Evolution sucks
In the 1860s, trenches were dug that would be roofed over to become the first line of the London Underground, the oldest subway in the world. Into those first trenches snuck specimens of Culex pipiens — mosquitos to you and me.
This seemed like a bit of hard luck at first. To the mosquitos, I mean. C. pipiens lives on birds. Not that many pigeons sneak into the Underground. But the subway hosts many puddles, large and small, and the air is a constant temperature year-round. So, unlike their friends and relations above ground, subway mosquitos could be active (and breed) 24/7/365. All they had to do was learn to live off something else.
Like, you know, the millions of human beings who pass through the Underground every day. They took to this idea with so much enthusiasm, the subway variety was give the name Culex molestus. They bit the living shit out of people sheltering from the Blitz.
Turns out, all that breeding and biting, they really have evolved into a separate species. At least three separate species, in fact. The mosquitos collected at the Victoria, Bakerloo and Central stops are each genetically distinct (and, very likely, each station — and the sewer system — hosts a unique variant). The below-ground varieties are more closely related to each other than the mosquitos above and probably all derive from a single colony, with no movement of bugs from below and above. DNA tells us this.
It’s very difficult to get C. pipiens and C. molestus to breed — please not to be telling me how one forces unwilling mosquitos to screw — and any resulting offspring are sterile: which means they really and truly have parted ways genetically.
And here I thought the creepiest thing about the Underground was the way the tracks jog sideways occasionally to avoid a plague pit.
Posted: August 27th, 2007 under animals, britain, personal.
Comments: 44
Comments
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: August 27, 2007, 12:18 pm
I do hope there’s a c.darwiniensis that lives in South Kensington station. It’s only a short buzz from there to the Natural History Museum.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 27, 2007, 12:35 pm
Can I offer you something in a Montypythonoides riversleighensis? Extinct python fossil found in the Australian town of Riversleigh.
Comment from Dawn
Time: August 27, 2007, 1:46 pm
My husband believes that mosquitos serve no useful purpose whatsoever and that they should be eradicated by whatever means possible. He’s one of the unlucky ones who skeeters just love the taste of. We can be standing in the same place and he will walk away with dozens of bites and I will have none.
Since these underground skeeters can not survive the cold – wouldn’t it be prudent to pump in some cold outside air during the winter into the train tunnels? At least until they turn into skeeters that can survive cold – then just blast them with some good old DDT.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 27, 2007, 2:46 pm
I, too, am a feast unto mosquitos.
You’d think a subway would be an easily controlled environment, but the size and scale of the Underground is mind-blowing. It’s *gigantic*. There are acres and acres of completely disused tunnels and stations alone; the active Tube is beyond huge.
I tried to Google up some pictures for you, but I’m at work and I keep getting the Big Red Hand. There are some beautiful photographs of disused stations and tunnels.
If you ever want to waste a happy afternoon, do a Google image search of “urban exploration.” There are a number of people (mostly young men) whose hobby is sneaking into places they shouldn’t be (mostly abandoned urban structures) to explore and take pictures. The cities underneath our cities are amazing.
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: August 27, 2007, 3:45 pm
DDT, eh? Now that would be something!
Perfectly safe, of course, but the shade of St. Rachel de Carson would be mightily displeased, so we couldn’t have that!
Better to let millions die from malaria.
Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: August 27, 2007, 5:12 pm
The cities underneath our cities are amazing.
I don’t think I would care to poke around in such areas. My flashlight would invariably fail and being in a dark place I’d likely be eaten by a grue.
Comment from TattooedIntellectual
Time: August 27, 2007, 5:38 pm
Biting bugs such as mosquitoes use the smell of CO2 that is emitted by your pores to find you. There is a tale floating about that suggests that if you take garlic and brewers yeast supplements (garlic for mosquitoes, brewers yeast for ticks) those bugs will not find you so attractive. I’m assuming it would work by masking the natural scent of the CO2 w/ garlic. Yum!
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 27, 2007, 6:12 pm
Before the mosquito season, I was trying to choke down a couple of tablespoons of brewer’s yeast a day (I was told it was for skeeters, too). It was nasty. I finally decided DEET was less painful.
Hell, eating DEET would be less painful.
Comment from iamfelix
Time: August 27, 2007, 6:30 pm
You have just Baader-Meinhofed me, with your linky mentioning the Komodo dragon, as I just watched the movie “The Freshman” last night for the first time in years.
Now I’ll probably fall over a reference to Sharon Stone’s former spouse …. 🙂
I’d love to see the underground pix, but I’m internet-nannied, too. I adore your promiscuous interests, Stoaty.
Comment from TattooedIntellectual
Time: August 27, 2007, 6:50 pm
Sweasel hon, they make a powder version in time-release capsules 🙂
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: August 27, 2007, 8:26 pm
Dunno about that yeast stuff… damn sure it had funny mental effects on me when I tried it.
Then again, I am a badger, so your mileage may vary.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 27, 2007, 8:37 pm
You trippin’ on yeast?
Comment from porknbean
Time: August 28, 2007, 11:28 am
Letting millions die from malaria is the point. Greenies want to cull the herd.
And speaking of culling…if those that get chewed by mosquitos, do so because they emit more CO2, shouldn’t we report them to Algore for their high-pollutin ways?
Couldn’t they rub garlic all over exposed parts instead of ingesting it?
Comment from lizardbrain
Time: August 28, 2007, 12:26 pm
(snif) My verbing of Baader-Meinhof is learning to walk… (snuffle)… they grow up so fast.
‘Scuse me, I think I have something in my eye…
Comment from Dawn
Time: August 28, 2007, 12:31 pm
Sometimes when you reread weasel’s posts you catch something you didn’t see the first time. Plague pits = gross.
Comment from stevo
Time: August 28, 2007, 4:39 pm
Perhaps plague pits and mosquitoes in close proximity are a bad thing. It sounds like the plot for a typical Hollywood action film.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 28, 2007, 5:07 pm
Can’t help it. There are plague pits all over London. It’s extremely unlikely any disease organisms are alive after hundreds of years, but still…it’s not like we have a whole lot of hard data about antique yersinia pestis. If that was even the bug responsible.
I wouldn’t lick a plague pit.
Comment from BGG
Time: August 28, 2007, 5:38 pm
There has been some speculation that the Black Death was actually due to both Y. pestis and B. anthracis, and the latter could potentially survive for a very long time in its spore form. Could it survive hundreds of years in a plague pit…I don’t know but I wouldn’t inhale too deeply in a plague pit, much less lick one!
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 28, 2007, 5:42 pm
The big plague years were way back in the 1300’s (granted a few other outbreaks in later centuries). But I wouldn’t give even money as to the absence of y pestis. Those pesky bugs have a bad habit of going dormant for long periods of time.
Didn’t they recently find (live)1918 flu virii in eskimos buried during the Great Influenza?
I have to grant I wouldn’t lick a plague pit either. Wouldn’t dig around in one either.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 28, 2007, 5:45 pm
BBG,
Yep. I’d read recently that some of the plague pits (somewhere) test positive for anthrax. And it can hang around forever, just about, or so it seems.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 28, 2007, 5:46 pm
Make that “BGG”.
Comment from BGG
Time: August 28, 2007, 7:58 pm
I answer to almost anything. They did not find “live” 1918 flu “virii” in the exhumed bodies, they did find enough intact viral RNA to analyze the genome and rebuild it from scratch. So yeah, we can reverse engineer and build extinct viruses these days, put that in yer bioterror pipe and smoke it.
Comment from Muslihoon
Time: August 29, 2007, 12:53 am
Is not “viridae” the proper Latin pluralization of “virus“?
“Virii” means “men” in Latin (the plural of “vir“), so it can’t be that.
Comment from Muslihoon
Time: August 29, 2007, 12:55 am
What happened to good old guns, fire, and bare knuckles?
Honestly…today’s whippersnappers are too lazy.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 29, 2007, 6:40 am
Yep. After I posted I thought maybe they weren’t “alive” but rebuildable.
Haven’t got a clue about virii. Thought I’d seen it thus, but who knows.
Comment from TattooedIntellectual
Time: August 29, 2007, 6:48 am
The pluralization of virus is viruses. At least the last time I took a microbiology class anyway 🙂
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 29, 2007, 7:34 am
Well then, I can’t help wondering if the plural of doofus has ever been officially finalized?
And what is the plural of anal retentive, we wonders yes we wonders?
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 29, 2007, 7:36 am
The plural of Kotex is Kotices; I know that.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 29, 2007, 8:11 am
…but in other news, China has banned Buddist reincarnation with permission:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/
Damn. There go my holiday plans.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 29, 2007, 9:24 am
Huh. It’s all about controlling the Dalai Lama, apparently. Weird. This is weird, too:
According to a 2005 Gallup poll, 20 percent of all U.S. adults believe in reincarnation. Recent surveys by the Barna Group, a Christian research nonprofit, have found that a quarter of U.S. Christians, including 10 percent of all born-again Christians, embrace it as their favored end-of-life view.
Their favored view? Meaning, they believe in it or they think it sounds nice?
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 29, 2007, 9:54 am
Um…how ’bout “without” permission. Geez.
Comment from BGG
Time: August 29, 2007, 12:53 pm
If I could just be anal retentive enough to go back to “virii,” and I believe I could: at the time it was first used I believed McGoo to be displaying silliness and using the term “virii” in full knowledge that the plural of virus (as a category) is viruses, and the plural of viral particles, as in the aforementioned permafrost-preserved samples, is virions. Thank you. Please throw money.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 29, 2007, 3:57 pm
Nope, BGG. I had one of my regular (and increasingly significant) brainfarts and flat-out mis-called that word. I have no earthly clue where virii came from and wish it would go back quietly and expire or evaporate or sumpin.
But that is not to say that my comments are not best viewed as bon mots rather than informative or serious.
I don’t do serious…much. I’m retired.
If I came off as snippy, I apologize to one and all.
Comment from BGG
Time: August 29, 2007, 4:23 pm
Snippy? Naw! (But then I’m socially retarded and I always think everybody’s joking about everything! Makes life fairly pleasant, at least…)
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 29, 2007, 4:32 pm
For some reason, I just remembered the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks. It wears thin pretty quick, but it’s good for a few.
Comment from BGG
Time: August 29, 2007, 4:35 pm
I don’t “know” what in these comments could bring “that” to mind. But I “like it.”
Comment from lizardbrain
Time: August 29, 2007, 8:48 pm
Steamboat —
The plural of “anal retentive” is “geeks.”
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 29, 2007, 9:34 pm
lb,
I figured it’d be “buncha assholes”, but you’re probably right.
Should the collective term for anal retentives be a “detail” of A-R’s? A minutia?
Comment from Muslihoon
Time: August 29, 2007, 10:33 pm
A minutia or minutiæ of anal retentives?
I can be the most pedantic and anal retentive person I know.
Of which We are quite proud indeed.
Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 30, 2007, 1:23 am
Um…whichever one pleases you, M.
Comment from EW1(SG)
Time: August 31, 2007, 3:54 am
S. weasels thus:
Before the mosquito season, I was trying to choke down a couple of tablespoons of brewer’s yeast a day (I was told it was for skeeters, too). It was nasty. I finally decided DEET was less painful.
Hell, eating DEET would be less painful.
Gack. I didn’t know one could even find brewer’s yeast anymore.
Try thiamine. Apparently it makes one stink in such a way that the CO2; is masked but isn’t terribly gross to humans.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 31, 2007, 5:22 am
Oh, sure. You’d be amazed what’s in the herbal section of Whole Foods.
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Time: November 18, 2014, 4:51 pm
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Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 18, 2014, 4:54 pm
Porn? Really? I got a spammer named “porn”?
That’s so awesome I had to leave it. With the link removed, of course. Might’ve been porn, might not. Didn’t click.
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