Save the Skeeters!

***EXCLUSIVE*** UNSPECIFIED - UNDATED: Tsetse fly (Glossina fuscipes fuscipes). This one is using its proboscis to feed on the blood of its host. This blood-sucking parasitic fly is found in tropical Africa. It transmits Trypanosoma protozoa, which cause sleeping sickness in humans. MEET the real-life vampires that will make your skin crawl. Far from the loyal and good-looking Twilight star R-Patz, nature’s ugly monsters will love your blood - then leave you. From a slimy leech on your thumb to the hideous jaws of a Pacific lamprey fish these blood-soaked critters live by sucking their hosts dry. Pictures even show how a blood-filled tick’s body swells up to bloated proportions and one stomach-churning image even shows the eggs of a one-millimetre-long Chigoe flea being squeezed from the skin on one unlucky victim’s foot. This horror-movie like way of surviving from the blood of other creatures is known by science boffins as hematophagy. This way of feeding may sound disgusting, but the greedy animals are actually being clever – blood is packed with nutrients, easy to digest and allows small creatures to feed from much larger prey. The closest real-life example of Hollywood’s Dracula is the vampire bat, which lives only from the blood of other mammals and hunts at night by detecting heat with its pig-like nose. PHOTOGRAPH BY SPL / Barcroft Media /Pascal Goetgheluck UK Office, London. T +44 845 370 2233 W www.barcroftmedia.com USA Office, New York City. T +1 212 796 2458 W www.barcroftusa.com Indian Office, Delhi. T +91 11 4053 2429 W www.barcroftindia.com

As this linked article proclaims, in the wake of the Zika virus, which has been linked to serious birth defects like microcephaly (babies being born with abnormally small heads, thus abnormally small brains) and follows the already existent scourges of malaria, Dengue and West Nile virus, some people are calling for the eradication of all mosquitoes. This must not be done! Not because mosquitoes serve any positive purpose. They don’t—except for one. They feed bats. Mosquitoes are the staple crop of bats the world over, excepting our dear little furry friend the vampire bat and the oversized “flying foxes,” aka fruit bats. Most bats eat skeeters, though, in geographic areas where skeeters are indigenous. Some scientists insist that other insects would replace the mosquito as the bat’s buffet of choice. Others warn that, as nature abhors a vacuum, the insect that replaces the skeeter might be even more of a problem for us humans.

More troubling is what we can term the “House of Cards” theory. That nature is like an elaborate tabletop card construction. You might take away a card and nothing happens. Even take away several cards and see no visible result. But if you take the right card—or the wrong card, more accurately—it all comes falling down. Since human beings are cards at the top of that structure, we’d have the farthest to fall. Geronimo!

By TheCheezman

WAYNE MILLER is the owner and creative director of EVIL CHEEZ PRODUCTIONS, specializing in theatrical performances and haunted attractions. He has written, produced, and directed (and occasionally acted in) over two dozen plays, most of them in the Horror and True Crime genres. He obtained a doctorate in Occult Studies from Miskatonic University and is an active paranormal investigator. Is frequently told he resembles Anton Lavey. And Ming the Merciless. Denn die totden reiten schnell!

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