Mosquitoes actually are not replaceable in any ecosystem that naturally has them and that includes replacing them with any of the non biting species because these are the traits that make them so core to food webs:
Tiny
Can use every single pool of moisture to raise generations no matter how dirty and stagnant and low in oxygen
Can fly
Males get by on just sugars
Females take protein from larger animals to manufacture thousands more eggs
All these things combined allow thst ecosystem to make huge volumes of insects from conditions barren to most other macroscopic life. You might think there are other insects that seem to make huge massive swarms out of nothing but there's really nothing that hits all the same qualities *except other insects that also suck blood.*
It's the precise combo of being able to "prey" on things millions of times larger and breed in nothing but a few drops of filthy rainwater or the moisture in a rotten log. That's the most efficient combination for anything that size to multiply that rapidly where nothing else can even survive, except of course the things that can move in because they eat them :)
A lot of people ask "could they just not be itchy though?" and I regret to inform that isn't actually their doing, there's no evolutionary advantage to making you itchy. That's your own body detecting the intrusion of another creature's saliva into your skin, where it doesn't belong, and reacting with histamines.
If you've ever been bit hard enough by a cat, dog or even human you may notice a similar effect!
I remember having a conversation with someone about my hummingbird banding volunteering and how the data went toward support for conservation efforts among other things.
They were all for that, and loved hummingbirds and supported it!
And made a quip about how the only thing they wanted to see extinct were mosquitoes and small biting insects/fruit flies.
40 to 60% of a hummingbird’s diet, and their main source of other nutrients, is small, soft bodied insects.
Including mosquitoes and fruit flies.
They had a massive struggle not wanting to accept that no fruit flies and mosquitoes = no hummingbirds.
I've also added this on other big threads about this topic but I should add it here:
Being INCREDIBLY OBNOXIOUS to larger animals, even when they aren't spreading any pathogens (and again, most mosquitoes don't!) actually is another vital purpose. Ecosystems need biting and stinging things to keep big, stompy, hungry beasts from getting too cozy.
Mammals are the most resource-hogging animals in almost any biome but parasites can inhibit their growth a little (a good thing), discourage them from spending as much time in the same area or ward them away from whole areas to begin with.
Mosquitoes in particular breed in filthy, stagnant bacteria-rich water. You know what leaves behind conditions like that? ANIMALS! Animals eating all the plants, wallowing in the mud and shitting everywhere! A herd of ungulates can turn a lush and healthy marsh into just a cesspit if nothing stops them.
But it's mosquitoes that find a cesspit an appealing nursery. And then you get a cloud of mosquitoes so dense that the ungulates move on! There used to be a great BBC documentary that actually showed "mosquito season" driving a mass migration of African megafauna but the shittified search engines right now are only showing me articles about mosquito control no matter how I try to find this again, gee thanks, maybe someone else can find it?
So while the "mosquitoes are bad" all the big animals leave for months. Months of the plants growing back, months of the water clearing up until it's drinkable again (and the mosquito larvae themselves are filter feeders!), months of the mosquitoes becoming food for tiny birds and lizards and arachnids and amphibians, and the beautiful wetland is back again strong enough to survive the repeat of that cycle the next year.
Everything you hate in nature - the ticks, the territorial wasps, the stinging plants - are pretty much nature's immune system.
Obviously this doesn't mean the big mammals are "bad" either. The cycles of destruction are themselves also something ecosystems come to rely on as a regulatory force :)
Honestly not being a killjoy, but do we have photos on what the protests were like in Republican territory? That seems more significant than the numbers in liberal zones like DC/NYC/Boston/Portland/Philly/etc.
This is a photo from the protest I attended at the KS Capitol building in Topeka as well as estimates from a local group as to the size of protests around the state.
The Kansas Capitol rally is amazing to see the size of, absolutely GIGANTIC compared to the Catholics and Christians who came out to protest the Satanic Temple doing a black mass at the capitol a few weeks back.
Removing reblogs talking about electric catfish (a completely different electric fish) to point out that the electric eel in Tupi is puraké, poraké, poroquê, poraquê, puraquê, or simply purá. Wikipedia claims that it means “the one that numbs” but I have not been able to verify that (yet… the source they cite doesn’t seem to have it, but the Tupi dictionary says puraké also means “deception” or “disguise”).
References
Navarro, E. (2007). Dicionário Tupi Antigo A Língua Indígena Clássica Do Brasil. Global Editora.
In Yanomami the electric eel is õrãmisiwë, shenini, or yahetipa. Sometimes the metaphor wakë rë yëre ha is used to refer to it (“the place where fire burns”).
References
Lizot, J. (2004). Diccionario enciclopédico de la lengua yãnomãmi. Vicariato Apostólico de Puerto Ayacucho.
... when he made his deal with the Lion? How much of it was intentional and how much of it was out of his control?
Well. If I'm being honest I don't really want to try and provide a definitive answer to that question, because I think the ambiguity is, itself, part of the story. I've gone back and forth a few times myself, and I don't think either category - "fully intentional" or "fully coincidence" - is entirely true.
That being said, I would like to point out a few things that I've seen taken for granted as true. Things that, imo, are much more about the character's perspective, or about what the character WANTS people to think (well, that's really just the Winged Lion).
Consider this not exactly an argument for "Laios masterminded everything from the start and saved the world with his cunning," but more... "Laios considered what he was doing more than people give him credit for." Make sense?
Alright then, let's go:
So to start with, I want to show every time (that I could find, at least) that the question of 'does Laios have a plan' gets brought up. This is specifically after his Ultimate Monster Form is revealed, to be clear - the question isn't about if he has a plan in general, it is if he has/had a plan when he made this specific deal with the Lion.
Here they are:
-
-
You'll notice, in all of these instances, there never really is an answer given to the question. Either because there is no way to get one, or, with Kabru at the end there, because he explicitly doesn't let Laios answer. There's even a bit of an arc here: we start with a sort of desperate 'I've mostly given up but maybe this isn't as bad as it looks,' then get a more optimistic 'maybe we really are saved,' and finally end on 'it all worked out in the end, so we maybe don't need to know.'
But, as much as there is some genuine growth in Kabru's 'accept the outcome, rather than dissecting the truth,' I also think it says a lot more about him than about Laios. Kabru is the one trying to handle his questions and his uncertainty - as he said, he wants to confirm his judgement of character. He wants to feel like he had control over things.
And he lets that go! But he also doesn't actually get the truth, either, and his implied assumption here (that Laios, the wide-eyed monster-lover, probably just followed his desires), still relies on his judgements and assumptions about Laios.
But okay, these bits are all focused on the characters theorizing about Laios. How about we look at the character who actually tells us the facts ("facts"): the Winged Lion.
The Winged Lion has quite a bit to say about Laios and his monster form.
He says that Laios hates humanity, and would rather be a monster
I've talked about this a bit already, but the Lion makes a lot of claims and assumptions about Laios that aren't necessarily true.
First of all, let's just make sure we clearly establish that the Lion is being manipulative here. That may seem obvious, but it's important to understand that there is a difference between 'the truth' and 'a version of the truth specifically framed to prey upon your deepest shame and insecurities about what you really want.'
To point out a few quick-and-dirty contradictions here:
If Laios really hated all other humans, then the Lion wouldn't hinge so many of his other arguments on Laios' love for Falin and his friends.
the Lion claims that Laios "[doesn't] even care enough about the future of [the] world to express an opinion about it," even though Laios has literally expressed opinions on what he wants for the world, to the Lion's face.
In general, the Lion does not make a distinction between urges and choices (see, for instance: him using Marcille's subconscious fear of the canaries as a way to keep her from stopping the monsters from attacking in chapter 86).
I'm not saying there is not a piece of truth here, but also... we are not our darkest thoughts, and we especially are not those thoughts as defined by someone who wants to hurt and control us.
But let’s move on to the stuff the Lion claims about Laios once he has been turned into his monster form.
2. He says that (or rather, acts like) Laios is under his control
The Lion really enjoys grandstanding about how Monster Laios is an ultimate tool he has control over. He gloats about making Laios fight the others, and has him smash through the magical barrier.
But smashing the barrier is kinda the only thing that Monster Laios actually does for the Lion. He doesn't attack anyone. He doesn't hurt his friends, despite Chilchuck thinking that Laios has "turned completely into a monster." And he certainly doesn't simply let the Lion go through with his plan to eat everyone.
This barrier smashing is actually an interesting and odd thing for Laios to have done specifically, so remember that one. I'll come back to it later.
But, yeah, to the original point... despite the Lion's dramatics, all that Monster Laios does is pose, smash up a magic barrier, and then eat him. Not exactly under his control.
AND SPEAKING OF EATING THE DEMON...
3. He frames Laios attacking and eating him as thoughtlessly violent
This one is pretty funny to me, and the Lion keeps it up for the whole scene. I'm not sure how much of this is his genuine understanding of the situation, and how much is him intentionally framing things in the most insulting manner, but like... truly. The ego involved in this. To see someone who has, multiple times, tried to stand against you - someone who has literally wished for your non-existence, to your face - to see this person attack you, specifically, and have your first reaction be 'huh, I guess he's a reckless weirdo to the core???'
Incredible stuff.
And this part, too:
He claims that Laios can't recognize anyone, that he's out of control. And yet, the Lion is the only person that gets eaten here. He is Laios' singular target.
Hell, Laios even specifically attacks one of the bodies that is actively hurting Chilchuck. I don't know if that was entirely intentional on Laios' part, but I do think it's notable.
The Lion torments Laios' friend, and when Laios does something that interrupts that action, the Lion reframes it as unhinged violence. I don't know, there's something here about the way that cruel people only talk about the things people do to resist them as violent, and ignore the violence that causes such resistance in the first place.
In any case, the main point is that the Lion insists on treating Laios like an unthinking animal during this fight, despite the fact that Laios is clearly trying to accomplish something here.
And what exactly is Laios trying to accomplish? Well, the Lion isn't entirely wrong. Laios is trying to eat something. He tells us as much.
And truly, everything Laios does as a monster points to this. He had a goal. And he accomplished it.
Let me back up a moment. I need to explain smashing the barrier.
So, Laios first starts considering how to kill the Lion when he is confronted with the fact that his only other choice would be to kill Marcille. Immediately and entirely discarding that solution, because of course he does, he tries to wrap his head around what defeating the Lion would even look like.
He clearly continues thinking about this, as a nearly identical conversation happens a few chapters later, when Laios is once again told that killing Marcille is the only way forward.
Only, this time, he's started to come up with an idea for how to do this impossible thing.
Harkening all the way back to the Living Armor chapter, Laios draws on the same lesson - if the Lion has made itself part of the world, if it has made itself into something alive, that means he can kill it. And eat it.
But there's an important extra detail to this. If he's going to try and kill (and eat) the Lion, he needs to strike when it’s vulnerable. He needs to strike when it's eating.
This is why he smashes through the barrier. Again, nothing else he does as a monster really benefits the Lion. He doesn't attack anyone else. The only command he obeys is to smash the barrier. Because the Lion has to think he has won for Laios to be able to eat him.
Beat him. For Laios to be able to beat him.
The question of why Monster Laios wanted to eat the Lion is, I think, the most ambiguous part. Was he curious? Hungry? Did he fight for his own life, for his friends, or for all of humanity? Did he know how to win because he had planned everything from the start, or because he was driven by an unquenchable instinct to do whatever it took to survive?
I don't know that it is possible to say for sure. But I do know that the Lion underestimates Laios, through it all. He underestimates Laios as a human, and he underestimates Laios as a monster.
And in the end, after he is bested, even then I don't think the Lion ever gets Laios. I don't think he understands how much Laios means his words about the Lion being burdened by hunger...
or what Laios cares about most...
or what meaning there is in life, for him.
So I don't buy what the Lion is selling about Laios, generally speaking. I don't buy that Laios didn't ever know what he was doing, and I don't buy that he was nothing more than a hungry beast.
Well. I mean. He was a hungry beast. But he was a more than that too. He was the Devourer of All Things Horrible. And he didn't just happen into that title by chance.
"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.
but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)
mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…
the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.
every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.
first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic
which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.
which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.
the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.
walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?
well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.
you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?
it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.
when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.
and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.
kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.
yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.
Video transcript, because some of the video captions are inaccurate. Transcript begins:
I have a simple question for you.
How many innocent Palestinian civilians - men, women, and children - does Israel have to slaughter? How many war crimes does Israel have to commit? How much death and destruction does Israel have to visit on the people of Gaza and Palestine, before you will call for and impose sanctions on Israel, and expel the Israeli ambassador from this country, and call for the immediate referral of Israel to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes?
Because in front of the world, by their own admission, Israel is committing war crimes. They have stated it publicly. This isn't a matter of opinion.
Uh, they declared their intention to force through the threat of military bombardment more than a million, and it is now well more than a million, Palestinians from their homes in northern Gaza and ethnically cleanse them. A crime against humanity.
They stated publicly, and have done it in front of the eyes of the world, their intention to deny to 2.2 million people water, electricity, medicine, life saving equipment, in front of the eyes of the world, and they're doing it.
And every minute children are being slaughtered by their artillery, the relentless bombardment of residential complexes, of hospitals, of schools, of civilian infrastructure.
They just go on and on and on, and you do nothing. Nothing. Words of concern, but no action to hold them to account. And it is clearly pre-meditated war crimes and genocide. Genocide. We have Jewish people in the United States and Canada, around the world, and Israel, calling a genocide. Scholars, academics, saying this is genocidal.
Let me quote you a few things. Israeli general, quote: "Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity or water, there will only be destruction."
Uh- Yoav Gallant, a minister, says "we are fighting human animals", we will, quote, "act accordingly". We will remove, quote, "every restriction on the IDF."
Smotrich, another minister, "there is no such thing as the Palestinians."
The president of Israel refers to the people of Gaza and says they are all responsible. Before October the 7th Netanyahu appeared before the UN general assembly with a map of Israel that had removed all references to Palestine: a clear declaration of intent to destroy the Palestinian people and steal all of their land. 6000 Palestinians killed between 2008 before October the 7th. Thousands of Palestinians hostage in administrative detention without trial. When are you going to move beyond words of concern and impose sanctions and expel the Israeli ambassador of this apartheid murderous state.
Disability will have you thinking shit like “I’m not even that disabled. I can manage as long as I limit myself to very specific careers, never go shopping for more than an hour or two at a time, keep my plans open so I can cancel and stay in if need be, and only go out a few nights per week at the most”
A while ago i created a creature called a Horsentaur, which is a centaur exceot the human part is the front half of another horse. My friend suggested this as a continuance. I call it the Horsentaur Infinite.
Everyone at Elsewhere University has seen a flock of crows at least once. Fewer have seen the Jaycrows. They are Elsewhere’s biggest gossips, whispering rumors and secrets into the ear of anyone unfortunate enough to catch their eye. Someone plagued by a Jaycrow will find their life in shambles as they collapse under a deluge of unwanted knowledge. Often the only glimpse a Jaycrow’s victim will have of their tormentor is an indistinct shape in the trees, watching them and cackling. Those are the fortunate ones.
Do not seek out a Jaycrow.
If it finds you, do not heed its promises of secret knowledge.
Do not follow as they beckon you deeper into the woods.
At the very least, do not give them the pleasure of hearing you scream.
