Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I am
Speaker 1: Christian Seger. Hey. The other night, I went outside to
Speaker 1: bring my dogs in before we went to bed covered
Speaker 1: in mosquito. B It's it's that season, it is. I
Speaker 1: was just and I can't do anything, like even if
Speaker 1: I get out there and I start putting the spray on,
Speaker 1: they get to me before then. Yeah. We uh, we
Speaker 1: have we have a company that comes in sprays the
Speaker 1: yard with some sort of biologically friendly stuff. It's not
Speaker 1: friendly to the mosquitoes obviously, or I think to the
Speaker 1: bees either, but it allows us to actually go out
Speaker 1: in our yard and not have to worry as much
Speaker 1: about the mosquitoes. But yeah, this is a terrible time
Speaker 1: for mosquitoes just in general. Uh. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: we have all the added concerns about the zekov right,
Speaker 1: especially because like as we're recording this, there's just been
Speaker 1: announced that it's zico virus has been found in Florida, right,
Speaker 1: which we are in Georgia. That's not that far away. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I suspect highly that there are a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially pregnant women, who are very concerned about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I have a couple of friends who are
Speaker 1: currently pregnant and they have been, uh, very very mindful
Speaker 1: of the scenario. So we thought it would be a
Speaker 1: good opportunity to talk a little bit, a little bit
Speaker 1: about mosquitoes in general, the pressure on what this organism is,
Speaker 1: why they're so successful, but more importantly getting into one
Speaker 1: of the more unique strategies out there to combat the mosquitoes,
Speaker 1: that is the mosquito factory. Yeah, and you covered this
Speaker 1: for How Stuff Works now was it last week? So
Speaker 1: if if you you guys are interested in hearing more
Speaker 1: about this and diving a little deeper. Robert both wrote
Speaker 1: an article about it, and uh did a short video
Speaker 1: that's about three minutes long. And I imagine that we'll
Speaker 1: be able to post that to our social media fairly
Speaker 1: soon too. Yeah, and that'll contain a link to our
Speaker 1: podcast probably in the podcast landing page will definitely have
Speaker 1: links back to the blue. We can combine them all,
Speaker 1: so like, depending on how deep you want to dive
Speaker 1: into mosquito land, you know, it's all right there in
Speaker 1: one suite for you. But but the video is really
Speaker 1: cool because you talk about this new innovation in China,
Speaker 1: which is a big part of what we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about today, using Walbakia bacteria in mosquitoes to try to
Speaker 1: basically kill off the population of mosquitoes that spread dengae
Speaker 1: fever and zica. Yeah, to kill off, but also to
Speaker 1: manage and redefine. Really so it's it's pretty interesting because
Speaker 1: it goes it's we'll discuss it goes beyond merely wiping
Speaker 1: out your enemy but also manipulating your enemy, and there's
Speaker 1: there's you know, potential consequences to rewards like that as well.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about all of that today on the episode.
Speaker 1: But to start off, we're gonna we're gonna discuss the
Speaker 1: enemy itself, the mosquito. And the mosquito is a weird
Speaker 1: creature to to discuss because it it's unlike most of
Speaker 1: the creatures that you're able you're generally going to encounter
Speaker 1: in your daily life. It is most certainly the enemy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true, right, Like nobody feels sorry for mosquitoes, even like,
Speaker 1: like I'm a as as people know from listening to
Speaker 1: this show, we talk about this sometimes, I'm a vegetarian,
Speaker 1: and yet like if I'm getting bitten by mosquito, my
Speaker 1: automatic reaction is like smack that thing, you know, get
Speaker 1: it or get it away from me as fast as possible,
Speaker 1: you know. Even uh geez, Like even cockroaches sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: be like a little nicer to and like try to
Speaker 1: scoop them up and get them out of the house
Speaker 1: or something. But a mosquito, I'm just like, no, I
Speaker 1: don't want to deal with this. Yeah, there's just there's
Speaker 1: absolutely no remorse, and it's it's been weird raising a child.
Speaker 1: My son is now four, and we've been really trying
Speaker 1: to emphasize that you need to be compassionate. And you know,
Speaker 1: we don't just sqush bugs because they're there. We we
Speaker 1: take an interest in them. We give them the distance
Speaker 1: they need, and when we find something the house, we
Speaker 1: light it out, you know. But the mosquito, that's the
Speaker 1: the only creature where we've taught him. Oh, if you
Speaker 1: see one of those who snack it um, and if
Speaker 1: you see it on someone else, you can even smack it,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever the costs. This is our enemy and
Speaker 1: we must defeated, no matter no matter what. Yeah. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: especially like I don't know if your son is like this,
Speaker 1: but I remember growing up, like my mom used to
Speaker 1: always say like, oh, they love your ears, because I
Speaker 1: would get just mosquitoes would go right behind my ears always,
Speaker 1: and maybe that was just like the best source of
Speaker 1: blood or something like that. They're they're drawn to him, um,
Speaker 1: and he he seems to have more of a reaction
Speaker 1: to him. And he's the kids, so he scratched him
Speaker 1: more so. So even on days where I'm not wearing sprays,
Speaker 1: like we're just spraying all sorts of stuff on him
Speaker 1: and the injury's covered up. Otherwise, they just eat him
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah. Yeah, And it's uh, We've we talked
Speaker 1: about this a little bit on our vampire episode when
Speaker 1: we when we were talking about the science of vampires
Speaker 1: drinking blood, right, and we sort of compared it to
Speaker 1: the mosquito and the science of that. If you're interested
Speaker 1: in that, you go back and check out that episode.
Speaker 1: But this made me think of that, right because of
Speaker 1: the like the sort of idea of if you just
Speaker 1: let mosquitoes drink you constantly, it would still take them
Speaker 1: like months to drain a body. And yet like they're
Speaker 1: such a constant annoying pest because they don't drink you
Speaker 1: all at once. They just get a little sip here,
Speaker 1: a little sip here exactly from this guy, a little
Speaker 1: from this gal. And I think if I remember from
Speaker 1: the Vampire episode that was sort of the proposal for
Speaker 1: the functional vampire was that's how they should operate as well, right,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's talk about this, uh, this most
Speaker 1: perfect organism, the mosquito. The world is currently home to
Speaker 1: roughly thirty five hundred named species of mosquitoes, though only
Speaker 1: about two hundred or so directly bother humans. Um. And
Speaker 1: you can't really blame him, right because, I mean, just
Speaker 1: look at us, like the mosquito. We thrive with these
Speaker 1: throughout most of the world. We also offer large expanses
Speaker 1: of relatively hairless skin, all of it coursing with delicious blood.
Speaker 1: And we have we tend to be distracted by stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like my son walks outside, he's just
Speaker 1: doing his thing. Yeah, I'm working on the porch, and
Speaker 1: then everybody else in the neighborhood is playing Pokemon Go,
Speaker 1: just just just sitting there waiting to be sucked dry
Speaker 1: by the mosquito. Somebody should do a study on the
Speaker 1: effect of pokemon go on on mosquito population. Probably it's
Speaker 1: probably done a lot for him. We also have to
Speaker 1: remember two of those species, though it's only the females
Speaker 1: that are drinking blood. Yeah, that's that's one of the
Speaker 1: important factors here. The females drink the blood because they
Speaker 1: have to use the blood to UH as part of
Speaker 1: their reproductive cycle to actually develop the eggs. The males
Speaker 1: they do not drink the blood. And we'll and we'll
Speaker 1: get back to the difference between the males and the
Speaker 1: females in a minute. Um. Mosquitoes in general, though they're
Speaker 1: accomplished flyers, as you know very well from your attempts
Speaker 1: to kill them. Their skills at infiltrating human habitats. They can,
Speaker 1: they hitch c spanning rides. They invade new continents, as
Speaker 1: we see with the invasive yellow fever carrying aidis agypty
Speaker 1: in South America. They also benefit from an inc readibly
Speaker 1: fast reproductive cycle. All they need is the tiniest bit
Speaker 1: of standing water to deposit their eggs in, which developed
Speaker 1: into their aquatic wriggling larva. UH. Abandoned swimming pools and
Speaker 1: bird baths are great, but they can also make do
Speaker 1: with a pet bow, candy rapp or even like just
Speaker 1: small puddles and cracks in the earth. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that I read for this that didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the notes was that in Brazil, where they're
Speaker 1: very you know, we're gonna talk about that later, and
Speaker 1: I'm very concerned about this. Uh, they actually sent military
Speaker 1: out home to home to make sure that there weren't
Speaker 1: tires in the yards filled with water. Yeah, because that
Speaker 1: big of a problem they need to, like, uh, their
Speaker 1: primary concern is managing these these stale water sources are sorry,
Speaker 1: stagnant water sources. But but you know, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where, yeah, you can go to homes, you
Speaker 1: can sweep the area, and you can turn over old
Speaker 1: old kiddy swimming pools and old tires, but they're all
Speaker 1: those little things, I mean, just a candy wrap. You know.
Speaker 1: They're just wonderful infiltrators. And they have four stages that
Speaker 1: there's the adult, there's the water surface eggs, and then
Speaker 1: there's the sub surface larva. They breathe through snorkels of
Speaker 1: sort a little breathing tracheal tubes that poke up through
Speaker 1: the surface of the water and then when those developed,
Speaker 1: then the mosquito comes up up to the surface, flies off,
Speaker 1: and they're ready to go. Yeah, they're vicious, and then
Speaker 1: they like it's so incredibly quick. And that's part of
Speaker 1: the difficulty of trying to manage their populations too, is
Speaker 1: how fast they breed and their cycle of life is.
Speaker 1: Now they've been with us a while. They've been around
Speaker 1: roughly one hundred million years, according to the sources I
Speaker 1: was looking at, And according to Dark Banquet author Bill
Speaker 1: Shoot we mentioned on the vampire episode because that's an
Speaker 1: excellent book about blood drinkers in general, with an emphasis
Speaker 1: on bats, but also some of the discussion of mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: He points out that the oldest evidence for blood feeding
Speaker 1: actually comes from a fossil proto mosquito from the Triassic
Speaker 1: period two hundred twenty million years ago. Now, this is
Speaker 1: the time when there were no flowering plants, so the
Speaker 1: elongated probiscus on this creature is thought to have functioned
Speaker 1: more or less like the modern mosquitoes. I'm imagining that
Speaker 1: they were bigger, though everything was bigger. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: like the one that Homer Simpson kills. Yeah, exactly. It
Speaker 1: travels back in time. Now you'll find mosquitoes and every
Speaker 1: continent except Antarctica, they thrive, and even our most exhaustive
Speaker 1: steps to eradicate them often only serves to do them
Speaker 1: in for a short period of time. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: there's an article in Technology Review that came out recently
Speaker 1: looking at some of the efforts were discussing here, and
Speaker 1: they pointed out that Brazilian officials declared invasive yellow fever
Speaker 1: carrying a Us a Gypti mosquitoes eradicated in night following
Speaker 1: some rather intense efforts. Is kind of door to door
Speaker 1: kind of thing we're talking about here, only to experience
Speaker 1: reinvasion in the decades to follow, and then you're right
Speaker 1: back where you were to begin with. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: that was that was a time where they were they
Speaker 1: were using a lot of sprays as well as like
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, like you said, door to
Speaker 1: doorm management, trying to make sure everyone was following sort
Speaker 1: of best practices, and yet here they are it's back
Speaker 1: worse than ever. Now, this is interesting. We've we've mentioned
Speaker 1: the difference between males and females, even though the females
Speaker 1: are the only ones doing the blood drinking both sexes
Speaker 1: of the of mosquito take advantage of plant nectar for nourishment, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of the big concerns along the lines of
Speaker 1: eradicating them is what would it do to the plant
Speaker 1: population that's pollinating. Yeah, yeah, we'll and and we'll we'll
Speaker 1: get into that and the like I think the final
Speaker 1: portion of the podcast. But yeah, people often don't realize
Speaker 1: that that in addition to drinking blood, they're also visiting
Speaker 1: these different plants um and the female blood drinking. If
Speaker 1: nothing else, that really knocks the already shaky science foundation
Speaker 1: out from under. The two thousand five sci fi original
Speaker 1: picture Man Squito, in which a half man, half mosquito
Speaker 1: hybrid sucks blood and seeks out a female mate. If
Speaker 1: you've seen this, I've not seen it. I'm I've heard
Speaker 1: of it, and I gosh, I can't remember off the
Speaker 1: top of my head, but I just feel like there
Speaker 1: are a lot of sort of giant mosquito or or
Speaker 1: where mosquito type things in like some pretty trashy science fiction. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know what's a good one. In that China Mieville
Speaker 1: boss Log universe, there's a species I think they're called
Speaker 1: the anopolies or something like that. Uh, and their mosquito
Speaker 1: women that like zip around on wings and like attack
Speaker 1: people and drain them dry. Well he got the sex
Speaker 1: right at Yeah he did. Well, you know Meavil does
Speaker 1: his research. Now. I don't want to hate on Manskitot
Speaker 1: too much because the director uh Pbore Takas. He actually
Speaker 1: gave us the super fun Night seven film The Gate.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I like the Gate I saw that recently,
Speaker 1: and and to follow up the Night ninety Nines the
Speaker 1: gate To, both of which were yeah, tremendous fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a young what's his name, the villain from
Speaker 1: the first Blade movie was in Oh, yeah, you're right, God,
Speaker 1: what is his name? Stephen Dorff? That's the one. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: young Stephen Dorff demon summoning wishes granted and then wishes
Speaker 1: turning into poop after the fact that it's a pretty
Speaker 1: fair that's like back when they made horror movies for
Speaker 1: little kids, and I guess we have goose bumps nowadays. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we'll get back into that. I feel
Speaker 1: like that's one of the strengths of the recent Netflix
Speaker 1: hit Stranger Things, so it catch into that that childhood
Speaker 1: adventure scenario exactly. Um, certainly, even though I don't think
Speaker 1: there are any direct references to the Gate in that show,
Speaker 1: that's a little bit of the Gates DNA. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: So anyway, the females do feed on the blood, and
Speaker 1: they feed on it a lot, and they feed by
Speaker 1: dipping into an organism's blood and then another organism's blood
Speaker 1: and then another, making them an ideal disease factor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is where the real problem comes about, and
Speaker 1: especially with this atis a Gyp dy uh species, because
Speaker 1: they're the ones that really are carrying so many of
Speaker 1: these diseases that are problematic for the human population. Of course,
Speaker 1: one of the big ones, the most famous one perhaps
Speaker 1: even malaria, and according to some estimate estimations, mosquito born
Speaker 1: malaria kills one human being every twelve seconds. That's how
Speaker 1: pervasive a problem this is. Well, they're also responsible for
Speaker 1: dog heartworm, also dengay fever, which we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about a lot today. You mentioned yellow fever already. There's
Speaker 1: also estern equine and sephalitis. St. Louis encephalitis, lacrosse and scephalitis,
Speaker 1: Western equine and sephalitis all is there a plural for encephalitis.
Speaker 1: I think we just sephalitis is just created, and then
Speaker 1: West Nile virus, and now of course zekra, which everybody
Speaker 1: is very concerned about. Now, I just wanted to give
Speaker 1: us like a very tiny primer. Obviously there's a lot
Speaker 1: of out there about ZEKEI right now, but you know, frankly,
Speaker 1: like I wasn't quite aware of like the actual symptoms
Speaker 1: of it. For most people, it just causes a mild rash.
Speaker 1: The real concern here is the link to four thousand
Speaker 1: Brazilian children that were born with microcephaly or what's sometimes
Speaker 1: called shrunken heads um. But we currently don't have a
Speaker 1: vaccine for ZEKA, and developing a vaccine could take years,
Speaker 1: so that there's a lot of concern about it. Also,
Speaker 1: I believe it is sexually transmittable as well. Yeah, see
Speaker 1: I did not know that. So it's it's we're continuing
Speaker 1: to learn exactly how it works and the problems and
Speaker 1: trying to fight it, which often comes back around to
Speaker 1: fighting mosquitoes, fighting the the the vectors that are spreading
Speaker 1: it from one person to the next, And in the
Speaker 1: past we've depended on powerful and secticides like DDT to
Speaker 1: curb mosquito populations, but we've been forced to try different
Speaker 1: approaches in recent years, including the use of of a
Speaker 1: natural occurring soil bacterium called Bacillus the ginus that actually
Speaker 1: kills the insect larva. And then of course there are
Speaker 1: there are more advanced techniques, and that's really what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today. Some of these these really
Speaker 1: really intriguing ideas that go far beyond nearly gassing the countryside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's take a quick break and then when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to talk to you about the
Speaker 1: mosquito factory, in particular one that's in China and another
Speaker 1: in Australia. So, yes, the first couple of mosquito factories
Speaker 1: as they're called because they are we should just go
Speaker 1: and get this out of the way. They are basically
Speaker 1: endeavors to breed mosquitoes and pump them out to essentially
Speaker 1: math produced mosquitoes, pump them out into the population in
Speaker 1: an attempt to control the shape of that population. So
Speaker 1: this is one of the limitations of the podcast medium. Uh.
Speaker 1: And but what we'll be able to add some of
Speaker 1: this to the landing page. The Atlantic did a great
Speaker 1: article photojournalism article that we used as a resource for
Speaker 1: this to learn more about it. And it was a
Speaker 1: series of I want to say, like what twenty photos
Speaker 1: of the inside factories and man alive it. It made
Speaker 1: me itchy just looking at them. Uh. It's it's photos
Speaker 1: of what the inside of these labs look like, how
Speaker 1: they've they've got like it shows people just these jars
Speaker 1: filled the mosquitoes, or they've got racks where they've got
Speaker 1: mosquito larvae and they're like manually picking out the males
Speaker 1: from the females. And it's just until you see it,
Speaker 1: it really doesn't I don't know ring home just how
Speaker 1: how literal the term mosquito factory is. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: these particular efforts we're gonna talk about first here. First
Speaker 1: of all, the there's one in Guando, China, and that's
Speaker 1: what the photos referred to. And there's another one in
Speaker 1: Australia as well. Yeah, and these are both utilizing a
Speaker 1: technique that involves the use of walt Bacchia bacteria. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So while Baccia its full name is I believe wal
Speaker 1: Baccia pipientis, which sounds cute, pipientis, it's like a hobbit
Speaker 1: uh uh Walbakia is a bacterium and it inhibits Zeka
Speaker 1: and other viruses by preventing the fertilization of mosquito eggs.
Speaker 1: So when you reapply it over time to multiple generations,
Speaker 1: it can kill off an entire species of mosquito. The
Speaker 1: percentage of mosquitoes carrying it subsequently increases, and outbreaks can
Speaker 1: then be contained and reduced. Wal Baccia. Now, if some
Speaker 1: of you out there are immediately you know, worried, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, we're just putting this thing out into the world.
Speaker 1: What is it, Well, don't worry just yet about walbaccia.
Speaker 1: It already occurs naturally in some mosquito species, but not
Speaker 1: in the adis a gypty that we're we've been talking
Speaker 1: about already that's responsible for spreading all these diseases, right,
Speaker 1: and it also does not pass on to humans, right
Speaker 1: it like can't. My understanding is it cannot physically fit
Speaker 1: through the probiscus. It's actually present and up to six
Speaker 1: of all different species of insects that exists around us already,
Speaker 1: and it's reportedly, like as you just said, safe for
Speaker 1: humans animals in the environment. Uh, they've actually conducted two
Speaker 1: independent risk assessments on wall Bacia and they found that
Speaker 1: it has negligible risk rating when it's released in mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: So that brings us to Guang Joe, China, which is
Speaker 1: where they're actually doing this now. Yeah, and uh and
Speaker 1: as well discussed they've they've been reporting some promising results.
Speaker 1: They're rearing and releasing these mosquitoes that are infected with wallbaccia.
Speaker 1: Uh and and really you've already touched on this, but
Speaker 1: the two key ideas here is that first, it renders
Speaker 1: the mosquitoes incapable of carrying a wide range of dangerous pathonges,
Speaker 1: including including zaga. And this is a quirk that mosquitoes
Speaker 1: pass on to their offspring. So the parents have wallbakia,
Speaker 1: they'll pass that on. But of course this also again
Speaker 1: plays into the overall population because when a male walbaci
Speaker 1: infected mosquito mates with an uninfected female, the resulting eggs
Speaker 1: don't hatch. It's only when both mates carry Wallbachia that
Speaker 1: the union results in a viable egg, and then that
Speaker 1: offspring has wallbakia. Is well. So it's it seems really
Speaker 1: almost kind of perfect, right because it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's making the creature unable to carry the illness that
Speaker 1: is the problem, and it eliminates those the that that
Speaker 1: do not carry this disease inhibiting agent. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it seems almost too perfect. Um, which is you know,
Speaker 1: I mean my spider sense immediately, no pun intended, immediately
Speaker 1: goes off when I hear stuff like this, because I'm like,
Speaker 1: really like for messing with nature on this level where
Speaker 1: the repercussion is going to be Um, it's essentially mosquito eugenics. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
Speaker 1: The factory in particular that we're talking about, quote unquote
Speaker 1: factory in China, it's based out of the sun Yat
Speaker 1: Sen University collaboration with Michigan State University. They have a
Speaker 1: joint Center of Vector Control for Tropical Diseases there and
Speaker 1: basically what they're doing is they're releasing this infected population
Speaker 1: of mosquitoes on a place called shaw Zi Island and
Speaker 1: they claim they've had a nine suppression rate of the
Speaker 1: population of the species ADUs albo pictus there. Otherwise, that
Speaker 1: one is known as the Asian tiger mosquito. That's the
Speaker 1: one that carries Zeka in China. My question is, and
Speaker 1: I didn't have time to look into this, and I
Speaker 1: didn't get a sense of it from the Atlantic article.
Speaker 1: But I'm wondering who lives on Shahzai Island, and in particular,
Speaker 1: like what's their risk both of Zeka and from these
Speaker 1: altered mosquitoes. Right, So there are a lot of pictures
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic article showing families like kind of hiding
Speaker 1: under mosquito nets and like dealing with their everyday life
Speaker 1: just staying away from mosquitoes as much as possible. But
Speaker 1: why is that the perfect place other than other than
Speaker 1: that's an island, right. I look around for an answer
Speaker 1: to this as well, and I didn't really get a
Speaker 1: good sense of it. I have been to Guangzhou and
Speaker 1: I have visited Shaman Island, which is um a little
Speaker 1: bit up river, I believe, from it, and I was
Speaker 1: looking at the map and trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: closely word of each other. But I guess the important
Speaker 1: thing to to keep in mind here is that, uh,
Speaker 1: both of these islands in particular are on the Jojang River,
Speaker 1: the Pearl River, which cuts through the gateway city, the
Speaker 1: Chinese gateway city of Guangzhoe, which has a population of
Speaker 1: thirteen point zero eight million people, So you compare that
Speaker 1: to the eight point fifty five million people in New
Speaker 1: York City, right, Yeah, that's and that's a veritable feeding
Speaker 1: ground for mosquitoes. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a
Speaker 1: staggering metropolis, quite a blood behink from mosquitoes, and you
Speaker 1: have this major waterway and all these additional waterways just
Speaker 1: running like veins through the whole thing. So it's a very, um,
Speaker 1: very wet city. Yeahs you could say. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of perfect for for what we're talking about, both for
Speaker 1: breeding the mosquitoes to battle these diseases, but also just
Speaker 1: for mosquitoes naturally. Um. The other thing that I was
Speaker 1: wondering by looking at this photo essay was that they
Speaker 1: show the lab text like I mentioned earlier, separating the
Speaker 1: male larva from the female larva. Wondering how you do that, like, um,
Speaker 1: not how to use sex mosquito larva? Yeah exactly, Yeah
Speaker 1: not not, I don't mean like how like you know,
Speaker 1: what are your tweezer size whatever? Yeah? Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: interesting to me as well. So if there's anybody out
Speaker 1: there listeners who know a little bit more about this,
Speaker 1: uh and or you've been to this particular area in China.
Speaker 1: Let us know, because I'd love to know more about
Speaker 1: it and maybe we can catch up on it like
Speaker 1: a listener mail episode. Yeah, I I I spent several
Speaker 1: days there and it it was a very very hot month.
Speaker 1: I remember a lot of staggering through parks to get
Speaker 1: bit by mosquitoes. Did not I didn't. I don't remember
Speaker 1: having any problem with mosquitoes while I was there, But
Speaker 1: this was several years ago, so maybe the problem has
Speaker 1: been more pervasive in recent years. Well. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I found interesting, and it connects the Chinese
Speaker 1: experiment to the Australian one we're going to talk about,
Speaker 1: is that they're both supported by the Bill and Melinda
Speaker 1: Gates Foundation. They may be part of the same project,
Speaker 1: but one stat I saw said that the Wallbakier research
Speaker 1: in China was given forty million dollars by the Gates Foundation,
Speaker 1: whereas the research UH in Australia I think was like
Speaker 1: something like sixty maybe. Um, so maybe it's a combined
Speaker 1: effort over time, but so this is something that they're
Speaker 1: very interested in helping out with, right and and stressing
Speaker 1: again like both of these efforts are not only about
Speaker 1: tackling a regional problem, but also developing techniques that could
Speaker 1: be utilized elsewhere across the world. So the Australian project
Speaker 1: that I mentioned, that's happening in a place called Townsville,
Speaker 1: which is within Queensland, and that project is part of
Speaker 1: a global initiative. Now China wasn't included in this list,
Speaker 1: but it's also happening in Colombia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil.
Speaker 1: Brazil will be talking about later. And the basic idea
Speaker 1: here is they want to test whether they can slow
Speaker 1: the spread of these disease is with wallbaccia. Like we
Speaker 1: were talking about the same process. They injected hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of adis at Gypti mosquito eggs with walbaccia. Uh
Speaker 1: and so far it seems like it's being somewhat successful, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you already mentioned the suppression rate um in Guangzhou, and
Speaker 1: then we I've I've also read and this was this
Speaker 1: is from Eliminate DNA dot Com that has a lot
Speaker 1: of material on on the efforts, with of course an
Speaker 1: emphasis on eliminating DNA fever. But they point out that
Speaker 1: research has shown that walbaccia can sustain itself in mosquito
Speaker 1: populations without continual reapplication. So in other words, you know,
Speaker 1: it's talking about how it gets passed on, and you
Speaker 1: need the male and the female that both have waalbaki
Speaker 1: in order to create walbakia infected offspring. Well, if all
Speaker 1: you have, all we have to do, and not to
Speaker 1: make it sound super easy, but you just have to
Speaker 1: reach that that appropriate threshold of infection to where there's
Speaker 1: essentially no coming from the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes now in this region,
Speaker 1: in this area, on this continent in particular, are all
Speaker 1: going to have lall bacia. On that note, we were
Speaker 1: going to look at another mosquito factory option, that of
Speaker 1: genetically modified mosquitoes. Let's talk about this. Uh, they're genetically
Speaker 1: modified mosquitoes, specifically Brazil is where they're being tested at.
Speaker 1: You seem to have coined an amazing title here. Uh,
Speaker 1: and if it hasn't yet, it's surely going to be
Speaker 1: a science fiction horror movie in the next twenty years.
Speaker 1: What is it? Gmosquito? Yeah, Gmo Squito. I love it.
Speaker 1: Um it works better textually, I think, But yeah, it
Speaker 1: might be the name of the next man Squito s right,
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a sequel to Mosquito. Um. So there's a
Speaker 1: company called ox a Tech and it's a UK company
Speaker 1: and they specialize in this genetic modification of mosquitoes. They
Speaker 1: changed the d nay of the mosquitoes so that they
Speaker 1: can only live for four days and so that their
Speaker 1: offspring won't get past the larval stage. They call these
Speaker 1: the friendly eighties, I think, referring to that species title
Speaker 1: that we've been using earlier. Now. Oxy Tech is owned
Speaker 1: by Intrexon. I love these names and X in there.
Speaker 1: Why does the house of works? But we should start
Speaker 1: spelling it with works, like with an X at the
Speaker 1: end of it. Oxy Tech is owned by in trucks On.
Speaker 1: That's a US conglomerate and that owns This was a
Speaker 1: weird phrase, but I felt like we had to mention it.
Speaker 1: Quote a portfolio of transgenic organisms. Oh yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you have the recipe, you exactly the dish. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so my understanding was that I was like, everything from
Speaker 1: fish to plants. They they have a lot of transgenic organisms. Uh,
Speaker 1: and now they have these mosquitoes as well. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I think we've touched on this before on the show.
Speaker 1: But transgenic organisms are not. It's not all necessarily related
Speaker 1: to like here's a here's an new taken a wild
Speaker 1: animal going to release this. There's a lot of it's
Speaker 1: experimental and a lot of it is industrial in nature
Speaker 1: and not necessarily something with a with a backbone and
Speaker 1: a and uh in a brain. You know. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of transgenic bacteria and whatnot. Yeah, exactly. So this
Speaker 1: pilot program is taking place in Pira Chicaba, Brazil, and
Speaker 1: basically the idea here is they want to design something
Speaker 1: that will create a cost effective method for cities across
Speaker 1: the world to stop mosquito spread disease. They started in April. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the same year that there was a huge
Speaker 1: epidemic of Dengey fever there that caused more than one
Speaker 1: point five million cases in Brazil. Now, the actual breeding
Speaker 1: factory for the similar to the one that we talked
Speaker 1: about in China and the other one that's in Australia,
Speaker 1: is in Campinas, Brazil. They produced two million mosquitoes a week.
Speaker 1: Basically what they do, same process. They made the mosquitoes
Speaker 1: and they divide them by sex. The workers actually use
Speaker 1: these little electrified tennis rackets to protect themselves. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: These are the kinds you can buy at your local Walmart. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they show them in the lab. They felt one hand,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, separating out the larva, and
Speaker 1: the other hand is on this tennis racket just you know,
Speaker 1: ready to whack mosquitoes around. Both zeka and dengue, as
Speaker 1: we've previously mentioned, are spread by this ATIS mosquito, So
Speaker 1: that's why they're studying it there. Brazil in particular, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned, has this long history of mosquito problems. Uh so,
Speaker 1: yet another reason. They declared that the Atis was eradicated,
Speaker 1: but they were not. Uh So, how much is this
Speaker 1: actually working? How much are they changing? Um oxy tech.
Speaker 1: They first came up with the idea in two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: They released sterile males to compete for mates out in
Speaker 1: the out in the wild. They engineered their mosquitoes so
Speaker 1: that they would overproduce a protein that will kill them
Speaker 1: unless they are fed an antibiotic called tetrapsyche lean. Without it,
Speaker 1: the mails and then subsequently their offspring just die off.
Speaker 1: It's a little different than what's going on with the
Speaker 1: wall Baccia, but the same premise essentially. Yeah, and actually
Speaker 1: this is a similar strategy. That's that's rolled out with
Speaker 1: a number of different transgenic organisms to prevent them from
Speaker 1: from thriving in the wild and make them depend on
Speaker 1: something that I can't want to get in the lap. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, I was actually talking to Joe about this
Speaker 1: before we jumped in the studio, our co host and
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind, and Joe told me that
Speaker 1: on his other podcast, Forward Thinking, they've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: in particular using crisper to gene edit, and it's referred
Speaker 1: to as a gene drive. Uh. And they've talked about
Speaker 1: that sort of broader implication not just mosquitoes but other
Speaker 1: species as well. Um, so another part of the genetic
Speaker 1: modification process. This is interesting. They make the larvae glow
Speaker 1: with the fluorescence that only shows up when they're exposed
Speaker 1: to a special light. So this allows them to sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, they find breeding grounds. They hover this light
Speaker 1: sort of like the strain. That's what I'm thinking. You know,
Speaker 1: they've got these ultra violet lights. They hover it over
Speaker 1: and they can see which ones are are there, gmosquitoes
Speaker 1: or not. So there's very much like the not the
Speaker 1: notched ear on a feral cat. That has been spared. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're looking to see, you know, how successful their
Speaker 1: efforts are with that. There's also work being done in
Speaker 1: other u S labs in California and Virginia, and they're
Speaker 1: using crisper to cause the gene drive that I mentioned,
Speaker 1: same premise here. This would be used to drive adis
Speaker 1: a gypty into extinction. They weave the insects DNA differently
Speaker 1: than the given genes, spreads to all of the mosquitoes offspring,
Speaker 1: and this is a process that is referred to as
Speaker 1: super inheritance. Uh. This leads to a population replacement by
Speaker 1: spreading the gene, and it makes mosquitoes unsuitable hosts for
Speaker 1: certain pathogens like Zeka danae, all these things that we're
Speaker 1: worried about. Basically, it makes all the offsering mail so
Speaker 1: they they're just going to eventually die off. Now, this
Speaker 1: is hotly debated, and we've we've hinted at this already,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of concerns about how this would
Speaker 1: affect the ecosystem, especially as you noted, whenever you bring
Speaker 1: up the terms GMO about anything, people people's tackles get raised. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there's some fear out there, that the DNA could
Speaker 1: change and might jump to other insects, or that if
Speaker 1: something went wrong, these scientists wouldn't be able to recall it. Uh,
Speaker 1: And what if there was a biological niche that these
Speaker 1: mosquitoes were feeling that you know, we need and we
Speaker 1: get rid of it. And we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that at the end of the episode. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's some concerns there, rightfully. So, I mean when I
Speaker 1: hear stuff like this, I immediately think of, like again
Speaker 1: sci fi movies, Like I think of something like Children
Speaker 1: of Men, Like you know, Children of Men begins, and
Speaker 1: like there's you can no longer breed children. And they
Speaker 1: I don't think they ever really like give any kind
Speaker 1: of like science e reason as to why. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to conspiracy theorist, wise you could extrapolate
Speaker 1: from this something like that. Right. Well, it's funny that
Speaker 1: you mentioned conspiracy theories, but because of course there has
Speaker 1: been a specific conspiracy theory that has proven rather difficult
Speaker 1: to eradicate in Brazil based on these activities. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theory is is that because of the genetic
Speaker 1: modification that they're doing, they think that this caused zica.
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't make scientific sense, but it makes
Speaker 1: no but but it makes conspiracy theories sense because you
Speaker 1: have here, you have this mosquito you're toying with. It's
Speaker 1: a its ability to create healthy offspring. And then we
Speaker 1: look at some of the ramifications of of zica, particularly
Speaker 1: on on pregnant humans, and you can see how that
Speaker 1: feeds into this, uh, this conspiracy narrative. Yeah. Absolutely, So
Speaker 1: you know a lot of debate about that. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about sort of the good and and and
Speaker 1: you know, risky aspects of this a little bit later.
Speaker 1: The question is is this successful? Does this work? You know,
Speaker 1: same as the wall Baccia. Well, after ten months of
Speaker 1: testing it in two small neighborhoods in Brazil, they say
Speaker 1: that the number of Dengee cases there went from a
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty three to one per year. They also
Speaker 1: say that the program has decreased wild mosquitoes by more
Speaker 1: than eighty percent in the neighborhoods that they treated. Now,
Speaker 1: this is just two neighborhoods. For it to really work
Speaker 1: on a large scale, they're gonna have to release massive
Speaker 1: numbers of these mosquitoes and continuously to protect all of
Speaker 1: the pyre at Chicaba City. It's gonna take three billion
Speaker 1: bugs a year. That would cost seven dollars in fifty
Speaker 1: cents per person per year, which means that the city
Speaker 1: would have to spend around two point seven million dollars
Speaker 1: a year. Now here's the rub that's almost exactly the
Speaker 1: same amount of money that they currently spend on sprays,
Speaker 1: larva sides and all of their sick leave costs related
Speaker 1: to these mosquito spread disease. So city officials are looking
Speaker 1: forward to making this switch. They kind of see it
Speaker 1: as like a one for one swap. Uh, But there's
Speaker 1: a problem. Brazil barely has the money to pay for
Speaker 1: something like this right now. Mean, certainly this is a
Speaker 1: Brazil's money problem, so that this has been an important
Speaker 1: news story of late. Yeah, I mean we hear about
Speaker 1: it in relation to the Olympics. But like you know,
Speaker 1: think about your city manager and you're trying to deal
Speaker 1: with a problem like this, Uh, do you have the
Speaker 1: two point seven million dollars a year to spend on
Speaker 1: this experimental gmo mosquito that you're gonna release. And they're
Speaker 1: already conspiracy theories about gaining traction with the populace. What
Speaker 1: do you do? And here's the thing, Brazil's bio safety
Speaker 1: agency has actually approved them, but they still can't be
Speaker 1: sold commercially because they actually require this is oxy tech
Speaker 1: here requires certification from Brazil's medical regulator. Now, despite this,
Speaker 1: the city has already entered into an agreement to spend
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand dollars over two years to protect something
Speaker 1: around sixty people using this method. Now, the actual gene
Speaker 1: editing that that would eradicate mosquitoes, that's a couple of
Speaker 1: years away from actual use here. And then that leads
Speaker 1: to the conspiracy theory that you mentioned earlier, which is
Speaker 1: that these GM mosquitoes are causing ZEKA, that they're part
Speaker 1: of the problem. And you know, I can only imagine
Speaker 1: where it goes next from there, you know, there, I
Speaker 1: don't know, we're gonna start turning into Oh, maybe that's
Speaker 1: the origin story for man squito is the GM mosquito
Speaker 1: comes and stings you and then you give birth to
Speaker 1: a man squito. Okay, it still doesn't explain why why
Speaker 1: man squito is sucking blood. But yeah, now for this
Speaker 1: last portion of the podcast episode, I'm I'm going to
Speaker 1: discuss some of the arguments for keeping mosquitoes. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, go ahead and just hit us with
Speaker 1: all the bad mosquito talking points you can whip out. Well. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I looked at an article justifying why we should just
Speaker 1: annihilate mosquitoes. Basically, uh, and this isn't me speaking, this
Speaker 1: is the article, but the source mainly comes from Walter
Speaker 1: Reed Army Institute of Research, which is based in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Speaker 1: They study mosquitoes. They're uh. In fact that the stories
Speaker 1: about how they study the mosquitoes they are absolutely insane.
Speaker 1: Like they feed them ground up fish food and then
Speaker 1: they offer them bellies of unconscious mice to drain the
Speaker 1: blood out of. And they said that the mosquitoes drain
Speaker 1: the blood out of twenty four mice a month. Um,
Speaker 1: so I'm assuming that they actually kill these mice, but
Speaker 1: they knock them out first. Now, even these scientists who
Speaker 1: spend all day interacting with these mosquitoes and studying them,
Speaker 1: when they were asked about this, we're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd be much better off about them kill them. Uh.
Speaker 1: Malarious bread by mosquitoes infects two hundred and forty seven
Speaker 1: million people per year and it kills one million people
Speaker 1: per year, not to mention all those other diseases we've
Speaker 1: already mentioned. So the question here really is would mosquitoes
Speaker 1: be missed in the ecological system if we just utterly
Speaker 1: exterminated them. Well, we know they're everywhere, right, so they
Speaker 1: probably have a lot of role in the cyst them
Speaker 1: And that's true. It could leave a predator without a prey,
Speaker 1: or it could leave a plant without a pollinator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean these are both really important factors because mosquitoes,
Speaker 1: first of all, they make up a fairly huge slice
Speaker 1: of the biomass on our planet. They serve as food
Speaker 1: for various invertebrate and vertebrate species. We're talking beetles, fish, birds, bats, dragonflies,
Speaker 1: et cetera. The larva are especially uh an important gobbled
Speaker 1: up in aquatic environments. And you can also look at
Speaker 1: it this way. They're providing an important uh benefit here
Speaker 1: to aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems by converting pyramisium and other
Speaker 1: first level consumers into high quality insect proteins. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a good point. I Uh. I mentioned Bill
Speaker 1: shoots uh excellent book Dark Banquet earlier in that he
Speaker 1: rolls out some various estimates for how many mosquitoes bats eat,
Speaker 1: and the the upper estimate, and this is one that
Speaker 1: that he actually has some problems with, but just to
Speaker 1: give you an idea, the upper estimate is as many
Speaker 1: as six hundred mosquitoes per hour. So even IF's if
Speaker 1: it's less than that, bats eat a lot of mosquito.
Speaker 1: So if you remove that, what are they going to eat? Well,
Speaker 1: that's interesting because one of the things that I read
Speaker 1: said that bats are the perfect model to look at
Speaker 1: how some predators would move to other insects because when
Speaker 1: they have the option, that's prefer to eat moths and
Speaker 1: they have a much smaller percentage of mosquitoes in their
Speaker 1: bellies when they're opened up. Okay, So so the bats
Speaker 1: might be okay, maybe we don't know. Um. Also, just
Speaker 1: a quick note on the pollination issue. We already mentioned
Speaker 1: about how both both sexes of mosquitoes visit flowers and
Speaker 1: are involved in pollination. Uh, they're particularly involved in various
Speaker 1: orchids species. So if you if you value a beautiful
Speaker 1: orchid like like a lot of people, bear in mind
Speaker 1: that mosquitoes may play an important role in and in
Speaker 1: carrying on that species through pollination. So there's here's a
Speaker 1: really weird repercussion that I have never thought of, but
Speaker 1: it goes to show you sort of that circle of
Speaker 1: life thing that just like there's a or a butterfly
Speaker 1: effect that we could never predict. Uh. So, apparently mosquitoes
Speaker 1: highly affect caribou herds and what their migratory patterns are
Speaker 1: because if there's clouds of mosquitoes along a certain way,
Speaker 1: the caribous sense that they swerve out of the way
Speaker 1: and it changes their directional patterns. I've seen, Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: seen this featured on documentaries before concerning cariboo and perhaps
Speaker 1: maybe misremembering here, but perhaps reindeer as well, where the
Speaker 1: the the airborne parasites become just such a problem that
Speaker 1: they'll they'll go to higher altitudes where they're not bothered
Speaker 1: by but of course there they don't have is as
Speaker 1: as good in access to food exactly. So, So how
Speaker 1: does all of that change if we just utterly get
Speaker 1: rid of mosquitoes, you know, uh, what does that do
Speaker 1: to cariboo and then subsequently what does that do to
Speaker 1: the human population. Yeah, this is interesting because basically with
Speaker 1: the cariboo, the mosquitoes are an obstacle and the pattern
Speaker 1: of their life revolves around circumventing those obstacles, and we
Speaker 1: see that in human history as well. UH science writer
Speaker 1: David Quaman proposed this several years back, and I believe
Speaker 1: Robert Kroulwitch talked about this in a blog post that
Speaker 1: also picked up additional attraction in recent years. But uh
Speaker 1: Kuaman proposed that the ravages of mosquito born illnesses in
Speaker 1: many equatorial rainforest at forest areas actually staved off the
Speaker 1: advance of human exploitation until the twenty one century. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing this as well, that they're sort of like
Speaker 1: the guardians of the rainforest. Yeah, they're the swamp thing
Speaker 1: that evil here because just of the the pervasive nature
Speaker 1: of mosquito born malaria and other illnesses just keeping us
Speaker 1: from from just completely tearing it down and exploriting it. Well.
Speaker 1: And then the other argument in favor of destroying mosquitoes is,
Speaker 1: let's face it, if we eradicated them, there would be
Speaker 1: more people, right, Like mosquitoes spread, These diseases killed millions
Speaker 1: of people every year, and in a sense they are
Speaker 1: managing our population exactly. So do the costs of an
Speaker 1: increased human population outweigh the benefits of a healthier human population. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's because you can't. That is not something you can
Speaker 1: argue in a political environment, or you can barely argue
Speaker 1: with just in in human conversation and say, hey, sure
Speaker 1: malaria related deaths are horrible, but they're keeping our numbers down,
Speaker 1: so we should you know, you just can't argue that
Speaker 1: we should, that we should keep an illness around, right
Speaker 1: if we can fight it. Yeah, So, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's a tough one and scientists on both sides of
Speaker 1: it are they're arguing about it, but they're also kind
Speaker 1: of at a loss, like do we do this? I mean, now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, like the stuff that we talked about
Speaker 1: today of the walbakia and the genetically modified thing, this
Speaker 1: is restricted to one species of mosquito. They're not they're
Speaker 1: not destroying all mosquitoes. But because again, only like two
Speaker 1: hundred out of dred are actually a past to us,
Speaker 1: So we wouldn't be taking out all the mosquitoes. But certainly,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, just focusing on a few taking them
Speaker 1: on entirely, are we pulling the biological jinga block out
Speaker 1: too too close to the bottom that who knows. Only
Speaker 1: time will tell, but it it definitely sounds like the
Speaker 1: origin story for some kind of science fiction horror masterpiece, so,
Speaker 1: you know, or a utopian dream it might be in
Speaker 1: which you don't have to worry about going. Maybe this
Speaker 1: will fix everything. Maybe this is the answer to wicked problems.
Speaker 1: Just kill all the mosquitoes. Well, I'm sure some of
Speaker 1: you out there listening and are like, I have an
Speaker 1: opinion on this. Well, you want to share that opinion
Speaker 1: with us. There's lots of ways to do so. You
Speaker 1: can reach out to us on social media. We're on Facebook,
Speaker 1: we're on Twitter, we're on Tumbler, we're on Instagram. All
Speaker 1: those platforms were Blow the Mind or something close to that.
Speaker 1: If you search for Blow the Mind, you'll find us.
Speaker 1: Look look for the little head with the exploding symbol.
Speaker 1: Although our logo might be changing soon. That's exciting, true. Yeah, uh.
Speaker 1: And then you can always go to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's not just where the podcasts live.
Speaker 1: We've got all kinds of stuff there. We've got the
Speaker 1: videos that we do, we've got articles that we write.
Speaker 1: Robert's blog posts about electronic music that we mentioned in
Speaker 1: the last episode about a musea. So there's lots of
Speaker 1: stuff going on in the Stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: eCos system that you might be missing out on that
Speaker 1: aren't just podcasts, and maybe their pokemon there. I don't
Speaker 1: know if there could be there everywhere. Yeah, they could
Speaker 1: be in I bet that's where mew two lives. Which
Speaker 1: that's like the super powerful one. That's crazy rare. That's
Speaker 1: actually Pikachus, a super powerful one. Pika choose the protagonist man.
Speaker 1: But mew two is like the it's genetically modified. Actually,
Speaker 1: wait are they all? So they're heroes and villains among
Speaker 1: the Pokemon. It's more along the lines of that they're
Speaker 1: all the neutral depending on who catches them and what
Speaker 1: they do with them. But mewtwo was genetically modified and
Speaker 1: evolved into like a super sentience psychic Pokemon that wanted
Speaker 1: to take over in destroy the world. Okay, well, hopefully
Speaker 1: Mosquito Factories won't go in that direct. Yes, and as always,
Speaker 1: if you want to reach out to us the old
Speaker 1: fashioned way, the email address is blow the Mind and
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. For more on this than
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com