Why Wiping Out Mosquitoes Would Destroy the Planet

What If Mosquitos Went Extinct??? (And Why That Would Be Catastrophic) In 1955, the WHO sprayed Borneo with DDT to wipe out malaria-carrying mosquitoes — and accidentally triggered a chain reaction that ended with cats being parachuted out of airplanes. That's not the strangest part of this story. This video explores what would actually happen if mosquitoes disappeared: the freshwater food chains they quietly hold up, the Arctic caribou migrations they help steer, the orchids that depend on them entirely for pollination — and the one species of mosquito we might genuinely be able to remove safely, because scientists took the time to map exactly what depends on it first. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 — The cats over Borneo 0:45 — The "obvious" case for extinction 1:30 — The keystone resource hiding in ponds 2:15 — Arctic mosquitoes and caribou migration 3:00 — The orchid that needs mosquitoes to survive 3:45 — The species we're already engineering to disappear 4:45 — What Borneo actually taught us ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 RELATED VIDEOS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Why Human Babies Are Born Too Soon The Strange Reason Human Babies Look So Weird Every Animal Secretly Watches You Every Animal You've Met Has a File On You The Animal That Will Never Ever Stop Growing This Animal Has Been Growing for 400 Years and Won't Stop ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Subscribe To Never Miss An Upload!!! ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━    / @beyondhumanytsg   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 ABOUT THIS CHANNEL ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Beyond Human explores the science behind things you thought you already understood. New videos regularly. Keywords/Tags (30): mosquitoes, mosquito extinction, what if mosquitoes went extinct, ecology, ecosystem, food chain, keystone species, keystone resource, Borneo cats, DDT, malaria, dengue, Zika, genetically modified mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti, orchid pollination, caribou migration, Arctic ecosystem, invasive species control, unintended consequences, biology, science explainer, Beyond Human, nature documentary, animal facts, wildlife, environmental science, insect facts, science education, nature explained