Le mosquitoes they are a problem. They are not only annoying, so much so that several experiments are trying to kill the population by sterilizing the male specimens, but they are also very dangerous. It is no coincidence that mosquitoes are the animals that made them more victims in the history of humanity. Small, silent and deadly, they are killerrather virus carriers deadly or very dangerous.
In summer, the presence of mosquitoes becomes so evident that cyclically someone proposes to exterminate them, without taking into consideration the impact this could have for other animal species that feed on it. The idea of a summer without stings, however, is very tempting and often we end up filling the home environment or the skin with dangerous repellents too. Better to pay attention to the quantity and always prefer natural materials to “chemical” ones.
This summer, more than in others, it seems that the presence of mosquitoes has increased and precisely to try to understand the phenomenon, the researchers of the Sapienza University of Rome, in collaboration with other universities, are asking to photograph mosquitoes and upload photos to an app called Mosquito Alert. The goal is to keep mosquitoes under control, especially the most dangerous ones for human health.
Mosquitoes are dangerous for humans and beyond
Mosquitoes were not created to annoy the human being, even if they succeed very well in the intent. Like everything else that exists in nature, nothing really serves a purpose and all of them are someone else’s food. Mosquitoes are told as useless animals, but this is a completely human definition that does not take into account what is useful to nature, to other species and to the ecosystem.
In any case, useful or not, mosquitoes are vectors of dangerous diseases that they manage to carry for a long time between a bite and another and not only between a human being and another human being. A modus operandi that in the course of human history has killed more people than any other animal species. According to research conducted by various health agencies (figure 1) mosquitoes kill more than sharks, wolves and all other animals that we consider to be more dangerous.
Figure 1
Data on the number of victims of mosquitoes
Each dot corresponds to 500 victims, for a total of 830,000 human deaths attributable to mosquitoes per year. Compared to mosquitoes, sharks pale with their “just” 6 deaths a year.
The most dangerous mosquitoes for humans: what diseases they carry
In Italy there are over 65 known species of mosquitoes and in Europe it wins the sad record of country with more species and greater spread of mosquitoes. A worrying record, especially for the impact these animals have on public health. Over the years there have been several cases of outbreak of some of the diseases of which mosquitoes are vectors, such as in the case of Dengue fever or West Nile fever.
Among the most dangerous species, also present in Italy, we can mention:
- Culex Pipiens
- the Anopheles mosquitoes
- Aedes (to whom the tiger mosquito belongs)
- Temples of the Egyptians
These in turn carry pathogens (viruses, protozoa, etc.) that are dangerous for humans, such as:
- Yellow Fever, carried by the tiger mosquito
- Dengue, carried by Aedes aegypti and tiger mosquito
- Zika, carried by the tiger mosquito
- different types of encephalitis, carried by the Culex mosquito
- malaria, transported by Anofele
- Chikungunya, carried by the tiger mosquito
