Name: True Facts: The Mosquito
Uploaded: 2024-09-11T09:18:20.000Z
Duration: 17 min 11 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This episode is sponsored by Brilliant. Learn to think.

Dale? Dale? I think you should see this. There's something in the water.

No, it's not the dog. Well, I don't know what it is, Dale. Describe it? All right, it looks like Snuffleupagus but reimagined as a dildo, wearing glasses. Does that help, Dale?

No, I'm not drunk. Dale, I really think you should- What the fu-

Let's back up a bit. This is a raft of Culex eggs, seen from below, and they are just about to hatch. Now, if you have that thing where lots of little holes freak you out, this might be a good time to go to the kitchen and get something to eat. Not a bagel, that has a hole. And not pimento olives either. You might as well just stay and watch this. Well, you've been warned.

And here come the bibbies. There are more than 3,500 known species of fly in the family

Culicidae, otherwise known as moscovitos. All of them begin their lives underwater.

This shot is pretty crazy. The newly emerged larvae have to breathe, and they breathe air.

But they don't do it with their mouth holes. They do it with their back bits. Right there, right above the pooper, is something called a siphon. Some species, like those in the genus

Culex, have quite long siphons, and they look a bit like those poles on bumper cars that connect to the roof. When the siphon is underwater, five little flaps on the end pucker up to keep it shut. But when they attach to the surface of the water, they open up. And that is how they breathe. Look at that. You're staring right into a mosquito's butt. You can try this in your local pool. Just jackknife under the water, let your butt breach, and spread them. Then blow out your mouth real hard and see how long you last before you get arrested. Air enters the siphon and into a series of tubes, which transport oxygen to parts of the body. Some species, like those in the genus Anopheles, don't have a siphon. Instead, they have a hole on one of their segments. And to breathe, they lie parallel to the water's surface, which has some drawbacks. Anopheles kind of does its own thing. Look at that. Its head can turn all the way around. It's horrifying. Demon baby.

The main job of a larva is to eat and grow in preparation for its transformation into an adult.

Most species are filter feeders and use little brushes to filter tiny crap that's floating about into their mouths, like straining soup through a moustache. There are, however, mosquito babies that specialize in eating other mosquito babies. For example, the larvae of the elephant mosquito

Toxorhynchitis. I bet you can't tell which one it is. Got him right on the butt. And that's the thing about kindergarten. There's always a biter. And in this case, there's a bunch of them. I mean, look at this freaking thing. The larva of the fly Chaeborus. Looks like a can opener that came to life. I mean, you certainly don't get close to there. Told you. Now that baby dead baby. And then you have to worry about the dragonfly larva. Psychos. And look at that. They eat your butt first, too. It's a terrible way to die. Start with my face if you eat me. And I don't even know what this one is. I'm not googling it. Don't want that in my search history mixed in with the porn.

Someone might get the wrong idea. The point is, it can be tough to be a little mosquito baby and make it all the way until you're ready to pupate. Sorry, pupate. As the larvae grow, they must molt and shed their exoskeletons. On the fourth molt, however, something different happens.

Instead of emerging as a bigger larva, it emerges as a pupa. Two little ear-like things called trumpets pop out at the front near the head. They are the new breathing apparatus which replaces the siphon. Their body becomes more of a shrimpy, curled-up sort of thing. It sort of looks like a depressed ghost. Like one time he said boob by mistake and now everyone laughs at him. Inside this pupa, the adult form of the mosquito will be constructed. But listen, this isn't some bulls**t butterfly pupa that just sits there while you wait. This thing can move and dives quickly if there's danger about. In two to three days, the transformation is complete. Now, slightly above the surface of the water, the back of the pupa splits open. Underwater, you can see air enter the pupa as its exoskeleton separates from the adult within. And that s**t is packed in there good. I mean, there's a lot of parts in there folded up. It's like getting a bunk bed in a box from

Ikea. On the surface, it is a pretty fantastic entrance. It's like how Lady Gaga would come out on stage. Very dramatic. On the other hand, Toxorhynchides, the elephant mosquito, emerges a little more like, hello. I mean, it is a pretty incredible transformation. A few days ago, this thing was a friggin worm. And I'll tell you, puberty would be a lot better if it happened all at once like that.

Just unzip the back, pull off the skin, and you'd have a full bush on your pits. After its wings and body have dried out a bit, the newly emerged adult is ready for its first flight. No qualifications, no prior experience, by the way, unless you count convulsive swimming. Fortunately, the adult is equipped with some very sensitive navigational instruments. Two antennae, which can get quite bushy-pushy, especially with the males, connect back to two bulbs over the eyes. These contain

Johnston's organ. Named after Johnston, who must have had a tiny organ, Johnston's organ can sense the slightest movement, grow up, of the antennae. It is incredibly sensitive. It is thought that when they approach an object, they can sense minute changes to the airflow around their body. This allows them to fly in the dark without bumping into things. Their wing stroke is quite unusual.

It is a shallow, twisty-twisty movement that creates pockets of swirling air which support the mosquito in flight. Now that it can fly, the newly emerged adult needs to find food.

I know what you're thinking, but before you get your undies in a bunch, you should know that for day-to-day nourishment, mosquitoes eat sugar, mainly from the nectar of flowers. This means they are pollinators. Look at this one, he's filthy with it. He's got plant sperm all over him.

There are some flowers that are mainly pollinated by the mosquito. Males of all species will only eat sugar their entire lives. Females of most species will also take blood meals in preparation for laying eggs. But there are some species, like the elephant mosquito Toxorhynchides, that don't feed on blood at all. It's like the perfect mosquito. It eats other mosquito larvae, pollinates flowers, and it doesn't even bite. Sure, if that back leg there fired a little laser, it'd be more perfect, but still. Hello? In order to make babies, female mosquitoes need some of that male mosquito sperm.

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Where were we? Oh, right. In order to make babies, female mosquitoes must mate, and depending on the species, that goes down in different ways. Sabethes are the most extra. They do a little courtship dance for each other in their disco leggings, like they were club kids in Ibiza. Jerry, do we have footage of that? No, that's not it. That's a frog peeing on another frog, Jerry. What do you mean, how can I tell? It's... Never mind. Deinosaurides wins the award for creepiest mating. They live inside of crab holes, which should set off alarm bells right there. These are Deinosaurides males on the surface of the water. They're sort of skate fighting with each other to jockey for position. Because here's what they do. They camp out over a pupa and wait for it to emerge. If it's a female, they mate with her right then, before she can even fly. Told you, crab hole creep. With other species, like Aedes aegypti, it's more like a hookup at a karaoke bar. Males get all turned on by that f***ing whining sound of the female's wings. Look right here. You can play a female tone out an earbud, and a male will come over and try to hump it. Disappointing for the male, but also the earbud, who's already got a sh***y job jammed in your earhole playing your podcasts, and now it's getting d***ed by a skater. Anyway, when the male approaches the female, the two seem to adjust their wing beats to try to converge on a harmony. Now, if the female isn't into it, she has plenty of ways to tell the male to f*** right off. But if she hears what she likes, she accepts. Even if she's freaking glued to a rod.

I don't know if I'd be up for it, but everyone's got a kink. A blood-feeding female needs blood to make her eggs. The majority of species don't prefer humans. Anything that has blood is fair game. There are species that specialize in frogs or snakes. Some feed on fish like mudskippers or even manatees. Uranotinea safarina prefers earthworms, and the earthworms seem like they're down with it. Free acupuncture. Look, they're riding on it. It's cute. In this clip, when a car goes by, the vibrations cause the worms to duck underground, and the mosquitoes kind of get pulled in with them. I'm telling you, if you have blood, you're getting bit. Even the mosquito itself isn't safe. There's a midge that specializes in feeding from mosquitoes that have just been feeding on something else. And you know something's sucking on them too. It's mosquitoes all the way down. The mosquitoes who've gotten a taste for humans, on the other hand, are very good at finding us. When we exhale, we create a plume of carbon dioxide. Mosquitoes that enter one of these plumes become hypersensitive to other stimuli and try to track back to the source. When they get close enough to use their vision, they look for dark colors and areas of high contrast. When they get even closer, they can sense body heat and the odors from sweat and bacteria. Some species, like

Anopheles gambia, are particularly attracted to the smell of feet, the little kinky bastards.

So go ahead and hold your breath. They'll find you anyway. When these mosquitoes land, they have a bounce to them and even use their mouthparts as shock absorbers. And let me tell you, these are not your ordinary mouthparts. On the outside, there's a sheath. It looks like a closed tube, but it actually has a slit up the front, more like a rolled up piece of paper. At the very tip of the sheath, there are two sensory probes called labella. You can think of them as little kissy lips. Now, when the mouthparts are inserted, the labella stays on the surface of the skin. The sheath splits open and bends into a sort of u-shape, and you can see what's inside. Now, it looks a bit like a needle, but it's actually six different structures bundled together. Two of them are like the muscle of the operation, with tiny little saws that cut through the skin. Two others are like the lookouts. They hold the tissue apart. They hate their job. The two remaining are like the masterminds of the heist.

One, which pumps in saliva, is like the security and alarm systems expert. The other, the labrum, is the closer. It pierces the blood vessels and sucks the blood up. From the top, it looks fairly straightforward, but under the skin, you can see it's a little more loosey-goosey. This looks like the inside view of a teddy bear being humped by a chihuahua. You can see the mouthparts separate, and they're very bendy-bendy and flexible. There's often quite a bit of searching that has to happen before a capillary is found. Remember, they can't see any of this. They're just groping around like a surgeon operating on a patient buried in a ball pit, and they make mistakes. Look, it went right through that blood vessel. That's a mess, and if you suck on one too fast, you can collapse it.

Now, with all this fiddling about, the mosquito risks being detected. However, the mosquito's saliva contains cocktails that help turn off the host's alarm systems, both numbing the nerves and suppressing the immune response. The saliva can also contain some unwanted hitchhikers the mosquito picked up from another host. These pathogens cause a variety of disease. Only about five percent of mosquito species carry pathogens dangerous to humans, but those five percent are a doozy and have killed more people than any other animal, including people, and people are very good at killing people. When a good blood vessel is finally found, pumps in the head pull the blood up and into the tum-tums. Liquids get expelled out the back to concentrate the blood meal. I mean, that's straight up DWE, defecating while eating, and you know you're not supposed to do that, not often. The female's tummy parts secrete a membrane that surrounds the ingested blood. This allows her to continue eating sugar while the blood is broken down into the building blocks she will need to make eggs. That's right, there are mosquito babies out there that were made from bits of you. Some species, like those in the genus Haenopheles, pictured here with a match so you can get a sense of how hard it is for them to pick up a smoking habit, lay their eggs individually on the surface of ponds or marshes, and each egg is equipped with little floaties on either side. Other species prefer to lay their eggs in containers that fill up with water when it rains. Could be a hole in a tree stump or a discarded tire, even the cup of a flower. On the plus side, if you lay your eggs in those, there won't be any fish or dragonfly larvae. On the other hand, it might dry out before your larvae become adults.

As a sort of insurance, Aedes aegypti lays its eggs above the waterline. There they—oh, she knocked a couple down. No mother's perfect. I mean, who hasn't lost a child or two at the water park?

There they can stay dried out until it rains again and the container fills up more.

Now, Toxorhynchides, the best mosquito, also likes laying its eggs in containers, especially if there's other mosquito larvae in there that its babies can eat.

They sort of butt-whip their eggs into the container while they're flying.

If you look close, you can see it. Right there. Little egg bomb. Now, here's something special.

Researcher Rachel Morreale recently observed a novel behavior. When the smaller Aedes aegypti females sense that a Toxorhynchides female is egg-bombing their hole, they fly right up and start harassing it. Look, they're knocking right into her like a blackbird mobbing a hawk.

That's aggressive mothering. You wouldn't expect that. But here's another one.

Females in the genus Trichoprosapon—I can't pronounce that. Jerry, fix it in post, would you?

Females in the genus Trigonsbone stay with their eggs and guard them.

Their eggs are arranged in a little raft that she holds between her legs.

Now, other species make rafts, too, and they're very carefully constructed.

Here you can see a female Culex mosquito building one of her rafts, each egg individually glued to the others.

I mean, that's magic right there. It's like pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

I mean, if the hat was your butt and the rabbit was a tic-tac, it looks like the stress test room in a condom factory.

How are they holding up? There's a little leakage, but other than that, they're fine.

What, Jerry? What do you mean, what are mosquitoes good for? You don't ask that question, Jerry.

Mosquitoes are good for making more mosquitoes, that's what. Ask a chicken what people are good for. You won't like what the chicken says. And now look, on top of everything else, you've got a talking chicken. And let me tell you, that gets annoying.

Jerry, I laid an egg. Jerry, I laid another egg.

Jerry, I laid—oh, sorry, that's not an egg. And you snap and say something hurtful.

Like, I don't care about your stupid eggs, chicken. And now look what you did.

That's why you don't ask what something's good for, Jerry. You end up with a sulky chicken.

Wants to meet you. She likes your feet, too. Watch her slide up. Mosquito says, hello.

Mosquito says, hello. Mosquito says, hello. Mosquito says, hello.