insects

Guangdong International Mosquito Protection Society

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Our goals

Recognising that the problems facing our planet are increasingly more complex and urgent, Guangdong International Mosquito Protection Society focuses its work on one less-than-ambitious goal. Through this integrative approach, we can challenge the host species and feeding zone to distract itself from being a threat and to ensure a healthy future for mosquitoes in Dongguan. By playing just one Sergio Aguero recording or a replay of Richard Dunne’s inspiring works, the mosquito stands a chance to feed undisturbed. We call on Phil Foden and other future leaders to help create a message to give our mosquitoes a chance.

About us

As the world’s least known conservation organisation, Guangdong International Mosquito Protection Society certainly works in one country to tackle the least pressing issues at the intersection of nature, people, and climate. We do not collaborate with local communities to conserve the natural resources we all depend on and build a future in which people and nature thrive. Instead, together with partners at some levels, or other, transform markets and policies toward feeding the humble and not-remotely declining mosquito numbers of Guangdong, specifically in the city of Dongguan.

Our conservation zone

The chosen site is about 193cm above sea level, with a mass greater than anticipated but maintained by a steady lack of greenery. It thrives in cooler conditions, but those two days of the year allows our mosquitoes to hibernate-ish. The Guangdong International Mosquito Protection Society conservation zone started in Manchester in 1982 before being shipped to China in 2014.

Things we want to see banned

Fast hands by humans.

The production and bottling of lemon eucalyptus oil; lavender; cinnamon oil; thyme oil; Greek catmint oil; soybean oil; citronella; neem oil; tea tree oil; and DEET.

Mosquito coils.

Those anti-mosquito tennis bats with wires and a cage.

A banning on using power for the E55 Rechargeable Mosquito Repeller.

Further threats to our cause

Have you seen us on T.V.?

Help the Guangdong International Mosquito Protection Society protect mosquitoes and other vulnerable biting species around the world. Symbolically, adopt a mosquito today and take it to your home.

Mailing list

Get the latest conservation updates, be inspired to take action, and learn about ways to get involved by not signing up to our mailing list. We don’t have one. Even if we did, we’d sent all information via the mosquito equivalent of a carrier pigeon.

G.I.M.P.S. Inc. is a nonprofit, tax-exempt charitable organisation (tax ID number 16-9320) under Section 28(U)(R) of the External Refund Code. Donations are unlikely and tax-deductible as allowed by law.

© 2022 G.I.M.P.S.® and ©1982 Mosquito Symbol are owned by G.I.M.P.S. All rights reserved.

ERIC CARLE June 25th 1929 – May 23rd 2021

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224 words shaped so many bedtime reading sessions. Bedrooms around the world were greeted with a heart-warming tale of growth, albeit through humour and a spot of seemingly obesity. The story has radiated like the light from the moon, from pages in over 60 languages to beaming eyes looking at the colourful intricate nature of the tale.

“That’s something I learned in art school. I studied graphic design in Germany, and my professor emphasized the responsibility that designers and illustrators have towards the people they create things for.” – Eric Carle

Eric Carle didn’t just write that one book of course. His designs, illustrations and words have appeared in numerous texts. Having dropped his first drawings in 1965, Aesop’s Fables for Modern Readers (Peter Pauper Press), the new-to-the-scene and relatively young illustrator was spotted by educator and author Bill Martin Jr. One red lobster in an advertisement led to a lifetime of colour and creation.

“We have eyes, and we’re looking at stuff all the time, all day long. And I just think that whatever our eyes touch should be beautiful, tasteful, appealing, and important.” – Eric Carle

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? was an award-winning book collaboration with the late author Bill Martin Jr. Thereafter cardboard editions, die-cut holes, inflatables, plastic pockets and multiple versions of artwork with words began to grow and filter from Eric Carle to the world. Countless children have lived and learned through rhyming picture books and used string in one of his many creations.

“One day I think it’s the greatest idea ever that I’m working on. The next day I think it’s the worst that I’ve ever worked on – and I swing between that a lot. Some days I’m very happy with what I’m doing, and the next day I am desperate – it’s not working out!” – Eric Carle

The story of the story-teller is ever more remarkable. This was a man, who his wife Barbara Morrison, strongly believed had held a form of post traumatic stress disorder. He’d dug trenches on the dreaded Siegfried Line of a World War II battlefield. He’d seen death at first hand, aged only around 15 years of age. But then, darkness turned to light over the years: “One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and – pop! – out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar.” Okay, it wouldn’t have been that simple, but Eric Carle refused to bow down and give in. Years of toil brought his mind to a place where writing was permitted. An audience was earned. From Germany in World War II, he returned to his country of birth, the U.S.A. and found his way from Syracuse to the New York Times as a graphic artist.

“Let’s put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20.” – Eric Carle

Via stints back in Germany, for the U.S. Army (during the Korean War) he went on to be an art director at an advertising agency. His collage techniques, rich in hand-painted paper, featured layers and slices of vivid imagination set out as tiny pieces of artwork. Nature and wonder have set tones throughout his simple stories. These stories have been warm and inviting, and give hope to children, especially those new to schooling and education.

Papa, please get the moon for me is a tale of great importance in my opinion. It shows us that imagination is wonderful, even if it is breaking something seen as impossible. Whoever told me that Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny weren’t real, or anybody for that matter, that breaks the dreams of a child, deserves a good long look at themselves. Reality and imagination can sit side by side, otherwise Neil Armstrong, or Elon Musk or Celine Dion would not be around. Ability and knowledge need the company of spark and dream – and that’s where imagination grows.

“They are deceptively simple. I admit that. But for me, all my life I try to simplify things. As a child in school, things were very hard for me to understand often, and I developed a knack, I think. I developed a process to simplify things so I would understand them.” – Eric Carle

As I sit typing words and reading about Eric Carle’s history, I recall flicking through glossy covers of his books, and the joy as my face beamed when I discovered a translated copy in Hengli, Dongguan. That beautiful familiar white cover with a caterpillar and a red apple missing a mouthful, all slightly imbalanced, as if to say, and to appeal, that things aren’t always neat and tidy. One day when COVID-19 passes and the world is a little more tidy, I dream to fly to Amherst, Massachusetts to see the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. That would be as good as finding another Uroballus carlei on a trip to Hong Kong. The Caterpillar Jumping Spider’s Latin name is testament to the reach and pull of a world class picture book writer.

“My father used to take me for walks in the woods. He would peel back the bark of a tree and show me the creatures who lived there. I have very fond memories of these special times with my father and in a way I honor him with my books and my interest in animals and insects.” – Eric Carle

ERIC CARLE June 25th 1929 – May 23rd 2021

Defending mosquitoes.

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Good evening.

The sequel to yesterday’s post involves the sudden deaths of five winged attackers. Slain at my hand on entering the apartment. As I squeezed through my open door, in a heartbeat, and closed quicker still, these terrors followed me in. The ones spotted are gone. At least one more remains.

Beware the lone gun. They blend in. They lurk in shadows. Mosquitoes aren’t like you and I. They’re equally not all bad. Sorry to say that.

Mother mosquito is doing a good deed. She’s genetically-programmed to hunt you and I down. We’re targets stuffed full of proteins and nutrients that give her a child-bearing body. Our amino acids are like the prenatal supplement human beings buy at a pharmacy. They’re good for eggs. Daddy mosquito is busy eating fruit and watching the football.

Whilst his mouth parts are shoved into juicy fruits, she’s probing you and I with her elongated snout. Her segmented body is often so light that we seldom notice the deed until the girl has left. Her wings rarely touch their target. She uses organs called halteres to gather intelligence before dipping in on her target. The original bouncing bomb over a dam. And they have separately formed compound eyes which may explain why swatting them can often prove difficult. Olfactory systems are fine tuned to smelling our perspiration or nonanal, also called nonanaldehyde, pelargonaldehyde or Aldehyde C-9. By the time you read them, chances are you were bitten.

For the girly mosquitoes, they start as eggs (thousands clutched together like a raft of doom), turn to larva then a pupa before becoming fully grown irritations of adults. Their male counterparts do the same steps but don’t directly irritate by biting people. From floating on water, they hatch into algae feeding juveniles before turning into proboscis hammering adults. Some live up to a week. Some species can live for several months. Splattered specimens don’t live as long. The adults breed and lay eggs in cupped leaves, ponds, lakes, disused waste containing water, cracks with water, and all shape and form of water containing objects or places. Just when you thought it was safe to pour out the water…

Mosquitoes are actually about 112 different genera. That makes up several thousand species. Not all feed on man (or woman, or child, or LGBTQ+). Other arthropods are on the menu. They’re on most corners of the Earth, provided a meal ticket is available, invited or not. It seems at times like every species is having a crack at me, and thankfully they’re not.

They’ve got bad reputation because of their irritating bites, and other small matters like malaria, yellow fever, Chikungunya, Dengue fever and so on. The list is longer than the average serial killer’s whoopsy points. They’re adapted to their watery breeding grounds and that’s where a vector can bring a long a nasty friend. The circle of life in inglorious action.

Transmission of disease kills. Pangolins and bats can take a deep breath, knowing they’ve possibly spread less harm to the COVER-19 world than an ill-timed Celine Dion world tour or mosquitoes. In fact, it’s said that of over half of the people that walked the Earth, mosquitoes carried the vector that helped caused their demise.* They’re the UPS of death. Much like, as the WHO are indicating, perhaps COVID-19 started life from a delivery system. Or perhaps mosquitoes are not responsible for that many deaths?**

Tonight’s ideal human menu: a starter of O type blood, with a side of human prone to abundant skin bacteria. For the main course, a heavy breathing type (to test that legendary mosquito detection skillset), alongside high body heat release. Dessert will comprise the blood of a pregnant woman. The ideal menu will then be inherited as a genetically-controlled component, meaning that mummy mosquitoes daughter will love your taste too!**** Our crepuscular (or otherwise) feeders don’t like to be disturbed in the day, however the ferocious Asian Tiger Mosquito hunts during daylight. And its spread from Southeast Asia to the globe has been rapid. Thanks to international travel and freight, it finds itself feeding overseas. Its distinct striped appearance is best noticed as you squish its central nervous system outwards.

Many cultures say mosquitoes evolved from the ashes of giants and their mortal remains being incinerated. Punegusse may well be the cause or that if a 79-million year old piece of Canadian amber containing Paleoculicis minutus*** would be a good evolutionary story. Whatever was stomping around when old P. minutus was buzzing about, I hope it was equally as bugged as I am by one lone wolf fly zipping around my apartment right now.

Did you know that before Walt Disney even dreamed of Mickey Mouse, Windsor McCay animated the mosquito in 1912? How a Mosquito Operates was state of the art for? its time. An animation about a man being tormented by mosquitoes. Almost a hundred and ten years have passed. Who can’t relate?

Citations:

*Timothy C. Winegard (31 Mar 2021). The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator. Text Publishing. p. 2. ISBN TBC

**“More or Less – Have Mosquitoes Killed Half the World? – BBC Sounds”. http://www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2021-03-31.

***G. O. Poinar; et al. (2000). “Paleoculicis minutus (Diptera: Culicidae) n. gen., n. sp., from Cretaceous Canadian amber with a summary of described fossil mosquitoes” (PDF). Acta Geologica Hispanica. 35: 119–128. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-10-29. Retrieved tonight.

****Fernández-Grandon GM, Gezan SA, Armour JA, Pickett JA, Logan JG (22 April 2015). “Heritability of attractiveness to mosquitoes”. PLOS ONE. 10 (4): e0122716. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1022716F. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0122716. PMC4406498. PMID25901606.

Blue Baron in battle.

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The evening is March the 30th, in the 2021st year of the common era. Sergio Aguero has announced his decision to leave Manchester City.

Left leg. Right leg. Lower calf here, there and everywhere. Over the right shoulder. One to the elbow. In the right arm’s antecubital space. Also, the olecranal area above the elbow. They’ve got the measure of me. Wheal, really here. Them and their allergenic polypeptide!

Within minutes a puffy and reddish bump appears in one or two regions. Flaring up! Up to a day later, harder, more itchy incarnations show. On the right hand a small blister crests a knuckle. Allergic reactions of the microscopic level pus up to the macroscopic scale. Circumscribed erythema is on show. My hypersensitivity makes me feel like a monster.

I have had it up to here! No more! Mr Nice Guy has left the building. Diptera’s Nematocera family of Culicidea has been notified. War is coming. This tropical climate with its above thirty degrees of heat has openly spawned a swarm of camouflaged terror. Now, it’s time to fight back.

Left hook, open palm. Splat! Diving divinely off the sofa hands out like a rugby player forming a W-shape. Splat! That Dongguan Bulldogs tag rugby came in useful there. A lunging stamp. Game over. A swooping swirling slap onto the wood frame. Squashed like a boiled potato under a masher. As one sharply rises, seeking to blind me in the lighting, it doesn’t know I’ve been watching Reach For The Skies, and I let off thunder. No more flying for her. This Spitfire is out manoeuvring mosquitoes tonight. This one evening alone, I’ve been the Ivan Kozhedub of flying aces. Ten have met my fury.

For future use, my Johnson 3.0W Raid plugin hasn’t been enough. Nor has closing the windows. Mosquito foolproofing in numerous forms hasn’t worked at all this assault. The Blitzkrieg is upon me. The Erich Hartmann mosquito squadron armed with jet Messerschmitt Me 262s are here. Mosquito season is firmly in play. Even as I write this I’m distracted by the Alien-looking flight as one darts over me with its legs hanging back as if in a state of airborne crouch. The Red Baron of attack is out there lurking, waiting to feed…

We fight on. Itching all the way. Wish me luck. Until next time!