It seems that conspiracy theorists recently got away from the idea that pigeons are in truth spy robots made by the government, but now a lot of them are sure that government-manufactured spy-mosquitoes will snoop after them.
The bizarre theory was made famous by TikTok influencer Liam Dixon. In a clip that has been seen over 3.5 million times, he shows another viral clip of a man claiming to have found a mosquito with a mysterious number 38 printed on its back. Dixon relates that after a short time, the same anonymous man again found another numbered mosquito: "This of course gave rise to conspiracy theories."
Robotic animal spies
"Some people are claiming this guy grows mosquitoes for science experiments, which is the reason he numbered them in order to keep track." Still, others keep to the theory that mosquitoes are little robots, made to spy on the world's inhabitants.
The theory of the spy-mosquitoes is similar to the theory of the robotic pigeons, which Dixon also explained in his clip: "For years people believed that birds, especially pigeons, were created by the government to spy on people," adding that "there were many strange events over the years where thousands of pigeons dropped dead out of the sky."
He laughed and said: "Some believe that this happened because the government had technical difficulties. The Covid lockdowns were supposed to keep everybody inside, so the government could go out and change all the pigeons."
Liam isn't the only one who laughed at this story; many in the comments agreed. One wrote: "Doesn't make sense. My mother drove over a pigeon once and guts and blood splattered everywhere." Liam answered jokingly: "Ah, surely this was one of the real ones."
Another one added: "As someone who squeezed a few mosquitoes in his lifetime, I can assure you I never saw anything other than my own blood." Another user agreed with the explanation that the mosquitoes are used for some kind of test or experiment - which is the reason they had numbers.
A bit of truth?
A decade ago a picture was shared that claims to show an insect being used as a spy drone and being able to take pictures and DNA samples.
You will be surprised to hear that this is not completely ridiculous. The website Snopes, which regularly fact-checks urban legends and fake news, determined that even though the picture does not show a spy-mosquito, it does depict an urban spy drone in insect form, which is already in production by the US government, is remotely controlled and has a camera and a microphone. The drone can even land on a person and either takes a sample of DNA or leaves a tracing device on the skin.