“It’s one of those things that, in retrospect, seems obvious-that blood meals might cause a stress like that,” says David L. In research that recently appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1105195108), scientists report that a mosquito’s body temperature can spike from 22 ☌ to 32 ☌ within one minute of imbibing its victim’s blood.Īnd what a lot of stress that can cause! Such a warm drink endangers the integrity of the mosquito’s own proteins and enzymes, upsetting its tummy to the point of putting in jeopardy the eggs a victim’s blood is meant to nourish. One false move and a slap can dispatch the hapless buzzer to oblivion.īut I had never considered the biological stress this cold-blooded creature can experience when partaking in a warm-blooded meal. Then she has to pierce the victim’s skin, sip, and skedaddle. She flits about looking for a target and tries to land on prey while avoiding detection. It’s already a stressful life for the little female bugger-always looking for a square meal before laying her eggs. As the summer months approach and mosquitoes once again get busy, scientists point out that a warm-blooded meal can provide quite a shock to a mosquito’s delicate innards.

Scientists at Ohio State University, Yale University, and the University of Florida do. I was haunted by the story because it is told from Gregor’s metamorphosed perspective, and I recently got even more of a clue, from a biological system’s perspective, about the STRESSES OF BEING A BUG, specifically a mosquito. I vividly remember reading Franz Kafka’s novella “Metamorphosis” many years ago and being struck by the story of Gregor Samsa, a man who wakes one day to discover that he has become a large insect. Love at first bite: Mosquito feeds itself to make offspring.

Skedaddle insect repellent