Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitoes?

This is a modern, anonymous joke that riffs on the biblical story of Noah’s Ark (Genesis 6–9). It imagines a humorous “what if” scenario: if Noah had killed the two mosquitoes before boarding the Ark, humanity might have been spared one of its most persistent pests. The line typically circulates as a one-liner in joke collections, sermons-as-humor, and casual conversation rather than as a traceable literary quotation. Because it is part of oral/folk humor and is frequently repeated without attribution, it is difficult to pin to a single first appearance or definitive publication context.

The quip uses anachronistic hindsight to create comedy: it treats Noah’s task of preserving animal life as if it were a missed opportunity for pest control. Beneath the joke is a familiar human impulse to blame present annoyances on a single preventable past decision, simplifying complex realities into a tidy counterfactual. It also plays on the moral ambiguity of “saving every creature” by implying that some lives—especially those that cause suffering—might not deserve preservation. The humor depends on shared cultural knowledge of the Ark narrative and on the universal irritation mosquitoes provoke.