Published April 9, 2006 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
By Aaron J. Brown
This place will thaw out soon. When it does, we’re all going to be caked in mosquitoes. Hungry spring-time mosquitoes are the worst. They’re like poorly trained nurses trying to find the vein. July mosquitoes are professionals. They’ll draw your blood in a few seconds, conversing freely about the weather, sports or the scarcity of other mammals that day. “Have a nice day,” one might say as she squats 100,000 eggs into a bird feeder. Heck, you’d probably GIVE her the blood if she asked.
Spring mosquitoes, on the other hand, buzz around your ears for 15 minutes, then hop across various parts of your body looking for a good spot to tap. Sure, they figure it out eventually, but it’s just annoying.
Indeed, the hatching of the first batch of mosquitoes is a benchmark of the season; much like spring training. Only instead of pitchers and catchers reporting, it’s larvae and pupae.
Larvae and pupae! Wocka wocka! Speaking of larvae, did you know the government is researching the use of insects as military operatives? This one is true. According to a story published on the BBC website in March, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been working on insect weapons. One experiment involves inserting a computer chip into a developing insect larva that could be used to control the bug when it completes its development. The resulting “smart bug” could be used for surveillance or to detect explosives.
This same BBC story by Gary Kitchener also includes a sidebar about past U.S. military attempts to use animals as weapons. In World War II, according to the story, the army attempted to use cats to bomb ships. The idea was to drop a cat strapped to a bomb from a dive bomber airplane. In theory, the water-hating cat would fight its way onto the ship, just in time to detonate. In tests, the cats lost consciousness during the fall. Comparable efforts involving bats led to a similar conclusion. Cats and bats apparently share a lack of tolerance for higher g-force (which explains why we don’t let cats fly planes).
Those seem pretty silly, but during the Vietnam War the military successfully used trained dolphins to strip enemies of their diving equipment and drag them to U.S. interrogators. Modern trained military dolphins escaped from their pen during Hurricane Katrina. This lead to the greatest headline I have ever seen: “Dolphin Assassins Menace Gulf of Mexico; Rogue Cetacean Death Squad May Be Armed” (published last September in Great Britain’s “The Register”).
To recap: dolphin assassins work, but cat suicide bombers don’t. Why? It seems to me to be an issue of motivation. Motivation was the exact problem DARPA encountered with its insect minions. The bugs just couldn’t overcome their biological desire to eat and procreate. Bug brains are naturally programmed so specifically that any attempt to introduce new functions is likely to fail. That’s why, according to some, bugs are destined to inherit the earth. They can withstand greater radiation, for one, and they don’t get caught up in clandestine decapitation strikes. They keep it simple.
The military will continue its tests. I have yet to hear about their misplaced dolphin attack unit, but then again that’s the sort of thing that would be kept on the down low. What good is having a cetacean death squad if everybody knows about it?
In a way, this makes me respect those spring mosquitoes. It’s nice to know that – unlike people – we can count on them NOT working as secret government agents.
Or can we?
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.