Bug Bites

While I’ll be the first to admit the pure awesomness of summer, there are certain unpleasant realities we have to deal with that just come with the season. Luckily for us, many of them are steps we can take to prevent them from happening. As always, knowledge is the best weapon we can have in our arsenal.

Anyways, there is one particular summer pest I have in mind. When I was younger, all of the kids in my neighborhood used to get together at night to play a game called Manhunt, which was basically two teams playing tag in the dark. When we’d come home, my sisters and I were usually covered in these red, itchy welts. Of course, you know I am talking about mosquito bites.

Mosquitoes are a type of insect. In North America, there are 167 different types of species of mosquito, with 46 different species in Massachusetts alone. Mosquitoes feed on nectar from flowers, but it’s only the females that practice haematophagy, or the drinking blood for food, that mosquitoes are famous for. Females don’t need blood in order to survive, but they take it to get certain nutrients that help develop healthy eggs…think of yourself as a mosquito vitamin.
Mosquitoes are really cool because they are streamlined to search out their prey with their special sensors they are equipped with. When birds and mammals breathe, they take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide as waste when you breathe out. Carbon dioxide is one of the chemicals that mosquitoes are able to detect from up to 100 feet away. Once they are close enough, they can sense the heat radiating off of the mammal, or even visually detect your movements or your clothes contrasting with the background.

Once mosquitoes zero in on the object of their desire, it becomes all about using their specially designed anatomy to obtain their food. Mosquitoes have a very long proboscis, or nose, that has a very thin and sharp end, which is why you never feel it go into your skin. Once the proboscis is inside of the blood vessel, the proteins in the saliva of the mosquito are a special kind that prevent the clotting in your blood. (Clotting is what makes your blood stop flowing when you get a cut, and this is what enables the injury to form a scab and heal.) The mosquito will drink until her belly is full (unless she is disturbed) and fly away.

When the mosquito is gone, she leaves behinds some of the proteins from her saliva in your blood. These proteins provoke an immune response from your body, and that is what causes it to swell up. The proteins also make this welt itch. As soon as your body breaks down the mosquito’s proteins, the bump stops itching. In the meantime, in order to reduce the itching, you can use Calamine lotion or over-the-counter cortisone cream.

To prevent yourself from being bitten in the first place, make sure to wear as much clothing as the weather permits, and to use bug spray containing DEET. Make sure to reapply the bug spray on a regular basis. It is important to protect yourself from mosquito bites, not only to save yourself the annoyance of having to deal with those big, red, itchy bumps, but also to defend yourself against the diseases mosquitoes can sometimes carry.

For more information, check out:

How Stuff Works: How Mosquitoes Work
Wikipedia: Mosquito


Alrighty, guys! I know that you’ll use this information to keep yourself safe and mosquito-free for the rest of the summer! And remember, as always, to think, explore, learn!

~Sara