Mosquitos Use Drop of Blood To Keep Cool

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When sucking down hot blood, a mosquito exudes a small bead of the meal for evaporative cooling. Karen Hopkin reports.

December 15, 2011

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Being a mosquito can really suck. Not only do you have to gulp down your food because your dinner can turn around and swat you if you?re not fast enough, but a bellyful of hot blood can really do a number on your little body, which prefers to keep things cool.

So how do feeding skeeters keep from overheating? They take advantage of evaporation. That?s according to a study in the journal Current Biology. [Chlo? Lahond?re and Claudio R. Lazzari, Mosquitoes Cool Down during Blood Feeding to Avoid Overheating]

Insects depend on the environment to regulate their body temperatures. But too much heat can be bad for their health. That?s a serious problem when your meals consist of hot, fresh animal blood. The solution, it seems, is to use a drop of your dinner to cool you down. Like sweat, only blood.

Scientists used a thermal camera to watch mosquitos eat. And they found that mosquitoes that excrete, and then hang onto, a single bead of blood while feeding have bodies a couple degrees cooler than those that don?t.

Disrupting this sacrificial blood cooling system could provide a new strategy for controlling mosquitoes, and the diseases they spread. Because if a skeeter can?t secrete, its next supper could be its last.

?Karen Hopkin

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast]

Also see Mosquito Biochemistry Lets Them Handle Hot Blood

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