-
Click here to listen to this article - Share via
See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred
Two weeks ago, after a hot and humid summer of mosquito-induced hell, I decided I would spend whatever amount it took to get rid of the rapacious little creatures.
Which is how I found myself in the bug aisle of Home Depot, staring at a wide array of products under a banner that read “Mosquitoes.”
By the time I had finished loading up my cart, I had about $300 worth of chemical repellents for my skin, citronella candles, mosquito coils, a lantern-size ultraviolet zapper, a tennis-racket size ultraviolet zapper, two rechargeable Thermacell anti-mosquito misters and one butane-powered Thermacell mosquito banisher.
Overkill? I think not!
As I type this in my (unairconditioned) dining room, next to an open sliding glass door, I am running an electric fan pointing directly at my ankles in order to discourage the mosquitoes known as “ankle-biters” from attacking my bare legs.
It didn’t used to be like this. Twenty or so years ago, our local mosquitoes were pretty mellow. But new, invasive species have exploded across Southern California in the last decade, making life hell for those of us who want nothing more than to sit on our decks in the shade enjoying our enviable weather.
No time of day is safe.
The tiny ankle biters are diurnal, which means they are active during the day — usually at dawn and dusk, said Karthikeyan Chandrasegaran, a UC Irvine ecologist who studies the bloodthirsty little beasts. The mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus and malaria, by contrast, are nocturnal. And they are wily.
“If you swat at a mosquito and miss it, they are likely to understand something about it,” Chandrasegaran told me. “The next time they are going to try to bite you, they’re probably going to attack you in a different region. And they modify their flight trajectory depending on where they expect the swat to come from.”
The biological response to a bite is well understood: When a female mosquito sticks her proboscis into, say, my ankle in search of tasty blood to nourish her eggs, her saliva unleashes an anti-coagulant that makes it easier to drain me.
My body perceives her saliva as a foreign object and releases a counter-measure in the form of histamines, which send a signal to my brain that I am under attack, which my brain then interprets as an intense almost full-body itch, and screams that only an insane amount of scratching will help.
And so I scratch and scratch against my ever-thinning, soon-to-be-bloody skin. I slather the bites with hydrocortisone cream. I rub on lidocaine. And I continue to itch and scratch until I slap on an ice pack to freeze my discomfort away. I have literally walked around my house this summer with baggies full of ice cubes taped to my legs, ankles and arms. I look ridiculous.
While I am worried about my comfort, I should probably be even more worried about contracting a deadly disease. Mosquitoes can carry malaria, yellow fever, dengue, Zika, chikungunya and, of greatest concern in these parts, West Nile virus.
“This year has been really bad in Southern California,” Chandrasegaran said. So far, Los Angeles County public health officials have documented at least 100 cases of West Nile virus and five deaths linked to mosquitoes.
Worry all you like about lions, tigers and bears — and maybe charging hippopotamuses — but the mosquito is in fact humankind’s apex predator, responsible for hundreds of millions of infections globally, and about a million human deaths a year.
“The mosquito has killed more people than any other cause of death in human history,” writes historian Timothy Winegard in “The Mosquito,” his sprawling 2020 book. “The mosquito remains the destroyer of worlds, and the preeminent and globally distinguished killer of mankind.”
Winegard implicates mosquitoes in the extinction of the dinosaurs, weakened by the pests before the meteor hit. Mosquitoes may have been a factor in the deaths of King Tut, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan.
Around the world and across the centuries, untold numbers of soldiers have fallen to mosquitoes, which have repeatedly altered the course of major military campaigns, including the siege of Yorktown during the American Revolutionary War and the Haitian Revolution, which overthrew French colonial rule and indirectly led to Napoleon selling the Louisiana Territory to the United States. (Haitians had some resistance to the yellow fever-carrying mosquito; French soldiers did not.)
Rome’s mosquito-infested Pontine marshes — drained eventually by Benito Mussolini — played an outsized role in the history of the eternal city, forming a deadly natural barrier against invading hordes over the centuries.
Mosquitoes, unsurprisingly, played a part in the transatlantic slave trade. Malaria was so prevalent in prehistoric Africa that people evolved sickle-shaped red blood cells as a genetic shield against malaria. Sadly, the ability to survive malaria made Africans more appealing and valuable to enslavers.
In 2010, Janet Fang, a young intern at the science journal Nature decided to investigate what a world without mosquitoes would look like. The scientific consensus was that the abrupt extinction of mosquitoes would save so many human lives that it would outweigh whatever ecological damage their absence would create. Scientists speculated that mosquito-eating fish and birds would simply switch to other forms of protein.
“Life would continue as before,” Fang wrote, “or even better.”
Not everyone applauded the idea.
“People were mad,” Fang told me Thursday from Silver Lake, where she and her toddler have been plagued all summer by mosquitoes. West Nile virus was recently discovered in one of the reservoirs near her home.
“I never once super said, ‘Let’s kill all the mosquitoes.’ I thought it was clear that it was a thought experiment,” Fang told me. “But I was villainized.”
Personally, I think she deserved a Pulitzer Prize.
Bluesky: @rabcarian
Threads: @rabcarian
Insights
L.A. Times Insights delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles.
Viewpoint
Perspectives
The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.
Ideas expressed in the piece
- The article portrays Los Angeles summers as increasingly unbearable due to explosions of aggressive, invasive mosquito species such as daytime-biting “ankle-biters” that now swarm yards and homes even in normally pleasant weather, a trend consistent with reports of unusually intense mosquito seasons driven by heat, humidity and rainfall across Southern California[1][2][8].
- It describes a personal descent into mosquito “hell,” marked by extensive purchases of chemical repellents, candles, coils and electronic zappers, to illustrate how residents feel compelled to spend significant sums and adopt extreme, sometimes makeshift measures simply to enjoy outdoor spaces[1][2].
- The article underscores that the problem is not just nuisance bites but serious public health risk, emphasizing that mosquitoes in the region transmit West Nile virus and potentially other diseases, and noting that county health authorities have recorded elevated case counts and deaths in recent seasons[4][6][9].
- Drawing on scientific commentary, the column characterizes mosquitoes as humankind’s “apex predator,” highlighting estimates that they are responsible for vast numbers of deaths annually and recounting claims that mosquito-borne disease has shaped global history, from ancient rulers to major military campaigns.
- The piece suggests that new invasive Aedes species are central to the current crisis, describing how Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus have colonized urban California, breed in tiny containers of water, and are capable of transmitting viruses such as dengue, chikungunya, Zika and yellow fever[1][8][11].
- It reports expert explanations that recent extreme heat, humidity and standing water have created ideal breeding conditions, causing mosquito activity to start earlier and stay higher than historic norms, and conveying warnings that mosquito season now stretches across much of the year rather than a short summer window[1][2][9].
- The article invokes a widely discussed thought experiment about a world without mosquitoes, noting that many scientists interviewed in that work concluded that global mosquito extinction would likely save vast numbers of human lives with limited ecological disruption, a conclusion the column presents as morally compelling.
- At the same time, it recounts backlash against such ideas, describing how the thought experiment’s author was criticized and “villainized,” and arguing that these reactions underestimate how profoundly mosquitoes degrade quality of life and threaten health in places like Los Angeles.
Different views on the topic
- Public health agencies and vector control districts in Los Angeles County acknowledge rising mosquito activity and West Nile virus detections but frame the situation as a manageable endemic risk, emphasizing that annual case counts, while above recent averages in some areas, remain in the dozens rather than the catastrophic levels implied by global mortality figures[4][6][7][9].
- These official communications stress practical mitigation over eradication, urging residents to focus on draining standing water, maintaining pools and using approved repellents, and suggesting that consistent community action can substantially reduce mosquito populations without resorting to extreme chemical use or calls for wiping out the insects entirely[1][5][7][11].
- Local news coverage similarly highlights that most West Nile infections are mild or asymptomatic and never reported, indicating that severe neurological disease and death occur in a minority of cases, and encouraging vigilance and prevention rather than panic about an omnipresent lethal threat[3][5][7][10].
- Reports from regional vector control experts point out that Southern California has always had a seasonal mosquito presence, typically peaking from late summer into early fall, and while recent heat and rainfall have intensified and extended the season, these sources portray the change as a serious but predictable consequence of weather and climate patterns that can be addressed through long-term planning[1][2][9].
- Guidance from state and county agencies on invasive Aedes species reflects concern but also caution, noting that while Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus can transmit several tropical viruses, large outbreaks of dengue, Zika or chikungunya have not materialized in California to date, and that aggressive surveillance, targeted control and public education are intended to prevent such emergence without advocating global mosquito extinction[8][11].
- Critics of the “kill all mosquitoes” thought experiment, as described in the article, object on ecological and ethical grounds, arguing that mosquitoes play roles in food webs and nutrient cycles and warning that deliberately eliminating an entire taxonomic group could have unforeseen environmental consequences that scientists do not yet fully understand.
- Some public health voices also caution against viewing mosquitoes solely as villains, emphasizing that human land use, neglected infrastructure and climate change contribute significantly to current outbreaks, and that sustainable solutions require investment in environmental management, public services and climate resilience rather than relying primarily on household-level consumer products[1][2][5][9][11].
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
Greenline Housing Foundation has become something of a “first aid kit” for Eaton fire survivors, offering financial services that range from temporary housing grants to land banking that have helped some families fund their paths back home.
California once bet big on offshore wind to help power its clean-energy future, but the Trump administration is now paying developers billions to walk away from their projects. As California’s remaining offshore-wind leases hang in the balance, the state is fighting back in court.
The Hillside Strangler murders terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The killers were a pair of sadistic cousins. One confessed. The other was set to stand trial—until L.A. prosecutors flinched.
