Scientists figured out why mosquitos love your blood so much

[Mike Wehner]

• Scientists set out to figure out why mosquitoes love the taste of blood so much, and how they can detect blood in the first place.
• Using different mixtures and concoctions, the team determined that it's actually the needle-like stylet that the insects suck with that does the "tasting."
• It's packed with neurons that detect specific ingredients of blood and trigger the intense sucking action.

I live in a state where mosquitoes are a huge problem for several months of the year. I also seem to have been blessed with particularly tasty blood, as the annoying little bugs always flock to me while leaving my wife and friends largely untouched. It's weird, and I've always wondered what makes a mosquito prefer my blood — or blood in general — to other things it could be eating, like sugar-rich nectar.

A new study published in the journal Neuron takes a look at this phenomenon very closely in the hopes of determining what it is about the blood that makes it so tasty to mosquitoes. As it turns out, there are some very complex things happening in the needle-like stylet of mosquitoes that triggers them to suck as hard as they possibly can.

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Scientists figured out why mosquitos love your blood so much originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 30 Oct 2020 at 22:16:46 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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