What you may not have known about mosquitoes

By Bev Johnson | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, July 28, 2007

Only the female mosquito drinks blood. She needs the protein to make eggs. The male is a hippy type. He is a vegetarian, just flitting around living on nectar and plant juices.

Once a feeding mosquito is full of blood, a chemical signal shuts down the intake. If that signal is disabled in a lab, they will suck until they explode. A spray of that chemical would be worth a million.

Male mosquito "ears" have as many sensory cells as ours. This helps them identify and chase the female. When a mosquito detects the whine of the opposite sex, it begins to synchronize its own pitch to match that of a potential mate.

A randy male can do this in a second or two. Females take several times longer. They mate in midair often in as little as 15 seconds from "Hi there" to "see you around." The mosquito uses your exhaled breath to home in on you, especially when you sleep or when you have been exercising. Luckily, they only fly about 1.5 mph, so you should be able to outrun them.

Canadian researchers, who bared arms, legs and torsos, found that newly hatched mosquito swarms, bit 9,000 bites per minute, at that rate, you could loose half your blood in two hours.

There are between 2,500 and 3,000 varieties of mosquitoes from the Arctic to tropical rain forests. Most are active at dawn and dusk, but some feed during the day.

A few million years ago, they were three times a big as now. One that size could drain a cat in no time. It would take 1,200,000 mosquitoes of normal size, sucking at once to completely drain you of blood.

Millions of people today will die of mosquito transmitted disease. 1,000,000 people in Africa die each year of malaria.

Other killers are dengue fever, yellow fever and West Nile virus. They don't spread AIDS-HIV however. Infected humans have very few of the virus particles in their blood. If a mosquito does suck one up, its digestive system kills it, so they are good for one thing.

Here in the far north, we are most exposed to West Nile. However, malaria has been found in some of the southern states. Moral for the day: Wear your bug spray, do your exercising during daylight hours and don’t vacation in the swampy south.

From an article in “Discover” magazine.

Bev Johnson is a master gardener for West Otter Tail County.