'Skeeters
My daughter asks questions -- a lot of questions -- and I do my utmost, fatherly best to provide an answer.
One day we were on the topic of why certain animals exist on this earth. ("Daddy, why are there sharks? Sharks hurt people.") I did my best to muster the ol' "Circle of Life" answer, explaining that every creature served its purpose.
Then she asked me about mosquitoes and their purpose. Beyond being pesky and annoying, I was stumped.
One day we were on the topic of why certain animals exist on this earth. ("Daddy, why are there sharks? Sharks hurt people.") I did my best to muster the ol' "Circle of Life" answer, explaining that every creature served its purpose.
Then she asked me about mosquitoes and their purpose. Beyond being pesky and annoying, I was stumped.
posted by Worth at 10:22 AM
4 Comments:
Darn, I wish I was there for you. I asked the same two questions to my uncle when I was a kid. He gave me the standard shark answer but the mosquito answer was vastly different. He told me the mosiquito's were put here on Earth to draw our blood, which would lure the sharks to kill us, hence proving the intitial circle of life answer.
July 16, 2007 10:47 AMLet me know how it goes.
Jarrett
I guess it depends on whether you are a creationist, or whether you believe in the
July 22, 2007 6:03 PMscience of natural selection. Creationists may think things are there to fit a purpose. Scientists think things are there because they fit an evolutionary niche and are able to survive to procreate. Mosquitos exist because they can, not because we want them...
And what about cicadas? Especially the 17-year ones? Does providing food to predators every 17 years even count as serving a purpose?
August 1, 2007 3:40 PMYour daughter and I would get along well...
And speaking of those 17-year cicadas, all I heard was "they're coming, they're coming ..."
August 2, 2007 8:46 AMPeople warned me that I would be ankle deep in cicadas, that I would be shoveling cicadas off my sidewalk, that the cicadas would take over Chicago politics (okay, that one didn't seem so bad).
All in all, this cicada invasion was a bust. Oh, there were a few of the little buggers clinging to my trees, but it wasn't bad.
Or someone forgot to set the 17-year alarm clock for the critters.
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