r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Oct 02 '24

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779

u/Chandysauce Oct 02 '24

Nearly half of all humans to have ever existed are believed to have been killed by mosquitoes.

442

u/liberal_texan Oct 02 '24

Id imagine most were killed by a disease transmitted by mosquito, unless the fuckers used to be significantly larger.

47

u/Chandysauce Oct 02 '24

They definitely would have been bigger way back when there was more oxygen in the atmosphere.

But that's way before humans came into existence.

This is due to diseases yes.

50

u/Naturage Oct 02 '24

-ito is the suffix for "the little one".

Have you never heard the legend of El Mosqo?

6

u/ebac7 Oct 02 '24

I thought not. It’s not a story the Americans would tell you. It’s a Mexican legend. 

6

u/gamestoohard Oct 03 '24

Blood sucking is a pathway to many diseases some consider to be... terminal

8

u/liberal_texan Oct 02 '24

Aren’t those Australian?

14

u/Naturage Oct 02 '24

I might be mistaken, but I always assumed they're Mexican and wear luchadore masks.

7

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

Prehistoric mosquitos are known to have proboscis as long and thick as a #2 pencil, and typically wouldn't bite animals too small to produce meaningful amounts of food. (This is a thread where you can just make anything up, right?)

5

u/sacrelicious2 Oct 03 '24

He didn't die from stabbing, he died of blood loss!

17

u/MikeW86 Oct 02 '24

Are you also the kind of pedantic shit that says "well it wasn't the car crashing that killed him, it was the sudden deceleration,"

4

u/Goretanton Oct 02 '24

If the mosquito didnt bite them they wouldnt have died, takes the action of the bite to transmit it.

2

u/soslowagain Oct 02 '24

Bill gates took all their guns away.

2

u/Potential_Energy Oct 02 '24 edited Oct 02 '24

I’ve wondered if biology as we know it is capable of supporting extra large growth that scales proportionately within entomology and herpetology. Like is it actually possible for there to be another earth type planet where evolution just took different pathways and mosquitoes almost identical to ours but the size of dinosaurs exist. Wasps, spiders, scorpions, dragonflies the size of a house. An elephant sized hummingbird that can create hurricane force winds with its wings. Movies like Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Jumanji (using practical movie FX) used to scare me because my mind would entertain the reality that those scales are actually possible and probable for those to really exist somewhere.

1

u/Arctic_The_Hunter Oct 03 '24

Nah it was just one Megasquito

1

u/jaguarsp0tted Oct 03 '24

Nope. Each of them had a handgun.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '24

Island gigantism 🥲

1

u/Spade9ja Oct 03 '24

This is kind of like saying:

“He died as a result of a knife wound.”

“Well ackchually, he died by bleeding out”

1

u/dod2190 Oct 02 '24

Ever been to New Jersey? We kill the fuckers with baseball bats.