Mosquitos!!! Disease Carrier!!! The Facts to protect you and your dog

The mosquito is often a carrier of diseases, such as malaria, encephalitis, yellow fever, dengue fever, dog heartworm, West Nile virus, and many others. The females, who drink blood, can carry disease from one animal to another as they feed.
The mosquito is a common flying insect that is found around the world. There are about 2,700 species of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes can fly about 1 to 1.5 miles per hour (1.6-2.4 kph).
Mosquito Bites: Females drink blood and the nectar of plants; the males only sip plant nectar. When a female bites, she also injects an anticoagulant (anti-clotting chemical) into the prey to keep the victim's blood flowing. She finds her victims by sight and smell, and also by detecting their warmth. Not all mosquito species bite humans.
Anatomy: Like all insects, the mosquito has a body divided into three parts (head, thorax, and abdomen), a hard exoskeleton, and six long, jointed legs. Mosquitoes also have a pair of veined wings. They have a straw-like proboscis and can only eat liquids.

Life Cycle: The complete life-cycle of a mosquito takes about a month. After drinking blood, adult females lay a raft of 40 to 400 tiny white eggs in standing water or very slow-moving water. Within a week, the eggs hatch into larvae (sometimes called wrigglers) that breathe air through tubes which they poke above the surface of the water. Larvae eat bits of floating organic matter and each other. Larvae molt four times as they grow; after the fourth molt, they are called pupae (also called tumblers). Pupae also live near the surface of the water, breathing through two horn-like tubes (called siphons) on their back. Pupae do not eat. An adult emerges from a pupa when the skin splits after a few days. The adult lives for only a few weeks.

Classification: Kingdom Animalia; Phylum Arthropoda; Class Insecta; Order Diptera ("two wings"); Family Culicidae.
article from:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/insects/

The mosquito menace

Deforestation and industrialized farming are also two of the factors causing an alarming increase in the range of mosquitoes.

The World Health Organization says global warming is also expanding the range of mosquitoes that carry malaria, yellow fever, and dengue fever, putting millions more humans at risk. Malaria mosquitoes are appearing in upland areas where they've never been seen before.

A child dies of malaria every 12 seconds, mostly in the Third World.

"In the history of the world, more people have died from diseases transmitted by mosquitoes than from all the fighting in all the wars," says appropriate technology company Jade Mountain.

"The world's most dangerous animal is the mosquito," according to a BBC World Service health program: malaria now infects approximately 110 million people annually, causing 2-3 million deaths, and with increasing drug resistance, the problem is worsening, while attempts to control the mosquitoes with pesticides have proved ineffective.

Malaria Poses Bigger Threat Than Previously Believed -- For more than 50 years, the mantra of "one million annual deaths due to malaria" has been cited by scientists and journalists. This estimate had gone unexamined in regard to its accuracy and economic implications. A new report, ""The Intolerable Burden of Malaria: A New Look at the Numbers", has found that at a minimum, between 700,000 and 2.7 million people die each year from malaria, more than 75 percent of them African children. Environment News Service, AmeriScan, August 2, 2001.
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/aug2001/2001L-08-02-09.ht


The pesticides issue hit the headlines when an attempt to ban the use of the noxious and persistent insecticide DDT hit opposition from Third World countries which cannot afford the much more expensive alternatives.
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep99/1999L-09-07g.html


More about mosquitoes:
http://www.ag.usask.ca/cofa/departments/

hort/hortinfo/pests/mosquito.html

Mosquito Information -- informative article by Tom Floore, American Mosquito Control Association, with illustrations: Mosquito Life Cycle, Mosquito Control, Mosquito-borne Diseases and more.
http://www.mosquito.org/mosquito.html

Alternatives

So, everywhere, the search is intensifying for safe, cheap, effective, locally available alternatives to pesticides and to the malaria drug treatments that no longer work. In other words, plants.


Chinese scientists extracted an anti-malarial drug from the Artemisia annua fern, traditionally used against malaria for hundreds years. It is being used in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa and is proving effective against drug-resistant forms of malaria.

In India, a homemade mosquito repellent is proving particularly effective against the Anopheles mosquito which spreads malaria. It's made from low-cost neem oil from the amazing neem tree (Azadirachta indica, the "Village Pharmacy") mixed with coconut oil in concentrations of 1-2%.
http://www.theoriginalneemcompany.com/Misc/insectr

Neem is also proving effective against malaria itself, not just the mosquito that carries the parasite.
http://www.theoriginalneemcompany.com/usespages/pa

One active component of the plant, gedunin, is said to be as effective as quinine on malaria-infected cell cultures.
http://www.theneemtree.com/medicinals4.htm

The Neem Tree - A Tree for Solving Global Problems
http://www.theneemtree.com/


Also in India, researchers have found that peppermint oil could be a new, cheap weapon in the fight against mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, filariasis, dengue fever and West Nile virus. The oil not only repels adult mosquitoes but also kills the larvae. It was particularly effective against the Anopheles culicifacies mosquito, which is responsible for around three-quarters of malaria transmissions in the northern plains of India. -- BBC News, November 17, 1999
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_524


Another promising candidate is catnip.

Catnip Repels Mosquitoes More Effectively Than DEET -- Researchers report that nepetalactone, the essential oil in catnip that gives the plant its characteristic odor, is about ten times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than DEET -- the compound used in most commercial insect repellents... A patent application for the use of catnip compounds as insect repellents was submitted last year by the Iowa State University Research Foundation. Funding for the research was from the Iowa Agriculture Experiment Station. -- American Chemical Society, 28 Aug 2001
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/01082


But: "I can't escape the idea that something is fundamentally wrong with these scientists. I learned about the mosquito repellant properties of catnip (Nepeta cataria) from my grandmother when I was a mere babe. Now these scientists have patented this century-old common folk knowledge." -- John, Organic Gardening Discussion List, 29 Aug 2001

What old folklore does YOUR grandmother know that might turn out to be more scientific than the scientists?

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