Sabbir Hosen

What would change if there were no mosquitoes on earth?

Throughout human history, battles and wars have killed nearly a billion people. But this gargantuan number is overshadowed by the amount of deaths caused by a much smaller and harmless-looking creature: the mosquito. In The Nature Journal, it is estimated that during the past 50,000 years, nearly half of all human beings who ever lived have perished from diseases transmitted by this tiny insect. Of these, malaria is one of the most lethal. Mosquitoes transmit malaria and spread numerous other viral diseases, such as Zika, dengue, West Nile fever, and yellow fever. Malaria, by itself, killed 627,000 people in 2022 around the globe. However, the Anopheles gambiae mosquito has been the most problematic in rural Africa. A 2020 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences even referred to this mosquito as the world's most lethal creature.