sudden you feel a sharp pain on your arm. You slap it and pull back a bloody mess of bug guts and your own blood. And to top it off, your arm is now itchy. What have you just experienced? A mosquito bite. Don't you hate the little monsters? Well, sad to say, mosquitoes are important to the environment and to our survival as humans. Before you protest that, take a look at some of these reasons why.

First off, there's the food thing. Mosquitoes are a primary source of food for everything from fish to fowl. Fish, tadpoles, and other water insects eat mosquito larva on a daily basis. Bats, birds, insects, and a huge variety of other living creatures eat mosquitoes every night. A single bat can devour hundreds of mosquitoes in one night. Mosquitoes are a primary food source for thousands of species.

Sure, you may argue that if we got rid of the mosquitoes, another, less irritating bug would take their place. I am afraid not. Mosquitoes are an excellent food source for precisely the same reason we hate them. They ingest our blood, which is filled with protein. It is this blood that makes them so nutritious to other animals. There are not too many other bugs out there that could replace them.

Scientists from countries across the globe are experimenting with ways to permanently destroy mosquitoes once and for all. There is a huge call for their destruction. Mosquitoes are not only irritating, they can be dangerous. Many carry diseases that they pass to humans and animals. They are also bad for our livestock. Hundreds, if not indeed thousands, of cattle, pigs, sheep, and other farm animals die every year from stress related to mosquitoes. When mosquitoes swarm near a herd, many of the animals die from the stress of the sheer numbers of mosquitoes feeding on them.

If we were to achieve our goal and eradicate mosquitoes, then we would be committing environmental suicide. There would be a huge die out of animals that feed on mosquitoes and then of animals that feed on those animals. The environment would be severely damaged. It may even affect us by cutting us off from our food sources in the wild. We need mosquitoes around to maintain natural stability. Like it or not, mosquitoes are here to stay.

No sources other than prior knowledge were used in this article.