I Don't Know About That - Mosquitoes

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

In this episode, the team discusses mosquitoes with research assistant professor in The Infectious Disease & Global Health Department at Tufts University, Dr. Adam South. Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter @dr_adam_south. Go to JimJefferies.com to buy tickets to Jim's upcoming tour, The Moist Tour.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I don't know about Jim Jefferies that was your best one ever yeah pretty accurate there's three Red Bulls these were all from today I've been sleeping badly and I had to wake up

and all this type of stuff I'm up and down I'm dealing with a pregnancy. I don't have many vices left. You've drank all these right before the podcast, right? I drank, I'm on my third one, but I need a bit of caffeine at the moment, yeah. A little bit.

A little bit. Well, Jack, what have you got for us? Comment World. Comment World. It's Comment World. Reading comments off go first? Comment world. Comment world. It's comment world. Reading comments off the internet in comment world. Opinionated fucks, but we don't give a shit. So fuck them in the ass and let's be done with it. It's comment world.

Michael Miller, everybody. Faces were infuriating. I know. I did them for you, Forrest. But wait, is that new song? That's the same song we haven't got any new songs we haven't got any new ones in because we got some good ones

most of these comments are from Manatee episode very well received everyone really liked Forrest someone said I haven't laughed so much through an episode before you guys are always so entertaining but this time I was crying with laughter. That's nice.

Did anyone mention that I messed up the order in the family? Someone did. Okay. Did you want to have it? Of course they did. No, I mean, Serenity is the order. I said family, but I think I even said in the podcast. Look, part of my brain is dead.

Has anyone mentioned that Tasmanian devils don't eat fruit? No, I think you wanted to mention that. How the fuck did that slip by when no one corrected me? It turns out they're carnivores with the fourth strongest jaw in the world. How many episodes ago was that? It was the last one I listened to. When did you say it? What episode?

I just said it on an episode. I'm like, we haven't done an episode on Tasmanian devils. I said it on an episode, Tasmanian devils eat things, and then I went to Australia and saw some Tasmanian devils like eat through a kangaroo leg. And I was like, all right, they're not fruitarians at all. I got that completely wrong. I don't know where that bit of information popped into my head.

That's Steve Jobs. And now it's making me think, how much more am I wrong about? Wow. Crush the Red Bull. So there's a lot of nice stuff. But I want to do a new spin on Comment World today. Oh, God. So the new game. There's a lot of nice stuff, but I want to do a new spin on comment world today. Oh, God. So the new game...

Is there a song for that? You can sing it if you want. I don't know what the spin is. Well, I'm about to tell you, and then you come up with the theme song. So the game is, are these comments from one of our podcasts or... Something Hitler said.

Completely impossible to tell first comment the Jews are ruining the economy that was in our Bitcoin episode I'm sorry these comments

from one of our podcasts or on a video called high school kid sharts himself why do you know that video I looked it up yeah

so I'm going to read off some comments Jack was in high school pretty recently himself. Why do you know that video? I looked it up. Yeah. So I'm going to read off some comments. Jack was in high school pretty recently. Yeah, I was just going back to visit and I sharted myself. So I'll read off some comments. Why were you visiting your high school? I'm kidding. Okay.

Your voice is breaking. It always breaks and I can't stop it. All right, let's go. All right, first comment. Is this on our episode or on the video called The High School Kid Sharts Himself? That was fucking embarrassing. Sharts himself. No, I'm going to say it's a comment from our thing.

I think our podcast. It's ours. It was on the Australian Reptiles. I don't know. That was a good episode. Wait, that's the whole comment? That's fucking embarrassing, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Like, at least be specific so we know which part you're talking about next comment is that kid just shit himself also our podcast our podcast next comment these are

I did a random number generator so these are all just completely in a random order how is that even funny is that a machine the random number generator? you put in I have the numbers ordered

and then it goes in and just puts them in a random spot. Wow, the technology of today. You just explained that the same way Jim explains things on the podcast. I put them in there, and then they randomly, the machine, random numbers. That's right. Yeah, okay. How is that even funny?

That's embarrassing. Wow, you guys are just deplorable. You said you guys. No, no, no. There's kids sitting around watching the kid shit himself. It's going to be the kid shitting himself. I think we're pretty deplorable. You know, you said you guys. No, no, there's kids sitting around watching the kid shit himself. It's going to be the kid shitting himself. Yeah.

I think we're pretty deplorable. We are, but it is a kid sharts himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a kid sharts himself. I mean,

how is that fun? I haven't even seen it and it's funny. Of course it's funny. You shouldn't know there's other kids standing around laughing. Yeah.

Brilliant. Yeah, and watching the video is better because you don't have to smell the shit. Right. It's like, it's a win-win. Yeah. All right. Why was this on my recommended? brilliant yeah and watching the video is better because you don't have to smell the shit it's like it's a win win yeah alright

why was this on my recommended our podcast yeah it's our podcast it's Sharts it's Sharts it's Sharts wow and why was it on your recommended

yeah that's something they have to ask themselves well I guess they did next comment you can really cheat this by like like typing in like I don't find Jim Jefferies funny.

It's on the Sharts episode. You mean on the Sharts episode? Jack's written it in. Jack has a piece of shit. I'm talking about Jack Hackett. That's on the Sharts one. Next comment. Nope, not interested in your farts.

Good luck with that. Our podcast. next comment nope not interested in your farts good luck with that our podcast because we we talked about bottle jarring our farts and selling them he's not interested good memory

that's correct it was from our episode alright good good good remembers all the fart content alright this one quote shit's fucked

that about sums it up smiley face sharp shot that's us that's us oh That's us. Oh, wow. Do you have a guess what episode?

Gun control. Something about... Gun laws. Gun laws. That's right. You're pretty good. Just using context. The inter-party fact about slavery was so inappropriate.

Kid shotting himself. Next one. Your laugh is funnier than the video itself. Does anyone have a funny laugh in here? I don't laugh. Well, people say I laugh too much. Yeah, people say we all laugh too much. At a professional comedian.

Who I'm in the same room with. You're watching the podcast because you think he's hilarious. I also do. You can't fucking laugh, Kelly. Sorry about that, guys. Well, this one was from Sharts. Sharts. Sharts.

How many views on that one? I think like 500,000 views. Damn. It's pretty good. I feel bad. We need to get the Shart guy on the podcast. That was better than us. Was he monetized?

Oh, he better. I hope so. Next comment. I feel bad for him, but I admit I laughed. Sharts. That's about Jack, and that's this episode. Wow, Inception. It's Sharts.

It's Sharts. But that is why I picked it, for the confusion. Next one. I have no issue shitting on a French laptop. I am French. Moi, I'll fuck it. That would be one of our fans. A French laptop?

Yeah, that's what it says. Okay. You're right. Yeah, it has to be one of our listeners. A French laptop is just an over-heated laptop that's smoking. I don't know. I don't know. All right, last comment.

I'm pissed as a fart. An Irishman drunk as a skunk. I remember this one. They say I'm in Cambodia. It's ours. Yeah, because we have fans in Cambodia. That's right. Yeah.

And they own all the donut shops. They do. According to the documentary that Jim called me up on. I got to watch this because I've been curious. The Donut King. Not Cambodia. It's called Cambodia now. Was it Cambodia?

Yeah, it's Cambodia. Are you thinking of like. Was it Cambodia? Yeah, it's Cambodia. Are you thinking of like Burma and Myanmar? Yeah, it was Cambodia. The guy, Congleton. Yeah, Pol Pot. There was one comment on the short video that I almost included, but I thought it was really funny, just on a video of a kid showing himself that goes,

this video is great. You, sir, have earned a subscriber. More of this content, please. Great. That's it from Common World. Have we got ads? All right, let's see some ads. We're doing ads.

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That's Phil's F-E-A-L-S dot com slash IDK for 50% off your first order. What are you waiting for? Let's please welcome our guest to the podcast, Adam South. G'day, Adam. Now it's time to play. Yes, no. Yes, no. Yes, no.

Yes, no. Judging a book by its cover. All right. Look, he's a burly man. He's got a beard. He's got one of those John Deere hats on. It would involve some type of logging type of a thing or some mechanical device that he fixes or an animal that he knows a lot about

and how to skin it and put it on your wall. You're right. Yeah, so it's one of those three things. Do you live in the east coast of America? Yes, I do. Okay. I'm already biased against those people with their stupid accents and their way of living.

Like just pump your own fuel jersey. For fuck's sake, having to get someone else to do it or you get arrested or some shit. That bothers you, full service gas? It bothers me that you're not given the option. I think you are, right? No, not in New Jersey. No, in New Jersey, you've got to have someone else pump your gas.

Oh. I always thought there wasn't. The problem is it's a not in New Jersey. No, no, in New Jersey, you've got to have someone else pump your gas. Oh, I always thought there wasn't. And the problem is it's a person from New Jersey so you've got to fucking, you've got to deal with that. I think it's like,

I think it's New Jersey and maybe Oregon or what, there's another state in there too, but yeah, I never got that. Yeah,

and if you get out of the car people look at you and go, no, no, no, no, no,

no. I like tip. I think it's more expensive gas. I never know where to tip for anything. I never know what I'm tipping for. And then it's like, it's like, I always get like super stressed.

If someone grabs my bags, I'm like, don't do it. Cause I don't know what I meant to pay you. And anything feels like too much. You only move them 10 meters. Right. Right.

Um, all right. So, so you live on the East coast. Uh, are you involved in construction? Oh, no. Are you involved? construction? No. No.

Are you involved? Have you written books? I've written a couple of book chapters, but not any full books. Get out of here, Adam. A couple of romance novels. You're on the right path with animals. Are you a hunter? I've hunted, but I'm not a hunter.

Right, right. That's not your main bag. Is the animal indigenous to America? Yeah. All right. Well, there's a lot of the type of animal that I'm an expert on. Oh, okay. You hate this animal, probably.

I hate this animal, too. Oh, is it an insect this animal probably I hate this animal too oh is it an insect it is an insect is it an ant no oh wow that was the experience Jim had guessed

that we might be doing ants before we started this so I think it was yeah so it's a way more annoying insect okay here's a hint that Adam gave to me

he said it is considered to be the deadliest animal in the world. The deadliest animal in the world. So you want to say spiders or snakes or something like that, but I heard the hippo kills more people, but there's no hippos on the East Coast. No insect hippos.

And they're also an insect. They do not fly very well. Oh, fucking mosquitoes. Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes, yeah, yeah, yeah. They do not fly very well. Oh, fucking mosquitoes. Yeah, that's it. Mosquitoes. There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're the most deadly. They pass on the Zika and the bloody malaria and all that type of bullshit. I'm assuming you hate them.

Pain in the ass, mosquitoes. But I'm sure that they serve a purpose in our world, that we need to have them for some reason. But I can't see a reason. Maybe. I've never met anyone go, oh, well, everything will be okay once the mosquitoes come in. Adam South got his PhD in biology with a focus in ecology,

evolution, and behavior in 2012. He went on to be a research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Disease for five years, where he switched his research focus to the reproductive ecology and evolution of the, is this Anopheles mosquitoes? Yeah, Anopheles, yeah. Currently, he's a research assistant professor in the Infectious Disease and Global

Health Department at Tufts University. And then you can find him on Instagram at dr adam south. And we'll put a link up here for something that you would like people to get involved with or go and check out but it has nothing to do with mosquitoes it's fireflies right so maybe we'll talk to you about fireflies another time but uh there is a there's

a science project that uh adam has co-created on firefly you could say a little bit more about it and how you got into mosquitoes if you want right now yeah so i was in graduate school um i researched uh mosquitoes so my my main interests have always been in evolutionary biology uh more specifically in its type of evolution biology it's called sexual selection uh so in graduate school i used a couple different model systems mostly beetles like fireflies to make some discoveries about the root of ecology and elements of sex and insects. And so I had an opportunity to apply this knowledge base to insects of medical importance like mosquitoes. So now my research is really very broadly geared towards understanding what

we can about sex and mosquitoes in order to develop more effective ways of controlling mosquito populations beyond just using things like insecticides and bed nets. But I still work on fireflies as kind of a side project. So I've got a citizen science project that's been going since 2009, and it's one of the most successful ones in the world, actually, where people can create, can log on and upload information about fireflies and their habitats. And we can learn about what we think is actually affecting them in terms of why their populations are declining dramatically.

You mentioned bed nets there. If I put a bed net over my house, could I just stop mosquitoes? And then if that works, could we do a suburb, a city, a country, the world? It's like the Simpsons Dome. Yeah. The whole world. I mean, theoretically, I guess you could put a bed net over whatever you wanted,

but obviously that wouldn't be particularly efficient. You put a big pole on the North Pole. But the mosquitoes are in the world. I mean, once we kill those, I assume they come from space. They're aliens. Yeah, they come from space and they come in. We keep them out that way. Good idea. Most people just put bed nets around where they actually sleep. But if I put it over my house, would that work? And would I

suffocate or the bed net? Sleeping under bed nets is actually really hot, as a matter of fact. So I think it would be a little difficult. But if you had AC in your house. Yeah, no problem. All right. Well, we've solved that. Jack, find a giant bed net for Jim's house, please.

Well, I don't mind him, Jack. You'll have to get a whole lot of small bed nets. Sew them all together. So go to Adam South's Instagram dr underscore Adam underscore South and there's a link to that project in there as well so I'm going to ask Jim questions about mosquitoes see what he knows and when we're done you're going to grade them on accuracy

0 through 10, 10 being the best Kelly's going to grade them on confidence, I'm going to grade them on etc we're going to add those together Kelly made these categories 21 through 30 blood sucking-sucking bitch. 11 through 20, blood-sucking bitch. 0 through 10, blood-sucking bitch. I don't know you can call a mosquito a bitch, but, you know, I think it works.

Yeah. Screw them. I call them bitches. I call them bitches, too. All right. Expert says it's okay. Jim, what are mosquitoes? They're an insect.

They're a bug that bites you um they like to hang around dank water uh yeah they they seem sweet they seem to uh they're pretty much i don't know if there's a play i assume they're not on the north pole of the south pole i don't i've never seen one in the snow. They like swampiness. There's probably more than one breed of them. There's probably a whole fucking variety of the cunts. We'll get to that, yeah. So warm weather, you think? They like warm weather, yeah.

They like warm weather. And, like, how long have they been around, you think? Oh, I reckon they were bothering dinosaurs, weren't they? So, you know, if Jurassic Park taught us anything, it was mosquitoes drew blood from dinosaurs and they got put into sap or molten lava or some shit. No, sap. I think it's sap. Tree sap. Yeah, tree sap.

And then they made the end of a cane. But, yeah, mosquitoes have been around like millions of years. Millions, yeah. So how many species of mosquito are there? You said there's a lot. Probably over the course of those million years, there's probably been thousands. But in our current state,

we've probably got 50 different types of mosquitoes. Okay. Do both sexes of mosquitoes bite humans? One of those questions where you're like... Yeah, I'm going to say that the females bite, and they probably fucking eat their husbands after they have sex or some shit. Some evil cunts they are.

They're fucking... Bitches. Do they have teeth? Or how do they bite? They have a they have a prong that goes into you. They have one big tooth. One big tooth?

And then what do they do with the teeth? It's like a tube. Yeah? Yeah, it's a tube. It's like a trunk of an elephant but it's stiff

and it can pierce the body. Yeah. You're doing pretty good. And they they shove it in the body and they suck up blood. Okay.

So rude. What attracts mosquitoes to a host? I think it's got to do, there'd be pheromones or something like that because I know definitely my son seems to attract them really easily. And I dated a girl for a while and she used to get bitten all the time and I never really gotten bitten. And then I have certain seasons where all of a sudden I get bitten and then I'm good for a couple of years. So there must be something to do with your sweat and pheromones and all that type of stuff that

attracts the mosquitoes. So it was smell. And what sort of diseases do they transmit? Zika was the one they had. That was the big one for a while. Zika is out of fashion right now. do they transmit? Zika was the one they had. That was the big one for a while. Zika's out of fashion right now. Malaria, they probably, I reckon they'd probably have their fist in, like I know it's not the main way,

but I reckon they'd have something to do with Ebola. They didn't do the Black Plague. That was rats. So I'm not going to say they don't do the black plague. They, I don't believe they did smallpox. Uh, I'm sure they, you know, uh, many, many different things, but the big one malaria is the big one. Okay. And we'll talk about maybe how many people die from that after that.

So when we talked to Adam, uh, what do they eat? Blood, man. Blood. They survive on blood? What more do you need? But you said the females are the only ones that bite. So what do the males survive on? No, the males, they probably only live for a few days.

And the males, he just starves the whole time. Well, yeah, how long do they live? He does. You know, you want to meet my wife. She can't cook. Does gags like that. Fucking blood sucking bitch. Can't fucking cook i'm out

all day toiling in the fields or whatever they do so how long do they live oh three days three days ago um and then how do they reproduce um i believe that there'd be um larva. So flies and maggots become flies and they make a larva. I imagine there'd be small lavas that make up a mosquito, small little bugs, not like maggots but little tiny maggots that would become mosquitoes. I may be way out on that but I don't believe they give birth and one of them's pregnant flying around. There'd be something.

I always look at like, I don't know if they do the same as flies, but flies vomit on your food so that the food gets digested and then they eat the vomit back is how they do something, right? And I learned that off the movie The Fly and also when you're a kid growing up in Australia when a fly lands on your steaks, you just vomit it on your steak. So I assume there's probably some vomit and acid that comes out of them as well to get the blood all right here's a couple questions how far and fast can they fly and how much do they weigh there's a lot of questions but how far and

fast i reckon they would weigh one hundredth of a gram whatever that fucking measurement is. Okay. And I reckon they can fly, oh, miles. I reckon they can fly five miles in a day. So, yeah, I reckon. Then they say, like during Zika, they go, the mosquitoes are coming up to Florida from South America and that's how the Zika was being tread because people were in Miami and it was bad for pregnant women to get Zika. And so that's a long way.

And if I'm saying they only live for three days a week, so I'm going to say they can fly fucking 50 miles a day. They've got three days in them, and that's their fucking journey. Okay. You said they like water, so I'm going to ask that question. What would happen if they went extinct? Parades. Lots of parades.

People would be happy. I assume. Okay, so what would we lose out on? We wouldn't have any malaria, but I bet you there's something, some type of pollination-y type thing that we'd be missing out on. Maybe, I don't know. I just assume everyone would be happy. I can't think of a good thing that mosquitoes do,

but I assume there is one, but I can't think of one. Okay. And when are they most active? Summer. Summer. What do you mean, like 6 p.m. or something like that? Whatever answer you want to get. I want to say the most active from 4 till 7. what do you mean like 6pm or something like that sure whatever answer you want to get

I want to say the most active from 4 till 7 when dusk twilight they like to come out and get you we talked a little

about control methods we'll talk about oh why there's a lot of mosquitoes in California now why is that it's because Joe Rogan left

and before they were afraid of him before that they were scared right you'd choke him out or some shit and and then and then they were like joe rogan's not there anymore now all the ones from uh from austin have moved over here oh my god it keeps getting worse um all we pass to mosquitoes now? Alright, we'll ask this other question when we get into it. Alright, Adam. Zero through ten, ten being the best. How did Jim do on his accuracy about his knowledge of mosquitoes?

That was really impressive. Yeah, that was pretty good. Yeah, really good. I mean, having heard all the podcasts, I'd have to give Jim an 8.5 probably. Wow. That was excellent. I'm going to be one of your highest scores.

I know my shit about my skating. Dank water. Dank. Dank. We use the word dank, right? No, I know, but it's funny. I think it's a good description. It's funny. I just always think weed.

Yeah, it's dank, bro. Yeah, I'm going to give you a 10 for dank. A 10 for unconfident? It doesn't really matter what I give Jim because he's a blood-sucking bitch no matter what. So et cetera, whatever you want it to be, Jim. All right, I'll just take the win. Okay, yeah.

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not on the North Pole or the South Pole, not in the snow. They like swampiness and they're insects that bite you.'s pretty good that was that's perfect i mean they are insects uh technically speaking they're flies which you actually mentioned flies and maggots and stuff like that although the way that they they um breed is a little bit different um yeah so from what i understand actually um mosquito is spanish for little fly I think that's true. I don't know. Luis? Luis? Yeah, a little bit. Mosquito. You see how when I say it, mosquito. What is the bits of that word that you recognize? Mosca is fly. Ito. And mosquito is what?

No, but ito is the diminutive. Mosca is fly. Itquito is what? No, but ito is like the diminutive. Most guys fly. Ito is little. Ito means little, so you would like jimito. I never even put that together, though, because in Spanish it's mosquito. Wow. Everybody learns something here, and I don't know about that. All right.

Confirmed. I like that. I like that you're surprised that you haven't put that together. That was a thing in your life where you go, how have I wasted my time? All right. Probably the most important characteristic, as Jim pointed out, is the fact that the females, as he was right about that, the females take blood from mammals and also from lizards and birds

and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, and they can pick, can they pierce? Cause they seem to be able to, if they could have bitten dinosaurs and I've seen them on top of fucking elephants, can they pierce any skin? Or is there a skin where they're like, can't do crocodiles? I don't know if it's any skin, but they, they are, they're, they're proboscis,

which is the word that you were, you were looking for. I think you said like, I guarantee you he was not looking for that word it's it's uh specialized to be able to penetrate in between any kind of epidermal cells so they can find a very small gap whether it's a scale whether it's a feather or oh so like if you have like a blackhead or something like that, they can see a hole and go for it or what's... What do you mean they can... You don't get a blackhead...

They're going through your pores rather than going through the actual skin? They're not going through your pores, so they're actually finding spaces in between the cells of your skin. And they have... So what they have is they actually have like this tube, which is actually... It's like this tube, which is actually, it's like a small needle. It's actually composed of six smaller needles. Two of them have these like teeth-like edges where they kind of saw through your skin. Then they have two other

ones that act as kind of spreaders. So they insert them into the cells and keep them spread apart. Then they have two other ones that have specialized receptors to be able to pick up on compounds in your blood. And so they use those to kind of hone in on where the blood actually is. And they're also then injecting you with a paralyzing saliva, which is why you can't actually feel it. And so then they use that to then suck the the blood out and it's actually the mosquito saliva that they put they put inside of you that is actually what what makes you react to uh mosquito bites and why do some people react more to mosquito bites than others that's a good question i mean i think it's probably just like any other kind of a foreign

thing that goes into your your your body, you know, different people have different kinds of allergic responses. I mean, it is technically some kind of allergic response, you know, but I don't get, I don't get any kind of reaction from, from mosquito bites. I'm terribly allergic. Like I get full on welts. I've had to go to urgent urgent care once because I got, yeah, I couldn't breathe. So yeah, they just turn into softball-sized welts. As I said, my son gets big bites from mosquitoes. Is that just

that he's allergic and I get as many bites as he does? I just don't feel him? So it probably has something to do with his immune system and the fact that your immune system is a little more advanced. And the fact that you grew up in Australia probably really helps too, because you've been exposed to different kinds of things. Yeah, exactly. You know, so it, it, it really, it's really variable. I mean, I used to, I used to, to blood feed mosquitoes on me for different kinds of experiments.

And I would have, you know, 200 of them biting me here at once. And I, and, and, on me for different kind of experiments and i would have you know it's like a nightmare two 200 of them biting me here at once and i and and and the bites would be gone in like five six minutes yeah but what he hasn't told you is his real name's sharon and he's a 17 year old girl and what's happening is he was about 80 pounds and he's really swelled up what is blood feeding what do you why do you even throw that in the conversation like we know what you're talking about? It says what it does in the team. He's feeding him blood from his body.

Yeah. So if you want to work with the species of mosquitoes in the lab, you have to rear them. And so in order to get what we're jumping ahead, but in order, females take a blood meal in order to get the the kind of nutrients that they need to to lay eggs and so you have to if you want to rear them you have to buy human blood which is very very expensive or if you have kind of a smaller cage then you just you just stick them yeah you just stick your your your hand in the cage or put your arm over it and just let them let them feed on you so okay this is okay so there used to be an ad in Australia for Aragard, right? And you know, Aragard, you call it Aragard?

I don't know that. Aragard is fly spray or bug spray. Like off we call it here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They call it Aragard. And so the guy put his hand in a thing of mosquitoes and no one, nothing but in the knee spray, they all bit him and then he sprayed it with Aragard and he put it in. So you've got like, so you've got the sprays.

You've got the zapper, the zap like that. And then you've got the – every time I watch Hoarders, there's someone who has that weird American thing where it's a bit of tape hanging from the fucking roof. I'd rather just have the flies and mosquitoes. What is that curly tape? And what is the chemical that attracts the mosquitoes and flies to this thing or detracts them in the thing of the spray?

I don't actually know what the, I think that's called fly tape. Yeah, yeah. I think that's like more. You'd be better off having flies. There's nothing more ghetto than a fucking string of tape hanging off your roof that's covered with dead animals like i don't know it's horrible i've never seen yeah so i think i don't know if that works for mosquitoes to be honest with you i've never thought about it um but in terms of traps i mean people try to create traps based upon carbon carbon dioxide since that's one of the main things that mosquitoes hone in on. People try to create sugar

traps. So again, jumping ahead, adult mosquitoes eat sugar. I mean, males only eat sugar and nectar and things like that. And females also eat a nectar. So people try to create these kind of toxic sugar-baited traps. But I mean, there's been a lot, I mean, there's been a lot I mean there's been billions of dollars spent to try to develop more effective ways to keep mosquitoes from from people and there's such a incredibly well-evolved animal that it's almost impossible to keep mosquitoes from you unless you use something very very toxic like DEET for instance like DEET is very very effective but that's really bad for us too right yeah deed is deed is not is not not that and that's probably what was in that that product and deep because that's what they put in the stuff here off and whatever that yeah so exactly yeah so that answers

the question they eat more than just blood and so that would bring us to the next question which is what would happen if they all leave i'm going to assume there's some pollination there. Yeah. So first off, if all mosquitoes went extinct, we're talking about 3,500 species of mosquito. So more than 50. A little bit more, yeah. But you are correct in that they don't occur in the North Pole. They don't occur on Antarctica either, but otherwise they're just everywhere.

So there's only a very small subset of mosquitoes that are considered to be medically important. So the ones that actually bite humans and actually transmit some kind of infectious disease. And so if we got rid of all of them, I think that would probably be a sort of an ecological disaster. So there are really critical points of the food chain for both aquatic and terrestrial systems. So the females lay eggs in the water and then there are marble stages. And so those larvae in the water are critical for fish and for other kind of aquatic systems. for fish and for other kind of aquatic systems. And then in terms of terrestrial systems,

they're really important for bats, dragonflies, things like that. So if they were all just gone, that would be bad. Who needs bats and dragonflies, though? I feel like you're naming a whole lot of animals that I'm not that keen on. Bats haven't done great things. I mean, yeah. So, I mean, I'm not saying that i would defend you know but it's a food chain so you like you like to eat fish then other things will eat the dragonflies like birds and you know and so on and then you get to the animals that you like you know but but

they yeah the the hope is that so there's there's a lot of efforts that are that are that are pinpointed towards eradicating just the few mosquito species that actually transmit infectious diseases. So the hope is that if you eliminated them or at least reduce them a lot, then other kinds of species that don't actually bite humans or don't vector any kind of disease, they would just take the place of those mosquitoes in the food chain. It wouldn't actually matter at all. so you just eliminate the bad mosquitoes exactly florida where they dumped a bunch of like bioengineered mosquitoes to try to eradicate something yeah do you want to talk about that really quickly because it's affected california too obviously yeah sure sure so um the the mosquito that jack's talking about is called Aedes aegypti. And this is the species that vectors Zika, it vectors yellow fever, it vectors dengue fever.

It also will do chikungunya virus. And it's a huge, huge issue. And it's spreading across the world very, very fast. So in the last decade, it's spread across much of of europe um it's in california now as as as as well so there's a there's a company called oxytech which is from oxford and they have created lines of genetically modified male mosquitoes in which what they've done is that they've inserted genes that when those genes are expressed, it effectively kills the mosquito, right? And so they rear tens of millions of these genetically modified males, and they give them an antidote while they're in the actual lab so the gene isn't actually

expressed. So then they then release these tens of millions of males they mate with wild type female mosquitoes they pass on that uh lethal gene and since there's no antidote in in the the natural uh the natural environment that lethal gene gets expressed and all the mosquitoes die. Right. And then in California now, Google or a subsidiary of Google called Verily, they have a different kind of approach where they're again working with the Aedes aegypti mosquito. And what they are effectively doing is again, rearing tens and tens of millions of males

that are basically sterile. And so they release these sterile males. They mate with the wild type female mosquitoes. And then because female mosquitoes only mate a single time, they have taken now sperm from males that are effectively sterile. And so when they lay eggs, the eggs don't actually hatch and this is something that was actually pioneered in australia actually about a decade ago and it's proven to be very very effective at reducing populations of mosquitoes that actually vector these and what horrible horrible infectious so so if we have too many mosquitoes that's when the

infectious happens or is it like so what's a good amount of mosquitoes versus a bad amount of mosquitoes and it's a specific kind right yeah yeah yeah so it just depends so so 80s 80s a gypti and then one of their their sisters 80s albopictus are ones that are able to actually harbor these different kinds of viral agents. I just stop you for a second. We've done a lot of podcasts and every time I got a prescription the other day, what is it with fucking scientists and having to make everything a difficult fucking name and having Latin in there and all that type of stuff. I had a report from the doctor the other day and I tried to Google the thing. I had to go back and forth and check the word because it was fucking

15 fucking letters. Why can't you just call one breed of the mosquitoes Dave and another one Peter and stuff like that? Do it like fucking, I've got to give it up for the hurricanes and the tornadoes. They don't fuck around with these long fucking hurricaneous optimists, fucking whatever they want to call it, right? They just call it Sharon, right?

Why do you do that? I got you. Not you personally. You're just part of the system. It's all from us. That's my fault. I know it's not your fault. You're already in the fucking machine and you can't turn back.

But you think there's enough names? Because there's so many animals. You can make up words. I mean, you have to. Yeah, but that's what you're doing now. No, but you're making up big words. You're going, you're going. Like, there's three-letter words that haven't been fucking invented yet.

I'll give you one right now. P-T-S. Oh, no, P-T-S has been used. O-M-G. No, fuck. L-O-L? No, fuck. LOL. No, there'll be something. Just three L's.

How do you say that? In Welsh, you go, like that. That makes a noise in Welsh. And what's an L? What's three L's? What animal? It's just one of the flies. The Zika-carrying fly.

Mosquito. Thought it'd be an elephant, but okay. Anyway. I mean, I can actually answer that. Yeah, sure. What is the 3L animal? So if you think about it, right, so if you've got 3,500 species of mosquito, you know, you have to be able to give them some kind of unique name so you know what it is that you're actually talking about right so you have like so that the mosquito one mosquito two yeah i mean it's known as like asian tiger mosquito but then there's like 20 different ones that are called asian tiger mosquito and so when you're talking about specifics because as you remember from richard dawkins of course the definition of a species. Yeah, I didn't remember anything. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So you have to know what

the actual species is, right? And you have to know in the case of mosquitoes, you know, there's so much work that's being done on mosquito genomics. Now you have to make sure you have the exact right species to be able to know whether or not what you're doing is actually valid. So I know it's really annoying and I get really annoyed about it as well. And it's probably a bit of a mental masturbation on the part of us, us, the scientists. I'm not that annoyed by it. It's not keeping me up at night. It just annoyed me in this one little moment and I'll forget about it soon. I'm sorry. Yeah. And you'll bring it up next time it happens.

I'm going to tell you what, Asian tiger mosquito, that'll forget about it soon. I'm sorry. You'll bring it up next time it happens. I'll tell you what, Asian tiger mosquito, that'll stick with me forever. I'll know that name for fucking ever. That'll always be in my head. You test me on that later, Jake. But the one that, the other, I've already forgotten the other names. I couldn't even fake them right now. Archaeopteryx? Archaeopterus.

Sounds like 80s. Archaeopteryx, yeah. Were they around during dinosaurs? Jim said, yeah. Did Jurassic Park taught us anything? Yes. Yes, that's very, very true. So the thought is that things that are like mosquito-like ancestors probably evolved about 200 million to 150 million years ago, which would have been during the Jurassic and the Cretaceous periods.

And so they absolutely coexisted with dinosaurs. And Jim is actually very much true as well, that you can find fossilized remains of mosquitoes, some of them in amber. I think that's what you were looking for, right? That was the stuff. So there's like a hundred million year old fossil, fossilized mosquito in amber that was found in Burma recently. There's also been ones that have been found in like shale in Montana,

I think. And they actually have blood in them. However, the DNA is so broken down that you can't actually extract DNA from it and do that. I believe when we find other life forms, when we find aliens for the first time, and I do believe we will find it. Maybe not in my lifetime, but it will happen. I believe that we always think we're going to find some fucking big moon-eyed

fucking little grey alien that has a spaceship and all that stuff. I reckon the first aliens we find are going to be fucking mosquitoes or something very close to mosquitoes because we'll go to the first planet because we found a planet with water that's only so many light years away we found one with water i reckon if there's water there's fucking mosquitoes no no doubt in your mind we'll go there and that'll be like we've found aliens and just be like more of these fucking pests like starship troopers yeah they're not going to be big ones there'll be little bugs will be what we find first there'll be little life forms that are just because because okay so could i argue that a mosquito is not an intelligent animal it's dumb it's just it's it's just focused on blood sucking

like it's it's a purpose-built animal it doesn't critically think or anything like that no it's just i mean they have they have what you would call a brain which is really just sort of a cluster of neurons but they're just responding to different kind of stimuli they're not they're not smart they can't really think the way that you know we can and how many mosquitoes do we have on the earth at any given time oh holy shit i don't know something you don't want to know 50 trillion i don't. And they say that we're ruining the fucking planet. But there's more Beatles than there are anything else. So if you were to go to another planet and think about aliens,

it's probably more likely it would be Beatles, actually. Yeah. That's where John and George went. The music's really good on that planet. I always look at it. There's a Hulu documentary about Paul McCartney where he's chatting to Rick Rubin, and it's like six episodes or something. I was watching it this morning, and then they were talking

about George Harrison dying, and I was like, oh, that was sad when he died. And he was fucking 56. I'm getting close to George Harrison death age. Like, it just spun me out. No, completely off topic, but I thought he was like way older. I thought he was like 70. Lung cancer at 56.

Fuck me. And then he got stabbed a bunch in his house. He got stabbed once in his house. I don't think it was a bunch. I don't think it was every day he got stabbed. There was one. Well, he got stabbed a bunch at once. He stabbed him multiple times.

I don't think he got stabbed every day. At the one sitting. Like if he went back every day and he got stabbed all the time, sooner or later he's like, I'm going to call ADT. I should lock the door. I'm going to put some type of fucking device on here. A lock maybe. I'll tell you what you don't want to put some type of fucking device on here. A lock, maybe. I'll tell you what you don't want to watch is the Jimi Hendrix documentary.

He died really young. Yeah, but he died drug overdose. He didn't die of fucking lung cancer or anything like that that I could plausibly get, you know. I could die of a drug overdose, but I think I'm past those days. Yeah, I don't imagine. I don't think that day is coming to me anytime soon. You know, unless it was on purpose. those days. Yeah. I don't think that day is coming to me anytime soon where they just,

you know, unless it was on purpose. Do both sexes bite? You already said females are the only ones that bite and suck blood. There's some digs at Jack in this document and some,

like a lot of the stuff that he wrote. Why? What did I do? Sorry, Jack. He said Jack looks like Dave Grohl if he was bitten by a thousand mosquitoes. That's in this document.

It's in one of his answers. What the fuck? True fan of the podcast. Thanks for listening. I appreciate it. Sorry. You're the only guest who's really answered

all the questions in the outline. I mean, you put work into this. Good work. You really overdid it. Update yourself. Do mosquitoes have teeth? Jim said no. Probosc, you put work into this. Good work. You really updated yourself. Do mosquitoes have teeth? Jim said no. Proboscis, we went over that. Microneedle. What attracts mosquitoes

to a host? You said carbon dioxide. Is that right? Yeah, that's one. So mosquitoes, like I said, it's one of the reasons why it's so hard to keep mosquitoes from attacking people is because they can use what's called a multiple cue-based system. they can do smell, which, which Jim, Jim said, they have a very, very finely evolved sense of the smell. So they can pick up on carbon dioxide that's coming

out of your, your breath. They can also pick, pick up on like, uh, um, carboxylic acid and other kinds of alcohol compounds that you're breathing out. So breath is really huge. They can also sense heat. They can also sense movement. So if you take away one, yeah, yeah. I mean, they're incredible. I mean, so if you block, you know, two or three of a female mosquito census, she can still find you.

Right. Even though with heat, they'd still go after a dead body, right? They wouldn't go after a dead body, right? They wouldn't go after a dead body I've seen them around like dead animals, right? Oh, that's flies around dead animals Well, yeah, I mean, those are probably stupid males that are waiting for a female to come around, which is one of the ways that males mate They're around dead marauders? Animals, and then they just try to just grab them Yeah, I mean, heat is important, I mean, obviously on dead marauders? Animals, and then they just try to just grab them. So, yeah. That gives me some good checks.

Yeah, I mean, heat is important. I mean, obviously, you know, a dead animal also smells, you know, so they really pick up on smells, but most of the,

most of the, the, most of what they do is they look for things that are obviously indicative of some kind of alive animal, you know, because they want the blood.

What's their vision like? I imagine it's like the shadows and shit, or is it good is it like 360 like a fly it's not it's not it's not as as good so their their um olfactory sense is definitely their best but they can pick up on movement they can pick pick up on like blocking changes and in that color um so there was a there was a study that came out last year where people actually tethered mosquitoes and they hooked up electrodes to their brains and they actually measured the amount of neuronal activity exposing them to things like carbon dioxide and movement and different kinds of images. And so they found that there is you know a market increase uh market increase in this

kind of um activity and their wings also also be much much faster so there there's almost this instantaneous connection between i see something that that means blood and then they start to then just gravitate towards it immediately they're they're an incredibly well-evolved species. How long do they live for? I feel like my three days was way out now. It's a little off, yeah. Okay, so how long? So they start off as eggs.

So going from egg to adult takes about seven to ten days, depending upon things like the environmental conditions, the species, and whatever. But they can exist as adults in an optimal sense for weeks and weeks and weeks, if not months. I mean, as long as they have enough food and they don't get eaten, they can live for a fairly long, long period of time. Most of them in the field don't because obviously they're living in much more harsh conditions or they don't have access to as much food as they actually need or whatever else. But they have the potential to live for several weeks, if not several months.

Again, depending upon the actual species. And how far do they travel in a day? So mosquitoes can fly about a meter per second. According to the CDC, Culex mosquitoes, which are the main ones that we have here that we're really worried about, they can travel in a range of two miles. But there's other anecdotal evidence that they can go much, much further. And one of my colleagues at the NIH has found that mosquitoes actually use long-distance migration patterns where they go like 400 meters up in the air and they get carried by wind

anywhere from 100 to 300 kilometers in like nine hours. Dang. Right. So was I correct about saying like with Zika and everyone was going way over there or coming up from South America or Cuba or something like that. Was, was that true or what? Why?

Because it feels like they couldn't fly that far or, or like, do they sleep? Do they stop and sleep? Or they just keep flying all day and they can sleep while they fly. Or. I mean, theoretically one could fly,

you know, multiple days, really, really far, but it's not really about. And in that case, it's not really about, and in that case, it's not about an individual species range, or sorry, an individual mosquito's range, it's about the entire species, right? And also the species that are actually infected with the

actual virus. So whenever there's overlap in some kind of infected population, that can then spread to another infected population and keep spreading in that way right so one individual mosquito is not going to travel from brazil to miami however there's a gradual shift in the the makeup of the the population in terms of the actual percent that are really infected and that is going to travel across land land land like a domino thing so one infects the other exactly exactly exactly yeah and that's that's that's a huge huge issue so um mosquito scientists are really really worried about about how things are actually spreading and so with uh climate change happening you know the sort of ranges of these mosquitoes are expanding

greatly so you know we're going to be faced so we have the actual species that can vector things like you know yellow fever dengue fever zika that are actually here i mean they are where you guys are now the problem not not the problem what is good is that the actual viral agents are not there yet, right? But if there was someone that wanted to actually bring in a whole bunch of infected mosquitoes and release them in L.A., there could be some kind of outbreak of Zika. So let's say malaria, which is the most common, correct? Malaria is the most common?

Okay. So let's say malaria. Do the mosquitoes just carry malaria or do they give us malaria and then another mosquito has to bite you to get malaria to give to another person? And if that's the case, who had malaria first? That's exactly it. So malaria is a little bit different. So that's not viral. So that's caused by something called plasmodium and so that is

something that is um definitely did not evolve in humans it evolves in other probably probably reptiles first and so we have you know reptilian malaria we have malaria that's specific for birds you know there's malaria that that was specific for was specific for our great ape ancestors first. So the way that that works is that it has an entire life cycle inside of a mosquito. So mosquito bites some kind of infected person, that plasmodium parasite then grows inside of it, inside of its midgut, then it travels to the salivary glands. And then whenever it bites anything, in addition to injecting that saliva that I told you about, it's also then injecting that Plasmodium parasite now in the actual human form.

And so then it then goes through a whole series of life cycles in the human. It's in the liver. It's in the blood cells. And then a naive mosquito would then bite an infected human and then start that cycle over and over again. Right. So lizards. I have a hypothetical. Yes. If your blood alcohol content was high enough and a mosquito sucked your blood,

would it kill them? I think that's going to be a fun experiment to do. Cause I don't actually know. I'll just be wasted every night if that's what I have to do. I mean, so the greater good. I mean, yeah,

I mean, there's, there's, there's been a lot of work done about alcohol and the blood. I think I sent you guys a link to a paper that, that showed that people that drink, that drink actually are more attractive to mosquitoes, people that aren't. Only we. Yeah. So also there's been some work done about whether or not, you know, mosquitoes are more or less likely to go to people that are diabetic or not. So, but it's all so,

I mean, there's so much contra much contra you know there's papers say different things all the time so there's not really any kind of consensus about that um i wish there was but yeah uh and they are the most deadly species so we've said that at the beginning right that's just yeah yeah so how many people are killing you um year? So, 800,000 total, probably. That's not COVID numbers. No, it's not, but it happens year in and year out.

You don't think that COVID's going to happen year in and year out? You don't think this is a new norm? I think we're going to get fucking Delta and then it's going to be Echo and then it's going to be whatever the next letter in the alphabet is. I mean, so just

taking malaria in general, right? So in 2019, I think there were 219... I just wrote it down. Sorry. I don't want to fuck this up. I think 2019... Damn it, where is it? Doesn't matter if you fuck this up. I think 2019.

Damn it, where is it? It doesn't matter if you fuck it up. No one knows. In 2019, there were 229 million new cases of malaria. 409,000 people dying, which is a huge drop from where it used to be. So it used to be well over a million people dying a year. And about 90% of those or more are happening in sub-Saharan Africa. They've got to work on that malaria tablets.

Because every time I travel to somewhere that might have malaria and it's like, they go, you probably should take some malaria tablets. And I go, right before I get on the plane, I'm like, I'll get on that. And I go, can I have some malaria tablets? They go, start taking it six weeks before you fly. I'm like, oh, fuck. I'm getting malaria. They need a quicker malaria.

This fucking six-week thing isn't fucking cutting it for me. It might be two weeks or something. Something like that. But it's never ready for me. I'm fucking always late to the malaria table. Yeah, there used to be one that you could start taking the day beforehand, but I think it induced a bunch of psychotic episodes and people and things like that.

That sounds fun. What do you want? Malaria pills? Malaria probably won't kill you. They've worked on a malaria vaccine? There's been probably $100 billion spent on that and nothing yet. Nothing yet.

Not getting people to take it. In terms of mosquito-borne disease that kills the most people, malaria is really, really big. I mean, the thing that's crazy is that over half of the world's population is at risk of being infected with malaria every single year. And is malaria one strain thing or is it a multiple strain thing like the flu or whatever that evolves every year um so i mean there's certainly variants of different kinds of uh plas plasmodium species um but in general you know it's not it's not as as it doesn't mutate as much as you would see in something like the flu or something like a virus it doesn't't mutate as fast as you would get. All right.

Moving on, mosquitoes have sex? I don't know if we talked about that. Yes. Yeah, but I mean... Do you want to read the rest of the notes? No, just... No, no, no. So, yeah.

So mosquitoes are sexual and their ecology is actually really fascinating so the way that the most the most medically important species made is they actually swarm so males form these like swarms of anywhere from like 20 to like 5 000 males right around dusk and so these males are just kind of swarming around and gradually females enter into the swarm and they actually mate the physics of mating is actually really amazing so they actually mate while they're flying you know so it's pretty

it's pretty incredible so they mate for about anywhere from 17 to 30 seconds about you know same as humans and it's consensual it is consensual yeah it is consensual well if she didn't

want to get fucked she shouldn't fly into the swarm of 5,000 men right what do you expect when you go into the swarm don't victim blame her

buzzing around in that outfit this is this is one of the elements of sexual selection that I really like and I research a lot

so this is a species in which there's a lot of very extreme female choice. So if a female is going to mate only a single time, right? So her entire fitness is wrapped up in this one single mating. She has to make a really good choice of a male, right? So females are relatively selective.

Males can mate multiple times, you know, but the female gets one shot at it and that's it and and what is she looking for in terms of quality is there like because he would produce a you know a better larva or like is he going to be a deadbeat dad like what are they looking for that's an excellent question well first off all all uh mosquito males are deadbeat dads so she's definitely looking, I mean, that's actually a very active area of research now, and that's something that I'm actually working on. We don't

really know a lot about what it is that makes a male mosquito attractive to a female mosquito. Here's one for you. I never see one just sitting down unless it's on me body. Do they ever just, you know ever just sit down for a bit? Think.

Relax. Yeah, absolutely. And when do they do that? So that's another actually very interesting area of active research. So nobody knows where mosquitoes go during the day at all. We have no idea. All right. You know, if we actually knew knew that would be great so then

we could actually target the areas where they are and then kill them why don't you just follow them how i don't know you're the mosquito expert so i'm sorry so actually was i correct with twilight it feels like twilight yeah yeah yeah so so typically speaking mosquitoes are most active between dusk and dawn. Although now there's been a lot of evidence that mosquitoes are evolving around some of the control mechanisms that the humans have. And they're actually becoming much more aggressive biters during the day. Like the species that you guys have there, the Asian tiger mosquito, I won't use the scientific name, they're actually becoming much more aggressive daytime biters because that's the best time to find blood, right? So mosquitoes evolve incredibly fast. And that's one of the reasons why it's been really hard to fight against them. It's because the rapidity at which they go through their generation time means that they can

evolve very fast. So people have been employing insecticides against mosquitoes for decades, but the reality is that mosquitoes have evolved ways to detoxify those infecticides within only a few years and they're virtually harmless to mosquitoes now, which is really troubling. I feel like I missed something. I'm looking through. We covered how far they fly. They're attracted to water. We talked about that.

What would happen if they went extinct? I guess maybe we could ask this because we. We talked about that. What would happen if they went extinct? We talked about it. I guess maybe we could ask this because we didn't talk about this. No mosquitoes at Disneyland. Maybe you can tell us that and then we'll get to some of that. No mosquitoes at Disneyland?

Yeah. This is actually really interesting. Walt Disney, obviously he bought this enormous swath of land in the middle of Florida. And it's swampland as well. It should be mosquito heaven. Exactly.

But I know why, because mosquitoes are afraid of mice. And large mice are the worst of them all. That works. Well, I mean, the U..s has a very interesting history with mosquitoes and because there used to be um a lot of malaria in the south part of the united states yeah and we why did we eliminate it why do we so so so walt walt walt disney hired a guy um that used to be a U.S. Army Major General that worked in Panama. So he worked at the Panama Canal, which they dealt with mosquitoes all the time.

So he was basically this expert. And so he hired him on the spot when you first met him to organize the entire Disneyland experience in order to minimize mosquitoes being present. And the best way that you can keep mosquitoes from being where you are is to eliminate dank water. So there's actually no standing water anywhere in Disneyland. So there's actually no standing water anywhere in Disneyland. And they've actually even designed the buildings such that no water will actually pool anywhere. What, the fucking riverboat cruises in dank water? Well, there should be still movement of water there. But they also then made sure that all of those bodies of water were exclusively stocked with fish that only eat,

not only, but chiefly eat mosquito larvae. There's right. There's fish in the fucking riverboat cruise. Damn. I would assume so. Yeah. Or else they just move that,

that, that water around the electronic fucking things that pop out and all that is fish. They, or else they, or else they, they, they treat the water sufficiently that no, no, uh is fish there or else they or else they they they treat the water

sufficiently that no no mosquito eggs or larvae could actually i don't think anything anybody can drink that water no animal on earth can live and drink that water no fucking way absolutely not yeah um and they also so this is more in this sort of a historical perspective so they all these different kinds of design elements they made sure that there was only running water. So female mosquitoes can't lay eggs in, in, in running water. It just doesn't,

doesn't work. It's a small world after all that water doesn't look, that water looks dank as fuck. You know, small water would kill anything. Just chlorine in that. Yeah. People,

do they, do they not like chlorinated water? Cause I feel like there's sometimes mosquitoes over my pool, but do they, do they not like chlorinated water? Because I feel like there's sometimes mosquitoes over my pool, but do they not like chlorinated water? They don't like chlorinated water. As long as you keep that water, keep the chemistry of that correct, then there should be no mosquito species that's able to lay eggs in there unless it's some crazy lab-generated strain.

Did you know that bees like pool water that's been pissed in? I do know that. Ted McFall, right? Yeah. I remember. I scooped out four bees the other day, and I looked at my son like, I don't know what you're up to. I'm not pissing in this water.

As you're peeing in the pool. So the guy that he hired also used to spray garlic extract everywhere. I don't know if that actually works, but that's supposed to do something to keep away mosquitoes. But now I've heard that they use

traps, like carbon dioxide traps. They probably use sugar traps. They have these sentinel chickens. So they have chickens in places. And so the idea is that these chickens serve as a monitor system. Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean sentinel? I've been to Disney and I've never seen a fucking chicken. That's where all the chickens go. You wouldn't see that. And like, yeah, yeah. Like they keep chickens in like, in like,

yeah, yeah. Like behind the scenes and like coops or cages and they monitor. As you put it on the Indiana Jones ride. For like when you're in a plane, just have a chicken flying around. Yeah. So,

but they, they, they monitor the, the, the blood of those chickens to see if there's any mosquito borne infectious disease there. Right. So they,

they, they, they screen them for things like West Nile virus or Eastern equine encephalitis, which is very, very problematic. So they're just there as sort of sacrificial chickens. Yeah, I'm reading it right now. It says they keep them,

and their sole job is to be bitten by mosquitoes. Yeah, their entire job. Yeah. Jesus. But they're also able that the thought is that they can then pinpoint areas of the the park that would have been um infiltrated by mosquitoes that might have some kind of infectious disease um i'm sure now they they use insecticides i mean there's plenty i'm not plenty there's there's insecticides that are approved for use around around humans so

i'm sure that they do that. I don't know that for sure, but I can't imagine that they do. They have an entire mosquito surveillance program there. They take it very, very seriously. Oh my God. Can we, can we get more mosquitoes to Coachella? How do we do that? Yeah.

I just want to see puffed up Instagram models. It's pretty dry out there. I need some dank water. Yeah. Let's go pour some water bottles out. Yeah. Maybe some dank water. It's a spring.

It's a spring though, isn't it? Palm Springs. Okay, Adam. So now we're to the part of our show, dinner party facts. Since you know so much about our show, you already know what this is, but we'd like you to tell us. I've got a couple of them. Yeah.

Yeah. So I've got a couple of them. Yeah. Yeah. So I've got a bunch of them. So the first one that I put is that amazingly, male mosquitoes are able to ejaculate five times without their head, which is pretty incredible. Like if their head's chopped off? Yes. So there's this technique that's used with mosquitoes. It's called force mating. It's not nice.

So you take male mosquitoes, you pull off their head and all of their legs, and you shove their body onto this needle. That's funny because that's what makes me come. So you impale this mosquito, this shell of a male on this needle, and then you take female mosquitoes, which you then anesthetize. So you drug them, you know, roofie them, basically, and you lay them on their back. The mosquito comes in and then they think, you know, I haven't got a head. It's brilliant and then so you have these these females that are then knocked out and you rub the male genital claspers over the female's abdomen and i've seen it like the male doesn't

have a fucking head but his claspers are going crazy like trying to grab the female as soon as possible and he grabs the uh female and then he then ejaculates. And the record is that males can ejaculate five times without a head. Damn. All right. You said you had a lot of them. I couldn't because the head's where I keep all my cum. You said you had a lot of them. How about just one more for us?

One more dinner party. Yeah. So the other one is actually, again, as a fan of the podcast, I remember Wayne Fetterman's one about slaves in Africa. Originally, slaves were used at Disneyland. This one is actually very, very relevant to how mosquitoes, the mosquito-borne infectious disease affected the the slave um affected slaving so um most africans are you know they have they've they've been um they've acquired resistance to different kinds of mosquito-borne infectious diseases like malaria

or yellow fever or whatever so you know like you probably heard of sickle cell anemia. Yeah. That's actually an adaptation in Africans to deal with the effects of malaria, as a matter of fact. So the population of the new world, so, you know, like North America, South America, Central America, was so decimated by the diseases that were brought from Europe that they turned to Africa to find populations of slaves that were already more adapted to dealing with the same kind of mosquito-borne infectious disease. And so that's one of the reasons why slaves were far more heavily pulled out of parts of africa because they'd already demonstrated an and ability to deal with these these um diseases that were killing tens of millions of people wow not really yeah so that's that and mosquito-borne infectious diseases

like um malaria have affected the course of human history all over. I mean, it affected the Civil War. You know, it affected the Roman Empire as well. It affected the Crusades. Like, it's been one of the most important shaping forces. And there's a book that I read recently called The Mosquito, A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, in which this historian, Timothy Weingart, estimates that 52 billion people, which is about half of all the people that have ever existed on this earth,

have died because of mosquitoes. Wow. That's fucking crazy. That's a good one. That's a good one there. I was just thinking, you know where there would be mosquitoes? Knott's Berry Farm. They haven't set up anything.

No chance. That log ride, that's Mosquitoville. I was going Raging Waters would probably have a lot of mosquitoes, but Knott's Berry Farm is your number one. Well, Raging Waters has all the moving water. It's all moving. Yeah. A lot of pee in the water too.

Half the world has died because of mosquitoes. That's all moving. Yeah, so they... A lot of pee in the water, too. Half the world has died because of mosquitoes. That's good. You ever been to Swamp World? They got a lot of mosquitoes there. Terrible theme park. Still standing world. Thank you, Adam South, for being here. Again, his Instagram is dr__adam__south. Go to

his Instagram, and there's a link there for his Firefly project that he's part of. And, yeah yeah thank you for being here. Thank you. That was very informative. You got anything you want to plug mate? No not really just the Firefly project that I work on.

I know a lot more about Fireflies than I do about Mosquitoes. That's another podcast I'm happy we did Mosquitoes and not Fireflies because I thought fireflies were mythical. If you're ever at a party and someone says no one's ever died from a mosquito bite, go, well, I don't know about that and walk away. Good night, Australia.