Science in Progress: Bloodsuckers and Butt Snorkels

Would the world be better if disease-carrying mosquitos were eradicated? We pose the question to Dr. Shannon Bennett, the Curator of Microbiology at the California Academy of Sciences, and join her for an adventure capturing, farming, and studying these hated bloodsuckers.

Comments (9)

9 thoughts on “Science in Progress: Bloodsuckers and Butt Snorkels

  1. Just started watching… Mosquitoes major danger is NOT viruses. They carry a pathogenic microbe called Plasmodium that is a eukaryote (our tree of life, not bacteria) that causes Malaria. West Nile, Dengue, and things like that are certainly lethal, but not the major causes of Mosquito-transmitted deaths.

    Just wanted to clarify. The researcher they speak with is a virologist, which is super important, but Malaria causes more than 10x more deaths than Dengue, which is 100x higher than West Nile.

  2. Can’t seem to edit my comment to fix typos, but wanted to clarify that Plasmodium is on our “branch” of the tree of life, meaning it’s more closely related to humans than to bacteria. Interestingly, they used to be photosynthetic algae, but somewhere along the way became pathogenic and lost the ability to do photosynthesis (or vice verse). Weird little buggers.

  3. Interesting stuff! I really enjoy this series and it’s a nice rounding out to other content on Tested. It’s indicative of why I like the site so much in that it’s not just hyper-focused on one thing but instead covers a lot of different topics.

  4. This is a delightful exposition of the procedures and questions involved in doing science, from the day-to-day reality to the application of what we learn to policy. I am happy to support tested, and love that tested is telling these stories – but I wish that these stories were also available to the world at large, regardless of support. Any chance these kinds of videos will get moved from “premium” to generically available?

  5. Wonderful series, keep saying it. Great to have all that time for an interview, which many times is not the case.. science requires a bit of explaining. 🙂

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