Mosquito couple are main draw at Chiang Mai's insect museum

By Peter Janssen Dec 21, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Chiang Mai, Thailand - Manop Rattanarithikul, 77, and his wife Rampa, 73, are two of the more interesting specimens to be found at Chiang Mai's Museum of World Insects and Natural Wonders.

Manop, the museum's owner, operator and sole employee, is one of Thailand's two leading mosquito experts. His wife, Rampa, is Thailand's second leading mosquito expert.

Rampa will receive the John N. Belkin award from the American Mosquito Control Association (AMCA) in March next year. She will be the first Thai recipient of the award which recognizes trail-blazing research on mosquitoes. It's named after American entomologist John N. Belkin, author of the two-volume The Mosquitoes of the South Pacific.

Rampa officially retired earlier this year after finishing her six-volume opus on the mosquitoes of Thailand. It's a long read. There are 459 mosquito species in Thailand, of which Rampa, employed by the US's Armed Forces Institute of Medical Science of the Smithsonian for more than 50 years as a mosquito researcher in Thailand, discovered 24 of them.

Manop, a malaria expert previously employed by the US Operation Mission of Thailand, also discovered a few new mosquito species in the course of his long, back-biting career, one of which bears his name - Toxorhynchites manopi - a monster of a blood-sucker that luckily doesn't prey on people.

The larvae of the Toxorhynchitos manopi likes to eat the larvae of the Aedes aegypti, or the striped-leg mosquito that is the vector for dengue fever, also called haemorrhagic fever and breakbone fever.

If Manop had his way, the Thai government would be breeding millions of his namesake to rid the country of dengue fever.

'Instead of fogging and spraying the government just needs to breed a colony of Toxorhynchitos manopi because the larvae of this species is the natural predator of the larvae of Aedes aegypti,' Manop said. 'That's the best way to control the Aedes aegypti.'

But looking at the size of the Toxorhynchitor manopi, called the 'President of Thai mosquitoes,' one wonders if the public would appreciate such an anti-dengue campaign.

'The big problem is that the government people are ignorant,' Manop said, warming to his favourite topic. 'When people do fogging in Chiang Mai they kill millions of mosquitoes but if you checked them, you would find that not more than 1,000 are Aedes aegypti (dengue). That means you are killing mosquitoes that might be good for giving natural vaccines to birds and animals.'

Of the 459 mosquito species in Thailand only three are vectors for malaria and one, Aedes aegypti, is a vector for dengue. A handful of others are vectors for other dangerous viruses for humans such as Japanese encephalitis and filariasis (elephantiasis).

Out of the remaining 449 mosquito species maybe 50 can feed on human blood, while the rest feed on other animals, often acting as a vector for diseases that are specific to that animal.

'When a mosquito bites a bird or animal they put the disease into the creature's stomach, and nature can make it a natural vaccine,' Manop said.

He speculated that new diseases, such as the H1N1 virus, or bird flu, may have cropped up because of mankind's predilection for wiping out all mosquitoes.

While Manop and his wife are chiefly mosquito experts, mosquitoes are only one part of the Museum of World Insects and Natural Wonders.

In fact, many objects in the museum are just curiousities that Manop picked up in the course of his mosquito-chasing life, such as the horns of a giant Thai buffalo, or a room full of wood art created by termites and some Roman coins.

Upstairs is the dead insect collection, except for one shelf of creepy-crawlers labelled 'These are Not Insects.'

His collections includes 436 mosquito species samples, which might benefit from a magnifying glass case, 4,668 insect species from around the world and 1,109 butterfly species.

Manop opened the museum ten years ago. 'I opened the museum because I like to look at my collection every morning,' Manop said. 'It makes me feel happy.'

Unfortunately none of his four children are interested in following in his footsteps.

'A foundation once offered me 4 million dollars for my collection but I said no,' Manop said. 'If I had my way I would move the museum to a bigger place and give it to the people of Chiang Mai, so people from around the world could come and visit.'

Until that happens, the museum is to be found on Nimmanhemin Road, Soi 13, Chiang Mai. The 300 baht (10 dollars) admission fee is well worth it, if Manop is there to talk you through the place.

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