It’s dark, nay... an almost pitch-black summer night, your windows are
open, a breeze is blowing...and a fiendish criminal is sneaking into your
room. His plan is simple: to drink all the blood from your slumbering
form. He silently approaches you, his target, preparing to take the first
sip of that crimson elixir... when suddenly the lights are turned on,
illuminating the room. You - his prey - have woken up, and glare straight
into the eyes of this inhuman villain. But wait! It's just a mosquito. And he
can’t do this all alone. To drink all of the blood from a human, he’s going
to need some friends to help him out. The only question is... just how
many of friends does the diabolical mosquito need? Does the world even
have enough mosquitoes to drain all of the blood from a single human
being? At first, let’s figure out what motivates
these tiny, vampiric criminals. Mosquitoes often feed not only on blood, but
also on water and nectar. But, just as with humans, their lives radically
change when a strong feeling of… love appears. Female mosquitoes
meet their “soulmate” just 3 days after being born. But on that note,
their luck ends. Sadly, similar to what sometimes happens with humans, after
this glorious “night of love” the male flies away, and the female
is forced to find food for herself and her future children on her own. And like
any mother to be, she needs to supplement her diet with extra vitamins
and trace elements. But more than anything else she needs protein,
protein to help nourish her unborn offspring. It’s here where human
blood comes to the rescue. These future mothers drink human blood for
one simple reason: the protein they derive from it. They digest our
human blood for 2 to 3 days, whereupon they then lay their eggs in a convenient
reservoir of water. The mother invests much in this endeavor,
often even dying when giving birth. Remarkably, as it turns out, a single
mosquito needs your blood only once in its entire life! And that is
simply for the sake of her children. Interestingly, “urban adapted” mosquitos
don’t need your blood at all! This species has evolved for life in our cities
and receives all its vital nutrients from the water in, for example,
our basements. Is it difficult to imagine that these cute - seemingly harmless
- little creatures could
drink all of the blood from a human being? Scientists from the University
of Cincinnati say that you shouldn’t drop your guard so fast. They
discovered that mosquitoes desire and drink even more human blood if
they are lacking in water. And, according to the study, when the
temperature goes above 77ºF - or 25ºС - 30% of the females go on a
second, more intensive nutrition-related search operation, become much
more aggressive. So, during a drought, we risk becoming victims of
hordes of rabid and hostile pregnant mosquitoes. Certainly not a
reassuring fact, especially if we take recent global warming into account.
And what if the males also suddenly wanted human blood due to higher
temperatures? In that turned out to be the case, the possibility of dying
from mosquitos stealing all of our blood doesn’t seem so far-fetched and
crazy as before. Scientists at the University of California
decided to check what would happen if male mosquitoes also drank human
blood. They divided the men into three groups: the first group was
given only sugar to eat, the second - sugar and blood, and the third - only
blood. Those male mosquitoes eating the “sweet” sugar-only
diet lived a happy and long mosquito life of 28 days. The males who ate
or drank a mixture of blood and sugar, enjoyed sunrises and sunsets for
no longer than 7 days. And those who drank only blood lived bright lives,
but alas even briefer, from but 3 to 5 days before their short lives winked
out. So, our human blood will kill a male mosquito. But this doesn’t
mean he will not drink it. The same scientists continued with the experiment,
this tie giving the insects a choice: blood or sugary sweet syrup. Half
of them chose the blood. So, in the end, 50% of male mosquitoes will still
bite you to get a taste of the red stuff they so crave! Add in some aggressive,
pregnant females and we’ll have a real gang of thieves, ready
to drink every last drop of the sweet liquid pumping through your veins. And
don’t expect these thieves and hooligans to fail in pursuit of this juicy
loot... At least, that is, according to team of researchers from the
Pasteur Institute in Paris, who discovered just how much these malicious,
bloodthirsty brutes are capable of...
The main thing revealed by these Parisian scientists was the amazing
flexibility of the mosquito’s proboscis...the skin-piercing and blood-
sucking mouth-like protuberance that extend from the mosquito’s face.
According to the researchers, the proboscis only happens to look hard
and unbending like a needle. When the mosquito pierces your skin, it
doesn’t even know exactly where your blood vessels are located. The
flexible proboscis is actually six separate, thin, needle-like mouthparts,
each of which pierces the skin, searching in your flesh, allowing these
tiny vampires to prospect for blood until they finally hit pay dirt. And the
tentacle-like organs at the end of this “elastic needle” don’t leave you a
single chance - you can be sure the mosquito will get what it wants
sooner or later. And when it finally finds a blood vessel, it will
literally feast on your protein rich red juice for no less than an 4 entire
minutes. But wait a second…
are we really so inattentive that we cannot feel the foreign intrusion of
this blood sucking proboscis into our bodies for a whole 240 seconds?
Well yes...and this is due to the utter cunning and deviousness of these
tiny bloodsuckers. Even at the first stage of just probing your skin, the
mosquito plants its saliva in you. This prevents inflammation. And if there
is no inflammation - there are no disturbing signals from your body to
warn of this attack and penetration. Moreover, mosquito saliva keeps
blood vessels from constricting, and blood from coagulating, so the
blood just keeps on flowing at full steam. All of this turns a simple bite
into a gala feast for this unholy, demonic insect. But again, we must ask:
how long would it take for one of these thieves to suck out all of a
person’s blood... down to the very last drop?
According to one Dr. Daniel Landau from the University of Florida, an
adult has about 1.5 gallons, or 5.7 liters of blood. Imagining a mosquito
drinking so much at one go is difficult...okay, yeah, it’s impossible,
obviously. But the trick is that these tiny bloodsuckers dont have to drink
all of our blood in order to harm us. There is a good reason why doctors don’t
take more than 450 ml or 15 ounces of blood from donors. This is about
8-10% percent of the total volume in our body, and taking more gets into
dangerous territory. According to the American College of Surgeons,
if you lose 15% of your blood, you will begin
to feel some negative side effects, such as a faster heartbeat, rapid
breathing, and mild nausea. Vampires suck about this much blood from
their victims if they plan on keeping them alive, or turning them. At least
thats what some students of physics from Leicester University say. They
figure that if a vampire does not plan to kill a person, but simply wants to
have a little bite, as it were, he will need around 6 minutes for his snack.
In this situation it’s important for the bloodsucker to feel satiated at 15%.
As if a person loses 20% of their blood, something called hemorrhagic
shock begins. This is a condition in which - if it were you - you pulse
would weaken considerably, your skin would turn deathly pale, and you
will likely faint. And when 40% of your blood is lost, you die. Death from
bleeding out comes very rapidly - even faster than from a vampire bite.
Literally in just 4 to 5 minutes. The cause may be due to an injury from
an accident, being stabbed or cut with a knife, or from a mosquito bite.
After all, if you remember, the duration of a bite is roughly 4 minutes. So
the question is, how many mosquitoes need to start drinking at the same
time to induce a fatal outcome? How many mosquitoes are needed to
suck us to death? Actually, there are more than 3,500 different
species of mosquitoes - and all of them come in different sizes, have
diverse appetites, and possess a variety of distinctive temperaments. So,
let’s suppose that you are not very lucky and you’ve stumbled upon the
most aggressive and largest of all species - the Asian tiger mosquito. It’s
hungry females drink 5 microliters per bite. So, for this species, to drink
all the blood from one average adult, 1,100,000 “tiger mosquitoes” will
be required. It goes without saying...but I’ll say it anyway, that it’s really
unlikely that such a cluster could be found in a single location. On top of
that, there isn’t even enough space on the body for all these little
bloodthirsty devils. On average, a person has about 2 square meters, or
11 square feet, of skin covering their body. So only about 6300 of these
bloodsuckers will be able to get “landing rights”. All the rest will have to
line up. And, really... have you ever seen a line of mosquitoes? Thus, in
reality, the risk of dying from mass mosquito bite total blood-loss is
almost non-existent. This is good news. The bad news is that you can
die from a single bite, from a single mosquito. It’s little wonder then that
scientists have included these insects on the list of the most dangerous
creatures on Earth. Mosquitoes are carriers of malaria, fever,
and encephalitis. Every year, about 725,000 people die from the bites of
infected mosquitoes. Most often, these victims are residents of cities
with hot and humid climates. There, dehydrated and hungry mosquitoes are
especially cruel. But there is no need to panic.
Yes, it’s true that no one is entirely safe from a chance meeting with
these notorious, blood-sucking thieves. But the risks can be minimized.
The Journal of the American Association for the Prevention of
Mosquitoes has reported that the main way you attract mosquitoes to
you is when there is too much carbon dioxide in and around your body.
For example, if you exercise in the outdoors and sweat a lot. Or if you
drink beer on a hot summer day. To avoid becoming a victim of
mosquitoes, simply apply special protective chemical agents, or even
just eucalyptus oil. Mosquitos hate the stuff! Researchers claim that
these simple preventive measures will discourage even the hungriest
females from trying to bite you! So - take care of yourself, give us a thumbs
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