Mosquito: World’s Deadliest Creature

Blood-engorged Mosquito

“Mosquito” is Spanish (mosca + ito) for “little fly.” Mosquitoes have six legs and, like flies, they have two wings. But unlike flies, mosquito wings have scales — quite complex wing structures for such small insects. How did that happen? Did Someone design the intricate wings?

What about the mosquito’s six legs? How do the six legs coordinate so that they don’t interfere with each other, or interfere with the wings? Did Someone design the nervous system to synchronize all of those parts and functions?

Thousands of mosquito species (but not all species) feed on the blood of humans, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and even fish.

What about dinosaurs? Did mosquitoes ever bite dinosaurs?

Yes, mosquitoes surely did once bite dinosaurs, as was the premise of the 1993 fictional film Jurassic Park. But it was only thousands of years ago that mosquitoes bit dinosaurs, not 65 million years ago as the movie maintains.

Imagine hordes of lumbering dinosaurs chased across the landscape by black clouds of mosquitoes craving dinosaur blood! It could have happened!

Recently some of the “science fiction” of the Jurassic Park movie has been realized. Scientists have found mosquito fossils with fresh blood in their abdomens. They claim the mosquito fossils are 46 million years old.

But biological tissue degrades rapidly in the presence of moisture and heat. Meat rots, milk sours, food spoils. These and other biological tissues don’t last very long, even with man’s best preservation methods.

The biological molecules in blood, such as hemoglobin, collagen, and DNA, cannot last for more than a few tens of thousands of years at most. It’s ludicrous to think blood could last a thousand times that long, which is the magnitude of the 46-million-years claim. It’s preposterous to think blood could last 46 million years!

Thus these little blood-engorged mosquito fossils contradict the evolutionary time spans, but they are consistent with the Biblical chronology.
(For the mosquito fossil report see Greenwalt, D. et al. “Hemoglobin-derived porphyrins preserved in a Middle Eocene blood-engorged mosquito.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. October 14, 2013.)

Mosquito warning poster in Agra, India

In addition to mosquito saliva being an itchy skin irritant, mosquitoes also transmit serious diseases like malaria, West Nile virus, yellow fever, dengue fever, encephalitis, hepatitis, and filariasis (the main cause of elephantiasis). They also transmit canine heartworm through biting dogs.

Because of this, mosquitoes are considered the deadliest creature in the world. Annually three million people die from mosquito-transmitted malaria. This is one of the conjectured causes of the death of Alexander the Great in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace in Babylon in 323 B.C.

During World War II, malaria killed over 60,000 U.S. troops in the South Pacific and Africa. In May 1943 General Douglas MacArthur said, “This will be a long war if for every division I have facing the enemy, I must count on a second division in hospital with malaria, and a third division convalescing from this debilitating disease!”

Questions to Ponder

1. In your experience, what works best to repel mosquitoes?
2. Why do you think God created mosquitoes? (My thoughts on this are coming soon in the 4th installment, Were Mosquitoes in the Garden of Eden?)

Share your thoughts on these questions in the comments below. It could encourage or help another reader.

Soli Deo Gloria.

This is the second article in a series on Mosquitoes.
Read the prequel:
Mosquito Blitzkrieg

Read the sequels:
Mosquito Mechanics
Were Mosquitoes in the Garden of Eden?

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©William T. Pelletier, Ph.D.
“contending earnestly for the faith”
“destroying speculations against the knowledge of God”
(Jude 1:3; 2 Cor 10:4)
Wednesday August 19, 2015 A.D.

But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you;
And the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you.
Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you;
And let the fish of the sea declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
In whose hand is the life of every living thing,
And the breath of all mankind? (Job 12:7-10)