Photo Of 1 Million Dead Mosquitoes Goes Viral Again; Mound Found In Sanibel, Florida
A photo of a mound of 1 million dead mosquitoes went viral again over two years after it was originally posted online.
Less than two weeks ago, one of the photos originally uploaded by the Lee County Mosquito Control District in February 2022 was reposted on Reddit with the caption: "What 1,000,000 mosquitoes look like. Caught in a trap in Sanibel, Florida."
The post on the r/BeAmazed subreddit has since gained over 43,000 upvotes and 3,800 comments.
What 1,000,000 mosquitos looks like. Caught in a trap in Sanibel, Florida.
byu/MoXWT inBeAmazed
"Is there a video of them being counted?" one user commented, doubting that the mound really consists of a million mosquitoes.
"Don't bulls**t us, you're short, 80 at least," quipped someone else.
"I wonder how much blood could be squeezed out of the pile," wrote a different commenter.
"[It's] a bad day to have eyes," joked another.
"I just can't stop imagining them all suddenly coming back to life in that room and how horrifyingly disgusting that would be," opined a different netizen.
Meanwhile, others were highly curious to know more information about the photo.
"How are they trapped? Is the trap available to the public?" asked one Reddit user.
"What was the timeline?" commented another netizen.
"Why are they on a table in a conference room?" someone else wrote.
Going back to the original post from two years ago may answer some of the questions from the curious netizens.
According to the old post by Lee County Mosquito Control District, the mound of mosquitoes came from an "LCMCD trapping project that took place in one section of one neighborhood on Sanibel Island over the summer of 2021."
The district did not provide more information about its trapping project at the time or how its workers were able to capture so many mosquitoes in its Facebook post.
However, it provided more information about LCMCD's mosquito control operations on its website -- a page specifically showcasing the district's mission "to protect public health."
After looking for mosquito breeding habitats throughout the county, LCMCD used "a variety of biological, mechanical, and chemical control techniques to reduce mosquito populations," such as larvicides for mosquito larvae and adulticides for adult mosquitoes.
"The District monitors for arbovirus transmission activity using mosquito pools from trap collections and by using sentinel chicken flocks distributed around the county," the agency noted on its website.
"When arbovirus transmission of significant threat to human health is detected, that area of the county is thoroughly inspected and treated to eliminate mosquito activity."
