Name: What Happens to Your Body When a Mosquito Bites You
Uploaded: 2019-09-22T09:58:53.000Z
Duration: 9 min 31 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...

Mosquitos – those brazen little buggers that buzz off with a bellyful of your blood.

Adverbs of degree

They can ruin a nice picnic in the park, camping out with your friends, even your own humble

Ugh, mosquitos are the single worst thing about summer!

Why do they have to bite, and why does it itch like crazy?

Australia's got platypuses - mammals that lay eggs and have beaks like ducks.

There are jellyfish that can potentially live forever.

There are so many exotic and extremely rare creatures that can be called true oddities

They're innumerable, and they come in swarms just about anywhere you go.

Still, and I really don't want to accept it myself, they appear to be a miracle of

First of all, mosquitos are ancient critters thought to have evolved between 50 and 100

That means even the dinosaurs weren't free of their irritating presence.

(Imagine a T-Rex trying to swat one away!

Chances are the first human being on this planet was bitten by a mosquito probably more

Mosquitos proved to be a highly adaptable species.

Except for Antarctica, they live on all continents in a variety of climates – from tropical

Sub-Saharan Africa to the cold forests of Siberia Russia.

There are about 3,000 different species of mosquitos all around the world.

All they need for survival is some water and a warm meal.

No, not your Granny's home-cooking – they only want what's pumping through your veins!

So, how did they become adapted to feed on the blood of animals?

Just to get things straight right from the start, not all mosquitos suck blood.

I'm not talking about different species of this insect but about severe differences

Only females drink blood, while male specimen feed solely on nectar.

It's as if all the men on Earth were exclusively vegetarian by nature!

Such a critical difference in feeding behavior between males and females is extremely rare.

The good news is, you can tell the difference between the two!

Male mosquitos are a bit smaller than females.

And if you see one nearby with fancy-looking feathered antennae, don't rush to smack

it just yet – it's a male and it won't bite you no matter what.

You see, the wings of female mosquitos move so swiftly that they resonate on a very high

frequency from 300 to 500 beats per second.

This makes that annoying high-pitched buzzing sound that can have you scouring your house,

The males' feathered headpieces are specifically attuned to locate this sound so that they

As for the antennae of female mosquitos, they're smooth.

A mosquito's lifespan is only about a month or two.

The guys live a lot shorter: around 2 weeks.

All this time, they must keep busy, especially females since their job is a lot harder.

They need to find a source of blood meal to be able to produce eggs.

Once their eggs are ready, it's time to find a nice place with standing water to release

Since they're in a race against time, they look for a source of blood usually within

And that's exactly why you shouldn't have any standing water near your house if you

Ok, but what about that bug zapper you have on your front porch?

Contrary to popular belief, mosquitos don't search for their prey looking for lights.

To be fair, there aren't many species that prefer human blood at all.

Most of them would rather feed off mammals that, ya know, don't grab a shoe or newspaper

But there are even more that like to feed only on birds or even reptiles and amphibians.

Well, if they don't use light, then how do they find you?

They have a variety of methods, but they mostly use scent.

More specifically, they're sniffing for your body heat and the one thing every living

breathing thing produces constantly: carbon dioxide, or CO2.

Every time you exhale, you allure loads of flying pests.

A mosquito can sense a tiny concentration of pure CO2 in the air from more than 75ft

At closer distances, they'll go towards the heat and anything that moves.

They have a couple things to help them with that latter bit: 1) compound eyes with hundreds

of lenses that give them a wide field of vision and 2) tiny hairs all over their body that

guide them towards the movement of big animals.

So when you're out mowing the lawn, your body is moving the air around you, and the

tiny hairs on a mosquito's body can sense this!

Still, the true mystery of mosquitos is in their feeding habits.

What you perceive only as a short stinging feeling is, in fact, a long and ingenious

When a mosquito finds its prey, it approaches it carefully.

The buzzing kinda gives them away, but I guess they can't do much about that since the

The task is even more difficult since they need 3 minutes to fill their belly.

That's 3 minutes of the constant threat of being smashed by their prey!

Has anyone ever told you that waving your hands or swatting at mosquitos to scare them

Next time, you can answer back with this: a 2018 study led by biologist Dr. Jeff Riffell

proved that mosquitos can remember the scent of a particularly aggressive prey and avoid

That means, if a mosquito tries to bite you and you decide to brush it off or swat at

it, it'll probably choose someone else to bite next!

And that's wise of it because even if it manages to land undetected, it won't be

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What Happens to Your Body When a Mosquito Bites You

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