Name: 【TED】Greg Gage: The real reason why mosquitoes buzz (The real reason why mosquitoes buzz | DIY Neuroscience, a TED series)
Uploaded: 2018-09-15T14:16:17.000Z
Duration: 4 min 47 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...

Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Krystian Aparta

Greg Gage: We've all heard the annoying sound of a mosquito,

and we will stop at nothing to make it go away.

The mosquito's nervous system has almost as many sensory auditory cells as we do.

But why would they have so many in such a small body,

and why would they need to be so sensitive to sounds?

As humans, we do a lot to attract each other.

we put on makeup and make sure we smell nice.

You may unconsciously point your body or even sit closer to someone you like.

These are courtship behaviors, and a lot of animals have them.

So Haley's been spending her summer bravely listening to mosquitoes,

So we want to investigate how the mosquitoes make their song.

So Haley, how do we record their wing beats?

First, we anesthetize them in a fridge or a bed of ice.

And then I transfer them to this petri dish of ice,

and what I do is put a tiny little dab of superglue on this pin.

I want to make sure that I get it on his thorax above his wings

so that when he is suspended, his wings are still free to move.

It's really hard to catch male mosquitoes in the wild

because females are the only mosquitoes that are attracted to humans.

And now, we can try to get some recordings from them.

So this is the stand that I use to hold them.

I like to place it right over the microphone

so that I can get a recording of the buzzing that you hear.

That sound is generated by how fast they're beating their wings.

The males have very bushy antennae, and they look kind of feathery.

HS: This is a much lower frequency than the male.

GG: Yeah, it sounds completely different.

So is it because they're two different mosquitoes,

HS: It's because they're male and female.

Can you bring in another female and see if she sounds

And again, she is much lower than the male.

HS: She really is. GG: That's really bizarre.

HS: The females are at a much lower pitch. They were around 400 hertz.

HS: And all of the females were around that, too.

so they didn't have to flap their wings as fast to stay in free flight.

GG: So they have larger wings, so they're flapping slower.

And you noticed that all the females have the same frequency, roughly?

And the males do, too. That's kind of interesting.

Well, let's see what happens when we put the male and the female together.

HS: When I put them into the same hearing range,

I noticed that they were kind of changing their tones.

And when I put it back in my spectrogram to see their interaction,

The males and females are singing a duet,

meaning that they adjust their wings to be able to produce a common tone.

and you have the female singing down here at D,

you're saying that they change the frequency of their wings

HS: Yeah, exactly. GG: And they sort of sing a duet.

(Mosquitoes gradually adjusting to identical pitch)

HS: They're communicating to let each other know

that they've basically found a potential mate.

the female tends to choose a male that best sings her duet.

And studies have found that if she's pregnant,

So if we can understand the mosquito mating behavior,

we may be able to disrupt it in the wild and prevent diseases like malaria.

But for now, the next time you hear a mosquito buzzing,

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【TED】Greg Gage: The real reason why mosquitoes buzz (The real reason why mosquitoes buzz | DIY Neuroscience, a TED series)

potential

conscious

bizarre

spot