I have said it countless times and I will say it again. Mother nature doesn't make too many mistakes but when it comes to mosquitoes, she definitely made a huge blunder. They are a huge nuisance and I'm sure, our human species collectively hates them.

Not only are they irritating because they suck our blood, leave itchy bumps, make annoying noise in our ears but they also are carriers of diseases like malaria, dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, zika fever and much more.

These diseases collectively kill hundreds of thousands of people every year and in developing countries, the risk is even more. That's why scientists have been trying to figure out the best ways to deal with this menace.

One such promising method was to genetically alter a large number of mosquitoes such that their offsprings would die immediately on birth, and to release these mosquitoes into the wild so that the mosquito population decreases in the area.

Plan Backfired

The plan sounds like a really good one but ultimately it failed. Initially, the genetically altered mosquitoes spread throughout the sample area and caused the population to plummet making everyone think that the experiment was successful.

But 18 months later, the population of mosquitoes in the area shot back up to previous levels. It seems like the pesky creatures found a way to survive. Not only that, they have gone a step further and have evolved to become more resilient to such genetic alterations.

This is scary for two reasons. One the plan didn't work which shows that we are not prepared to deal with this problem. Second, it created a new stronger genetic hybrid mosquitoes and scientists have no idea how they could further evolve.

Although this doesn't mean that we have created a super bug that will kill everyone on the planet causing an apocalyptoc scenario, but it goes to show what can happen when we decide to play god. Let's hope scientists can come up with better ways to deal with this species.