The Legion of Chaos accepted another brave and courageous Warrior - Doc Kering - in its ranks . His conscious life he devoted to the study of many worlds, their ecosystems and the organization of life within them. What could be more interesting than a nascent life or someone's approaching death?
Doc did not know the answer to this question - he was interested in all the details of the flora and fauna. The more planets he visited, the more he realized that life goes everywhere according to its own laws.The space capsule quickly passed through the atmosphere and crashed into the surface of the planet. For a time, no signs of life came out of her. At last the hatch opened and a man appeared on the surface. Whether because of a heavy suit, or because of a not very successful landing, his gait was shaky.
Doc Köring looked around: around the swampy terrain, he was still fortunate that the capsule did not get into the muck, it would have been much harder to get out. In all the abundance of brownish-green colors, his attention was attracted by something white, like huge bunches of grapes hanging from branches of a few trees. Curiosity prevailed and Kearing approached closer to view the object ...
Often you can hear that mosquitoes eat our blood with you, that they are really terrible vampires. We eat meat, milk, fruits for food, by analogy, people decide that mosquitoes also feed on our blood. However, if you look closely, the situation is completely different, the analogy is false.
To begin with, you need to remember who the mosquitoes are and how they live. Mosquitoes are, first of all, insects, and then already dipterous. Close relatives - flies, I think everyone saw that they also have only two wings, which is not typical for insects. The second, rear, the pair they replaced by a special organ of equilibrium - a buzzing.
Diptera, and not only these, are characterized by a complete cycle of transformation , that is, a larva emerges from the laid-off egg, which is not similar to an adult individual, then it pupates and an adult becomes an adult. The same cycle is characteristic of beetles, whose larvae can often be found in wood or soil. The larvae of flies, quite unlike flies, are found in rotting meat, or the carcass of a dead animal, manure and so on.
source : Mosquito larvae
Mosquitoes lay eggs, near or directly into the water, as larvae lead an aquatic life, they feed on bacteria and other small delicacies. This can be any pond, including a semi-submerged cellar and a home aquarium. Pupa is like a larva, but a little more, especially in the head, mobile. Not knowing the larva and the pupa is quite difficult to distinguish. Egg and chrysalis do not feed. From the pupa comes out an adult mosquito, ready for active air actions. However, these actions are not always related to blood.
Firstly, not all mosquitoes bite. There is a widespread group called "mosquito-long-legged" - they are not blood-sucking in principle, but feed solely on plant nectar. For some reason they are often confused with a malarial mosquito, which in size and appearance is very similar to the mosquito that we are familiar to northern people.
I will clarify: it is always about imago, adults, larvae of all mosquitoes eat quite differently, more often completely harmless. True, just in the mosquito-leggings, larvae can eat live plants and damage agriculture. The division of the food pattern between the larva and the imago is aimed at ensuring that they do not compete with each other for the resource.
Secondly, even our mosquitoes of the genus Culex do not all bite and suck blood. Who is typical to sit on the neck and drink blood? No, not only for mother-in-law, but for the whole female. I think many men will agree with me. But many beautiful young ladies will stand in a pose: how is it ?! Forgive the girls, but if someone is sitting around your neck and drinking blood, not figuratively, but truly, this is exactly the female representative. The fact is that only females are bloodsucking, males are quietly quietly drinking nectars and plant juices. And this is typical not only for mosquitoes, but for the horns, and for midges - this is how things seem to be for all bloodsucking insects. Why is that?
source: drugged mosquito
The fact is that mosquitoes bite not for food, but for posterity. The fact is that juices and nectars contain few proteins and fats necessary for the full development of eggs, and blood - a much more concentrated diet containing all that is necessary. Therefore, a number of mosquito species use this food product to leave offspring more and more often.
It is interesting to note that mosquitoes can leave the first small laying of eggs without drinking blood, and further energy is not enough. However, if the larvae develop in an abundant food environment, then the imago can very well reproduce without additional nutrition. And such a medium is not found anywhere in them, but in the basement!
Thus, a subspecies of mosquitoes appears, which can multiply in multiplication without meeting a person or another warm-blooded. And then the entire school terrorize the neighborhood ... But I digress. Since the basements are always warm, mosquitoes can be found at any time of the year. I think they will be happy about this meeting, although they can do without it. And why are such meetings bad for us, why should they be avoided, especially in hot countries?
By itself, the mosquito bite is almost harmless. I really like the type of mouthpiece mosquito: piercing-sucking. He is very cleverly arranged, but allows you to make a small hole in the skin and through it to drink blood. In the hocks, the other oral apparatus is a cutting-sucking one, because of which they leave quite large areas of damaged skin and very unpleasant sensations. The blind man has a coarse apparatus, while the mosquitoes even have a heel for the proboscis!
source : The device of the mosquito's mouthpiece
Although the bite is practically insensitive, very serious consequences remain of it. On the one hand, the mosquito uses anticoagulants, so that blood does not curdle ahead of time, and they can cause a reaction in a person, down to an allergic one. At least it will just be itchy. Interestingly: in the spring and early summer, the reaction to bites is stronger than in the second half of the summer, because the body has not yet "remembered" how to react properly.
On the other hand, the mosquito injects saliva into the bloodstream to deliver the anticoagulants to the right place, and there may be a lot of strangers in it, the same malarious plasmodium. And plasmodium is a eukaryote, a nuclear organism, like you and me, is not a bacterium. Although pathogenic bacteria with viruses also occur in the saliva of mosquitoes and other blood-sucking insects. What they can not stand!
Not only are they being tolerated, but they are also under the influence of those who are being transferred. So the malarious plasmodium causes mosquitoes to become more restless and at the slightest risk stop drinking blood. Because of this it turns out that they bite more often - the number of victims where the malarial plasmodium falls falls increases.
We talked about the fact that mosquitoes, in fact, do not feed on blood, but use it for reproduction. Are there any kinds of animals that can really be called vampires?
There are such kinds. For example, unique and amazing warm-blooded vertebrates that feed on blood are vampire bats . Very interesting creatures, including due to highly developed altruism. Lamprey can also feed on blood on a par with other fish tissues on which it parasitizes.
Of course, one can not help recalling leeches - the most famous hematophagous, that is, eating blood. Among crustaceans, there are parasites that feed on the blood of fish. There are fish, catfish, which feed on the blood of other fish ... Yes, what can not happen ... Even butterflies are drinking blood !
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