Microscopic View of Bloodsucking Mosquito Will Basically Ruin Your Day
Mosquito mouthparts are freakishly flexible. We think of hypodermic needles as these fragile, brittle things. And they are. But a mosquito's blood-sucking kit is like a god-forsaken bendy straw of malaria-ridden doom.
What looks like a single blood-sucking apparatus is actually comprised of six distinct mouthparts: a pair of mandibles, a pair of maxillae, a saliva-injecting hypopharynx and a bloodmeal-syphoning labrum.
Mosquitos infected with malaria-inducing parasites spend more time probing for blood vessels than their uninfected counterparts. Which is just terrifying and fascinating and awful all at the same time.
On average, they drink for around 4 minutes and at higher magnifications, [Pasteur Institute researcher Valerie Choumet, who conducted the study] could actually see red blood cells rushing up their mouthparts. They suck so hard that the blood vessels start to collapse. Some of them rupture, spilling blood into the surrounding spaces. When that happens, the mosquito sometimes goes in for seconds, drinking directly from the blood pool that it had created.
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