What's the best way to combat disease-spreading mosquitoes? More mosquitoes! At least that's the plan of scientists at Google's Debug program. The researchers want to release 16 million mosquitoes each in the US states of Florida and California in a first step. And then they want to do it all again next year.
Trying to reduce the mosquito population by adding millions more sounds counter-intuitive at first. But to understand the project, you have to look at what kind of mosquitoes the researchers are fighting — and what kind they're looking to release.
In a nutshell, it's good mosquitoes vs. bad mosquitoes.
Google's 'mosquito army'
The researchers' plan is to "raise sterile males and release them into wild insect populations," it says on the Debug website. "When a wild female mates with a sterile male, her eggs won't hatch. The population gets smaller with each generation."
