Because of it, several hundred thousand people die each year around the world.
It’s a very small insect. But yet, it is probably one of the most dangerous enemies of humans. The number of victims is unthinkable: this tiny animal kills between 750,000 and a million people each year! That is more than 100,000 times more than the sea predators sharks, with “only” 700 deaths to be deplored per year. For comparison, 726,000 babies were born in France in 2022, therefore less than the number of victims caused by this famous animal which, in addition to being murderous, is hated.
Just at the sight of its image or at the approach of its little noise, the hairs stand up and the anger rises. Did you recognize him? It is of course the mosquito, which invades us in the summer and stays in our interiors until the end of the sunny days – or even later. This tiny insect often ends its life crushed by humans. Especially since the mosquito, far from the collective imagination, is much more deadly than the shark, the lion, snakes or wasps.
The main danger posed by mosquitoes is the transmission of many serious diseases – chikungunya, dengue fever, Zika, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile fever, but also malaria, lymphatic filariasis – and are responsible for countless inconveniences in certain regions of the world . But it’s important to remember that mosquitoes also play a role in ecosystems, although this may seem counterintuitive given the inconvenience they can cause to humans. Here are some of the functions and roles that mosquitoes perform in nature:
However, it is important to note that the usefulness of mosquitoes in nature does not necessarily mean that they are indispensable in all situations, especially when their abundance becomes a problem in certain areas or when certain species of mosquitoes transmit serious diseases to humans, as we saw above.
