Should we exterminate all those pesky mosquitoes?

If you could make mosquitoes – all of them – disappear, would you?

With the increasing threat of the Zika virus, which is transmitted chiefly by mosquitoes, serious people are questioning whether the world would be a better place without these blood-sucking critters. Why not eliminate them, just make them extinct?

Apparently, we have the capacity to do that. In isolated experiments, scientists have introduced sterile males to a population of mosquitoes, which disrupts reproduction and causes the entire colony to collapse in a relatively short time.

We haven’t tried that on a global scale. Yet.

But it certainly is tempting. Especially when you consider that female Anopheles mosquitoes spread malaria, which infects up to 500 million people a year. The Asian Tiger Mosquito is responsible for dengue fever, which also infects hundreds of millions, and mosquitoes now are spreading new curses such as the West Nile virus and Zika.

Ecologist Mike Jeffries, writing in The Washington Post, notes that, for the record, mosquitoes are a food source for migrating birds on the Arctic tundra, Australian forest bats, some small freshwater fish and tropical poison dart tree frogs. But he doesn’t necessarily contend that this represents a strong case for not exterminating them.

Those who advocate for the mosquito, in fact, sound a little like the public defender assigned to represent a serial killer: “Well, your honor, my client probably didn’t kill the last victim on the list.”

Those who toy with the idea of wiping out mosquitoes tend to focus on the serious health threat they pose – fevers, viruses and such. This, however, neglects what might be the single best reason for annihilating mosquitoes: the annoyance factor.

Have you ever been struggling to go to sleep on a summer night only to hear the dreaded drone of a lone mosquito looking for a meal in your darkened bedroom? You reach toward the sound trying to catch the mosquito – knowing it is futile. You sit up and windmill your arms around and around, trying to scare away the mosquito – knowing that this, too, is futile.

The drone returns. But the real terror begins when it ceases. The mosquito has landed!

This is when you get out of bed, turn on the lights and go hunting for the mosquito. Which almost always is futile.

You go back to bed, resigned to being feasted upon. As you drift off into a fitful sleep, your last waking thought is: “We should kill all the mosquitoes.”

Have you ever been just standing there when a friend or spouse, without warning, whacks you on the forehead?

“There was a mosquito on your forehead,” they tell you. OK, you say, let’s see a dead mosquito.

“I missed him,” they say. Did they? Or did they just get an urge to whack you on the forehead?

We can never know for sure.

Have you ever found a good-smelling mosquito repellent? Most lotions and potions that claim to keep mosquitoes at bay make you smell like a Boy Scout on a three-day camping trip.

And that’s not what you want to smell like if all you plan to do is sit on the deck, have a beer and watch the sun go down. If you drench yourself in mosquito repellent, that’s all you’ll smell for the rest of the night.

Have you ever been bitten by a mosquito? Well, of course you have! Right on the ankle where you have to pull down your sock to scratch it. Which does nothing to relieve the itch but just makes it worse.

So, kill all the mosquitoes? Why not?

I know the last, best argument: They are a niche in the food chain and, at some future date, they might be the key to a medical breakthrough, like a cure for baldness. But I say, let’s take the chance.

And what about the poison dart tree frogs, you ask? Let them eat flies.

This story was originally published February 7, 2016 at 4:06 PM with the headline "Should we exterminate all those pesky mosquitoes?."