Why the 'buzz' is never in their favour

For a creature that weighs 2.5-10 mg, mosquitoes do attract a disproportionately large amount of ire and opprobrium. It was recently reported that artificial intelligence has been pressed into service to accurately identify the varieties that carry diseases. And now the US’ Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has put out a multimillion-dollar contract for a skin-based microbiome to repel those tiny dive bombers so that its troops are not felled by their arsenal of malaria, yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, Zika and other deadly diseases.

And well it might, given that not only have some 52 billion humans succumbed to their depredations so far, in his 2019 book 'The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator', Timothy Winegard outlined how this indefatigable force of nature has changed the course of history too by stymieing armies, felling leaders. No wonder the 52 trillion mosquitoes buzzing around today scarcely have anyone to speak up for them.

Occasionally, of course, there are some who do aver that mosquitoes are victims of a vicious vilification campaign, pointing out that they are victims themselves: they end up carrying deadly pathogens by biting humans and animals who are already infected and do not intentionally spread malaise. But the arguments of such supporters lack bite.