Spent a lovely evening celebrating the birthday of two good friends last Saturday, the gazebo assembled without a hitch and the wine flowed, but unfortunately so did our blood! The venue for the event featured a large pond that looked great on the postcard, but was a bit on the "swampy" side. This meant that as soon as dusk fell the mosquito hoards descended en-mass, it was impossible to avoid them. I'm sitting in the office today and my scalp feels like a pin-cushion, I even think I was bitten through my (long sleeved) shirt, having several very itchy lumps up and down both arms!
It's really fascinating (and somewhat annoying) to consider how evolution has sculpted these insects to prey on us mammals, providing them with all the equipment and anaesthetic chemicals necessary to inject hypodermic mouth-parts through our skin into the capillaries beneath, extract blood, insert bacteria and then fly off with us being aware of a thing (until the next day of course!) This kind of biological complexity is often cited by our creationist brothers and sisters as evidence for their particular "god", of course since Darwin, any thinking person knows this to be bunkum but if you think about it, the existence of such fiendishly efficient bacteria spreading creatures begs a somewhat more challenging question for them...
Why would an all-loving God create a planet and a biosphere just for Human beings then put disease spreading biting insects in it too?
Sounds more like evidence for the absence of such a being to me, regardless, the genetic drift of such critters seems quite sufficient to explain the lumps on my head this morning for me, God or no God, praise the Lord but pass the "Deet"!!
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