Mosquitoes suck. They are the most deadly creature on the planet. They fly around, sharing diseases like dengue fever, malaria and yellow fever, infecting 700 million people a year, and killing over 2 million.

In an effort to reduce their negative effects on our population, scientists have begun fighting back. Some of the methods scientists have researched for waging war against mosquitoes, include:

• Infecting them with parasites which reduce cut their life span by almost half
• Splicing their genes in a way that will render the females wingless and unable to fly. (Female mosquitoes are the sex that suck blood and infect people.)
• Giving mosquitoes the vaccine for malaria, so they infect and provide the cure simultaneously
• Making mosquitoes immune to malaria, thus preventing them from contracting the disease
• Infecting them in the larval stage by weakening their exoskeleton, making them more susceptible to pesticides
• Reducing their lifespan with anti-mosquito bacteria
• Targeting and destroying them using a photonic fence (“laser”)
• Genocide: killing all mosquitoes

Genocide of all mosquitoes is the most extreme example and it is only being discussed. There are far too many unknowns scientists have to consider.

Interested in how science is targeting these little pricks? Here’s the full article.