Jacob Kushner | 18th January 2021 | www.bbc.com | View article
The discovery of a novel mosquito on Guantanamo Bay reveals how globalisation is threatening to unleash the next pandemic.
During the night of 18 June 2019, on the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an intruder was caught in a trap.
Soldiers are accustomed to prisoners wishing to break out of Guantanamo. The base is best known as the place where the US indefinitely confines suspects in its “war on terror”, without due process or trial. For an intruder to make her way in was unusual. Even stranger, no one had ever seen anything like her on this side of the world.
The first witnesses to get a close look described the interloper this way:
“Proboscis dark with median spattering of pale yellowish scales.”
“Wing: Scales mainly dark and narrow on all veins.”
And most striking of all: “Abdomen… with large median white spot.”
