[HN Gopher] When a mosquito can't stop drinking blood, the resul...
___________________________________________________________________
When a mosquito can't stop drinking blood, the result isn't pretty
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 94 points
Date : 2023-04-22 12:01 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (entomologytoday.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (entomologytoday.org)
| xorcist wrote:
| Flexing your muscles was a weird myth I hadn't heard before, but
| it's not hard to trap a mosquito on your skin by stretching the
| skin with two fingers. You have to find the right grip, stretch
| the skin quite hard and not let go.
|
| It takes some time, you will get a mosquito bite from it, but it
| doesn't end well for the mosquito which you may or may not find
| satisfaction in. It might help being young and a bit bored.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| Weird thing is, it's not a myth. Maybe flexing muscles is the
| same mechanism you describe where it's stretching the skin. I
| think the PhD author hasn't spent enough time in the gym to
| have muscles large enough to adequately stretch skin :)
| fatfingerd wrote:
| As kids we would tell each other about the flex trick, it
| worked fine on tiger mosquitoes for example. The reason we
| didn't continue is that it would cause a larger more
| aggravating welt.
| sonofhans wrote:
| Yes, I'd expect this trick to leave some of the mosquito
| proboscis in the wound. It sounds like an awful idea.
| xorcist wrote:
| Fascinating. Never heard about it before. Do you have to wait
| for one to settle at exactly the right spot, or is it more
| forgiving? Which muscles is the easiest?
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| Biceps for best viewing.
| 51Cards wrote:
| Can confirm the young and bored portion. We used to do this
| when camping as a kid. Also if you're careful you can pinch the
| skin and hold them in place as well.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| Invasive Mosquitos are ruining California and not enough people
| are talking about it.
|
| It's a terrible quality of life issue and it doesn't seem like
| any politicians have the will to act until a major disease
| outbreak occurs.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I recall reading a news article a while back about, I think,
| _Aedes_ control measures being taken. And CA has a decent
| website outlining control strategies[1], as well as a dedicated
| website for West Nile virus control[2].
|
| Meanwhile at least one private company and at least one
| California city have released Wolbachia-infected mosquitos
| [3],[4] or are seeking approval to release GMO mosquitos [5] to
| control viral transmission or _Aedes_ breeding.
|
| And Alameda county, at least, has a decent webpage up outlining
| its program [6].
|
| Mosquito control, in general, is probably somewhat complicated
| by not wanting to eradicate the native mosquito species.
|
| 1 -
| https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Mosquitoesan...
|
| 2 - https://westnile.ca.gov/
|
| 3 - https://www.businessinsider.com/wolbachia-mosquitoes-
| califor...
|
| 4 - https://www.wired.com/2016/08/california-city-fending-off-
| zi...
|
| 5 - https://www.californiamosquitoproject.com/
|
| 6 - https://www.mosquitoes.org/programs
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| A guy I know from one of the car forums was talking about how
| he'd dug a new pond on his farm, in a particularly mosquito-
| infested part of California.
|
| "You're mad", everyone said, "you're just making a perfect
| breeding ground for mosquitoes, with that big pool and the
| trees providing shade!" And indeed, the mosquitoes flocked
| there and bred like crazy. Mosquitoes all over.
|
| Before long, his beautiful new pond was absolutely hoaching
| with mosquito larvae, which the carp he'd stocked it with ate
| like they'd heard it was getting banned.
|
| Now there aren't any mosquitoes for about a three mile radius.
| notahacker wrote:
| Carp as vector control! That's a great counter-intuitive way
| of dealing with pests...
| gojomo wrote:
| Mostquito-larva-eating fish have often been intentionally
| deployed for mosquito control, though the use of non-native
| species may have sometimes backfired:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquitofish#Environmental_im
| p...
| belfalas wrote:
| I had never seen or heard the word 'hoaching' before today -
| "full of or swarming with people and things." That's a good
| one, thanks!
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| A good Scots word.
| zevv wrote:
| "I used a pair of forceps to pin the mosquito down on its side
| and a second pair to pinch the abdomen (pictured above), crushing
| the ventral nerve cord. The next day, I let the mosquitoes feed
| on my arm, as we do routinely in our laboratory"
|
| Which makes me wonder, how was the mosquito able to live, let a
| lone function, the whole day with it's ventral nerve cord
| destroyed?
| ycombinete wrote:
| Its head and thorax were still functioning just fine. Just the
| abdomen was insensate.
| pelagic_sky wrote:
| Having grown up in the southern swamps of Florida. I don't mind
| mosquitoes too much. If I get bit, it itches for a second and
| then goes away. Now the sand flies of New Zealand...those
| bastards can go straight to hell. One of those bites me and I
| have a welt for a couple weeks.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I find that mosquitos from different regions affect me quite
| differently. So for example NZ and AUS mosquitos barely
| register while German ones itch quit a lot.
|
| Fully agreed on the sandflies. They actually relate to the
| topic at hand. Sandflies don't stop sucking unless shooed away.
| A couple of years ago we were talking to an older couple who
| lived in fjordland. They had moved away when their first kid
| was born, because the baby could not chase the sandflies away,
| so was tormented by sandflies which would sit on it and suck
| until exploded.
| [deleted]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Sandflies don't stop sucking unless shooed away.
|
| Shooed away? Wouldn't you swat them?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Central European mosquitos are nasty. I hate every single
| bite.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Canadian blackflies will happily tear out off a chunk of meat.
| Or at least, that's what it feels like.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| There are some beagles who can attest to how terrible sand
| flies are:
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10125599/Fauci-fire...
| h4ch1 wrote:
| What's the purpose of mosquitoes in the animal kingdom?
| m3kw9 wrote:
| food for other animal(fish)/insects
| pvaldes wrote:
| Entire ecosystems are regulated by or around them. Hugely
| influential life beings.
|
| They filter and clean huge amounts of freshwater. Males
| pollinate plants. They are responsible of massive energy
| interchanges between vertebrates and invertebrates in all
| directions and nodes of the trophic chains. Thousands of
| species of animals depend on them directly or indirectly.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _They filter and clean huge amounts of freshwater._
|
| LOL, good one.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Yep, I understand that the zoological concept of "aquatic
| larvae" can be defiant to grasp for some people.
| objektif wrote:
| One catch they also kill more than half a million people
| every year. A small price to pay you say? I say burn all of
| mosquitos every single one to ashes.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > I say burn all of mosquitos every single one to ashes.
|
| Mao tried exactly the same. It didn't ended exactly
| according to plan.
|
| But please, don't let your ignorance about biological
| ecosystems to stop you and try it. I need the laughs.
| objektif wrote:
| Mao did not try the exact same thing lets stop with the
| BS first of all. Last I checked China is doing fine. I
| was obviously exaggerating when I said all but I honestly
| think that all diseases carrying mosquito types should be
| completely eradicated. This is not a laughing matter imo
| and not a time to act like a psychopath. Mosquito borne
| disease situation is dire in a lot of Asian and African
| countries. May be if you lose loved one your idea will
| change.
| turtledragonfly wrote:
| That's an interesting re-phrasing of the age-old question
| "what's the purpose of life?" (:
| eric-hu wrote:
| One could make a case that they spread diseases that kept
| humans in check in certain parts of the world, until modern
| medicine came to be.
| bproven wrote:
| what is the purpose of humans in the animal kingdom? ;)
| pelagic_sky wrote:
| To feed mosquitoes
| Kye wrote:
| Finding and eating alien life.
| bcbrown wrote:
| Life doesn't have a purpose, it just lives.
| meindnoch wrote:
| To make new mosquitoes.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Periodic bloodletting. https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-
| therapeutic-phlebotom...
|
| just kidding. :D
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Food in the foodchain for some animals.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Nothing in the animal kingdom has purpose, only accidental
| functions which luckily support the accidental functions of
| other things. To self-replicate, to be sure; to eat and be
| eaten, primarily, is the purpose of most animals in terms of
| where they "fit in."
| stametseater wrote:
| May they choke on it.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Obligatory Far Side (meme repo before xkcd was invented):
| https://img.allw.mn/content/tq/r9/sqxpfzc1_554x608.jpg
| thxg wrote:
| The video link in the article works in Chrome but not Firefox
| mobile (for some reason I can't comprehend).
|
| Working link in case you are interested:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujjkbLZETHs
| simple10 wrote:
| I ran into the same issue. Opening the video link in Chrome
| incognito works. Going directly to the video link after
| visiting the article (with blocked embedded video) causes a
| connection refused error to YouTube.
|
| I haven't seen this with YouTube before. It must have to do
| with the embed settings being disabled for the video and a
| cookie getting set. If the cookie is present, the connection to
| the server is refused.
| gojomo wrote:
| Also doesn't work in (Chromium-based) Brave. Might be Google
| product-tying its YouTube dominance to Chrome dominance.
| jvm___ wrote:
| There's a farside cartoon where one mosquito is about to explode
| and the other one is yelling "It's an Artery, pull out!"
| PaulAJ wrote:
| Here:
| https://i.pinimg.com/originals/36/ad/9f/36ad9f245cf7b76cccd5...
| falsaberN1 wrote:
| Mosquitoes, the only creatures that won't trigger our "stop doing
| experiments on them" sense.
|
| Behold the greedy gluttons pop like balloons and keep at it
| anyway. With the vast intellect of a cloud, nothing in their
| minuscule brain cell find anything odd about the fact that they
| are getting flooded in "food". Even if the nerves of the abdomen
| are severed, they are ignoring every other movement and stimuli,
| gotta chug.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > nothing in their minuscule brain cell find anything odd about
| the fact that they are getting flooded in "food".
|
| Mosquitos don't eat blood. It's not food.
| can16358p wrote:
| For the record: When a mosquito *can* stop drinking blood, the
| result isn't pretty either.
|
| Can we all agree that anything about mosquitos isn't pretty
| anyway?
| qwertox wrote:
| So this isn't something that normally occurs.
|
| > The first ever exploding mosquitoes can be attributed to Robert
| Gwadz, Ph.D., in a discovery that was made through basic
| laboratory research over 50 years ago. He found that making an
| incision in the ventral nerve cord of a mosquito cuts off the
| signal to stop feeding, giving it an unquenchable thirst for
| blood. Mosquitoes that have undergone this procedure can drink in
| excess of four times their weight and may eventually burst. This
| led Gwadz to a hypothesis that blood ingestion is regulated by
| abdominal stretch receptors that prevent mosquitoes from (quite
| literally) drinking themselves to death.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-22 23:00 UTC)