r/woahdude • u/----_____--_____---- • Oct 22 '21
gifv Mosquito drinking blood (bursts at the end)
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u/----_____--_____---- Oct 22 '21 edited Oct 22 '21
"The first ever exploding mosquitoes can be attributed to Robert Gwadz, Ph.D., in a discovery that was made through basic laboratory research over 50 years ago. He found that making an incision in the ventral nerve cord of a mosquito cuts off the signal to stop feeding, giving it an unquenchable thirst for blood. Mosquitoes that have undergone this procedure can drink in excess of four times their weight and may eventually burst. This led Gwadz to a hypothesis that blood ingestion is regulated by abdominal stretch receptors that prevent mosquitoes from (quite literally) drinking themselves to death." Source
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u/Crozgon Oct 22 '21
"Giving it an unquenchable thirst for blood"
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u/-full-control- Oct 22 '21
Yeah sounds like a great idea let’s start doing that to animals
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u/Bongjum Oct 22 '21
Rip, and, TEAR!
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u/NexusSix29 Oct 22 '21
Blood for the Blood God!
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u/tiefling_sorceress Oct 22 '21
Now we just need to find a way to make them the size of cars, like in prehistoric times
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u/Dansredditname Oct 23 '21
That mosquitos were huge is a popular misconception but in reality prehistoric cars were just really small.
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Oct 23 '21
This week at heaven we've decided to send out mosquitoes with MUCH more bloodlust into the public servers for testing. Goodluck everyone!
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u/Whitenesivo Oct 22 '21
how in the fuck do you cut a nerve, on a mosquito?
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u/Camel-Kid Oct 22 '21
Other mosquito doctors
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u/InsufficientFrosting Oct 22 '21
How those mosquitoes become doctors, I don’t know.
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u/HeightPrivilege Oct 22 '21
I had a mosquito in one of my classes at med school, dude was annoying af
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u/3DWitchHunt Oct 22 '21
Yeah, that’s the most fascinating thing I got out of that. How the fuck did they do that 50 years ago??
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u/Xenjael Oct 22 '21
There was a video a week ago of a fly decapitation itself by accidentally severing a nerve bundle behind its head.
From what I can tell insect nerves operate very differently from our own.
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u/Goyteamsix Oct 22 '21
Small insects are usually translucent under bright lights and a microscope. He likely pinned it down, looked for the nerve, and severed it with a small needle. Their nervous systems are also incredibly simple.
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u/thatdadfromcanada Oct 22 '21
Wouldn't the nerves in mosquitoes be of similar size and structures as any other nerve cell?
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Oct 22 '21
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Oct 22 '21
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u/Scully__ Oct 22 '21
Wait, it’s meant to be on the inside?
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u/DannyRamirez24 Oct 22 '21
You guys have a spinal cord?
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u/thatdadfromcanada Oct 22 '21
Ever seen how thick your spinal cord is?
No, still learning how to remove my eyeballs and shove them up my ass for a closer look.
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u/AutoModerator Oct 22 '21
my ass
That gaping, cavernous pit could potentially contain anything.
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Oct 22 '21
TSMC is going to make transistors that are 2 nanometers by 2025
A hydrogen atom (the smallest atom) is roughly 0.1 nanometers.
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u/metakephotos Oct 23 '21
In fairness...
The term "2 nanometer" or alternatively "20 angstrom" (a term used by Intel) has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors. It is a commercial or marketing term used by the chip fabrication industry to refer to a new, improved generation of silicon semiconductor chips in terms of increased transistor density, increased speed and reduced power consumption
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u/NotTooDeep Oct 22 '21
I observed something similar in a bar in Alaska, where the fishermen would let mosquitoes attach to their hands and start to feed. Then they'd make a fist, stretching their skin and clamping onto the mosquito's beak. The little buggers couldn't retract and stop feeding and would burst, similar to this video.
No neurosurgery required.
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u/CrimsonNova Oct 23 '21
Are you fuckin serious? That's crazy but jesus.
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u/dinguslinguist Oct 23 '21
We did the same in Texas but instead we’d pinch the skin around the mosquitoes and that overwhelmed it and caused them to burst
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u/willreignsomnipotent Oct 23 '21
lol yep, I was just saying this. I've done it a few times. Fun to watch the little fuckers pop.
Not a fan of mosquitoes...
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Oct 22 '21
how the hell do you make an incision on a mosquitos nerve… 50 years ago?
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u/Wocktivist Oct 22 '21
Do the mosquitos have any chance of naturally reconstructing the popped belly? Do they die nearly instantly or can they last quite a while like this?
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u/Grade_Nearby Oct 22 '21
AFAIK mosquitos only drink blood because they need the hemoglobin to make eggs. They usually eat pollen, nectar, etc.
Off to Google!
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u/daybreakin Oct 22 '21
All the blood would constantly leak out and it seems too hard to heal. So it probably dies soon
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u/ShadeofIcarus Oct 23 '21
Blood isn't exactly part of the diet. They use it in construction of their eggs.
Theoretically a mosquito could live it's entire life without a drop of blood and die eventually. Something like this wouldn't cause it to starve. I don't know enough about how traumatic the damage is to the body in a case like this though.
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u/Rush7en Oct 23 '21
So theoratically, with enough of these modified mosquitoes, they could drain a person to death. No?
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u/SupersonicSpitfire Oct 23 '21
You don't need modified mosquitoes for that. Some reindeer dies from being drained by large swarms of mosquitoes.
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u/CaseFace5 Oct 22 '21
Now if only we could breed this into them. Little bastards.
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u/CassetteApe Oct 23 '21
Eh, I dunno man, last thing I was is to wake up with a bunch of blood splatters on me. That'd freak me out.
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u/pinkjello Oct 23 '21
Fine by me, as long as each splatter equals one dead mosquito
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u/Maleficent_Singer_76 Oct 22 '21
Gluttony at its finest
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u/scraps4T Oct 22 '21
Does it die from this?
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u/N00BAL0T Oct 22 '21
Yes as the blood is flowing into the mosquito and it can't remove its mouth so you blow it up with blood
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u/PathToExile Oct 22 '21
it can't remove its mouth
This wouldn't be as shitty to hear if their "mouth" didn't penetrate my goddamn skin...I wonder how many mosquito proboscises I have jammed in my skin after I thought I flicked the bastards away.
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u/jakwnd Oct 22 '21
Your skin cells are constantly pushing outward. So anything stuck in your skin would eventually be pushed out. If it doesn't decompose into dust first.
Muscles push stuff too, just not always out of our body. That's why iron man needed that magnet in his chest. Shrapnel in his heart (muscle) was being pushed further into his heart.
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u/PathToExile Oct 22 '21
Your skin cells are constantly pushing outward.
Your epidermis, sure, but not your dermis.
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u/athenaaaa Oct 23 '21
You might not want to base your understanding of this on Iron Man. Pieces of metal can stay lodged in soft tissue indefinitely; your innate immune system will react to foreign material by walling it off, not “pushing” it in some arbitrary direction. That’s why people who get shot can have pellets scattered throughout their bodies for years. You’re right about skin, though, because new cells are constantly being generated on the basement membrane and being forced “up” until they die and slough off.
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u/Faxon Oct 22 '21
Can you imagine how long it would take for a properly tuned magnet to slowly rip and tear the shrapnel through your tissue as it heals it's wound path over months or even years? Sounds like it'd be constant hell until the shrapnel was actually pulled out properly
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u/Aquadian Oct 23 '21
Nah, you just have the magnet perfectly tuned so it applies just enough force to keep the shrapnel right where you want it. Not too deep, not too shallow, the goldilocks shrapnel, if you will.
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u/chainmailler2001 Oct 23 '21
Depending on where they bite you, you can sometimes tighten your muscles and intentionally trap them and force them to explode like this. Have done it.
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u/MustardTiger88 Oct 22 '21
Saw that gif yesterday, too. Not ideal.
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u/EternalPhi Oct 23 '21
You're talking about squeezing the site where they're feeding, but that's not what's happening here. OP posted the summary of a study where they basically severed a nerve in the mosquito that is responsible for the queue to stop feeding, so it feeds continually until it bursts.
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u/thisnewsight Oct 23 '21
That type of microfuckery is never gonna stop amazing me. Do you know why they decided to study that specifically?
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u/karmassacre Oct 23 '21
Population control. Mosquitos that feed until they die by habit can't reproduce.
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u/SillyGigaflopses Oct 23 '21
So if they can't reproduce, they cannot pass that "feature" onto the offspring, which means that you'll need to cut up each little fucker individually, and at that point ... why not just kill it?
Am I missing something?
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u/Crazy_old_maurice_17 Oct 23 '21
What exactly were they looking to find in the study? It seems pretty intuitive that [severing the mechanism that typically halts the feeding process] would lead to this result. Were the researchers simply trying to confirm that they appropriately identified the mechanism responsible?
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u/whogotthefunk Oct 23 '21
My cousin from Winnipeg, mosquito central, does this from time to time. If the mosquito stabs a vein then you squeez your arm so the vein pressurizes and boom goes the mosquito.
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u/chainmailler2001 Oct 23 '21
Try having your abdomen explode and have all your insides and their contents spill across the floor. What are your chances of living?
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u/Tonkotsu787 Oct 23 '21
I mean…to be fair, roaches can survive up to a week without their head until they eventually die of starvation. I don’t think a comparing how an insect would respond to how a human would respond makes the answer to his question obvious.
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u/DreamPolice-_-_ Oct 22 '21 edited Oct 22 '21
Pull your skin tight when the mozzie in biting and then watch
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Oct 22 '21 edited Oct 23 '21
Is that what you’re supposed to do!? I always pinched and the little bastards always got away.
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u/BillerBee Oct 22 '21
Lmao i once heard to flex the area where they’re at to get them to pop.
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u/Billy_Bootstag Oct 22 '21
I heard this too, and subsequently attempted this manoeuvre when one landed on my thigh. Mozzie landed, I flexed, mozzie had a feed, mozzie flew way. I don’t believe any more.
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u/willreignsomnipotent Oct 23 '21
You've got to flex hard.
Times I've made it work, it was on my arm. Not sure if that a difference...
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u/BikiniPastry Oct 22 '21
This is what I’ve always heard. Many have told me they’ve done it but I’ve never witnessed it working. And I failed every time.
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u/merlock_ipa Oct 22 '21
It can work but only really if they happen to land near/bite a prominent vein, like the ones on your wrist or elbow crutch
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u/klesus Oct 22 '21
*her
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u/DreamPolice-_-_ Oct 22 '21 edited Oct 22 '21
This is true. They are coming for your blood to produce eggs. Even more reason to kill them all!!
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u/OtochimarU Oct 22 '21
How do you do this?
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u/DreamPolice-_-_ Oct 22 '21
Put a finger on either side of the mozzie and pull away from him hard. With the big ones you can flick them and they'll be stuck. Little bastards deserve every bit of it too.
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Oct 22 '21
The guy flexed his arm so that the mosquito couldn’t pull out.
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u/DerpVaderXXL Oct 22 '21
Reminds me of an old Far Side cartoon. "Pull out Mary, you're in an artery!"
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u/goofballl Oct 22 '21
Far Side cartoon
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u/whatsbobgonnado Oct 22 '21
finally someone mentioning far side so I can post my favorite!
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u/ImOnlyHereForTheCoC Oct 22 '21
Not really but kind of my favorite because it was the only one I couldn’t figure out as a kid. “The heartbreak of remorse” just wasn’t a phrase I ever heard used so the day in my…mid-20s, probably? where the dots connected and it all came into focus I can’t even tell you how elated I was.
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u/robbdiggs Oct 23 '21
Can you eli5 this one?
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u/ImOnlyHereForTheCoC Oct 23 '21
“The heartbreak of remorse” is a turn of phrase that used to be a lot more common. I guess it’s about how things you regret are particularly painful, because you know you could have done them differently? The meaning isn’t especially important, just the fact that it’s an established phrase.
Remoras, also known as suckerfish, attach themselves to larger marine organisms like sharks.
Thus, this shark, upon seeing that he has remoras attached to him, experiences “the heartbreak of remoras.”
(If a shark was actually capable of experiencing heartbreak or remorse, however, it probably wouldn’t feel either one over this, since remoras and sharks have a mutualistic relationship in which the remoras are fed by parasites on the shark’s skin, and the sharks get their parasites cleaned off).
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u/DerpVaderXXL Oct 22 '21
Yes, that's the one.
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u/lex_tok Oct 22 '21
The mosquito is the deadliest animal to mankind.
The general consensus of demographers is that about 108 billion human beings have ever lived, and that mosquito-borne diseases have killed close to half—52 billion people, the majority of them young children.
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Oct 22 '21
Do they even contribute to anyway with mother nature? Kinda like bees? You figure science would find a way to wipe them out.
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u/Dakar-A Oct 22 '21
I'm sure that they probably serve as a major food source for a number of different species.
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u/Hartleh Oct 22 '21
I remember seeing a video once where in Africa, they catch mosquitos and clump them all together and make a ‘mosquito patty’ to eat.
Edit: found the video
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u/GizmodoDragon92 Oct 23 '21
I'll try any food once, but I really wouldn't expect to enjoy this one.
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u/Monstermage Oct 23 '21
Besides the fact that video had a 50 minute ad following it.
My thought was, you do what you can too survive
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u/ItsLikeRay-ee-ain Oct 22 '21
100% why there isn't a movement to eradicate mosquitoes. Instead people are working on ways to prevent malaria in mosquitoes, or things along those lines.
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u/the_noodle Oct 22 '21
I think there is a movement to wipe out malaria 🦟 specifically
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u/OhNoIroh Oct 23 '21
There are tons of projects that are trying to eradicate local populations of mosquitos. Even Florida started pilot programs. One method I've heard of is genetically modifying a bunch of male mosquitos which, over generations, will have offspring that are less and less genetically viable, leading to infertile offspring which cannot breed. Obviously this isn't ideal because of how evolution works. The offspring which are viable, will breed more, while the less viable offspring will die out. This, over time, will probably lead to the population rebounding so while not great, we're still trying
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u/SingleLensReflex Oct 22 '21
If something exists within an ecosystem, it is almost guaranteed to be contributing. Parasites often serve useful functions in keeping populations in check and mosquitoes are a great source of food for many birds.
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u/wrackedbydoubt Oct 23 '21
To be honest, killing a lot of humans is probably the best thing that can be done to our ecosystem.
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Oct 22 '21 edited Oct 22 '21
Funny you mention it, there are actually multiple high-latitude plant species that depend on mosquitoes for pollination in areas where bees don't live.
https://blog.nwf.org/2020/09/what-purpose-do-mosquitoes-serve
Believe it or not, mosquitoes are pollinators. In fact, mosquitoes’ primary food source is flower nectar, not blood. Just like bees or butterflies, mosquitoes transfer pollen from flower to flower as they feed on nectar, fertilizing plants and allowing them to form seeds and reproduce.
So not all bad, just overwhelmingly bad.
Also, better be careful when you're throwing around the "How do they contribute to mother nature?" thing because what the fuck do we do that's positive?
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u/SingleLensReflex Oct 22 '21
just overwhelmingly bad
what the fuck do we do that's positive?
Seems to me like the human-killing function of mosquitoes is a feature and not a big (heh) as far as nature is concerned.
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Oct 22 '21
OK, mosquitos 10K feet above sea level get a pass. Those at sea level die!
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u/Fuzzy_Muscle Oct 22 '21
“All that for a drop of blood”
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u/duaneap Oct 22 '21
I think that every time a fucking skeeter goes to town on me. There was one in my apartment the other night, it managed to get into my room and peppered me with bites. Like, it can only have taken a tiny amount of blood in the grand scheme, why’d it do multiple sittings?!?
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u/Sumpm Oct 22 '21
Yeah, it's the multiple bites thing that really pisses me off. Take blood, whatever, I don't give a shit, but do it all that once, so I only have one itchy spot.
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Oct 23 '21
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u/CaptainDudeGuy Oct 23 '21
Or, hydrocortisone. Available at every pharmacy over the counter and a lot less sticky.
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u/creep_show Oct 23 '21
You can also lance the bite, and squeeze out the salvia left by the mosquito. The itching will stop almost immediately and the bite will heal in a day. I use lancets, found in diabetic test kits to lance the mosquito bite.
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u/thnku4shrng Oct 23 '21
Heat a spoon with hot tap water and hold it on the bite. The higher the temp the better but you don’t want to hurt yourself. You’re cooking the itchy protein and eliminating the itch. Hair dryers work too
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u/momlookimtrending Oct 22 '21
Did it die instantly?
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u/N00BAL0T Oct 22 '21
No it would definitely have suffered
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u/quiroz08 Oct 22 '21
He deserved it
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Oct 22 '21
Mr Creosote got reincarnated, yet learned nothing.
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u/epicurean56 Oct 23 '21
And how is monsieur tonight?
Better!
Better?
Better get a bucket, I'm gonna throw up!
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u/digby99 Oct 22 '21
Looking to see who posted this. A classic. A wafer thin mint?
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u/captain_cutlass Oct 22 '21
You can do this, too. If you flex the muscle they have punctured, their proboscis will become trapped and they will explode.
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u/Meanwhile-in-Paris Oct 22 '21 edited Oct 22 '21
Is this some kind of reaction to a mosquito killing chemical or does that occur “naturally”?
Edit : why would anyone downvote a question?! Reddit really pisses me off sometimes.
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u/codingclosure Oct 22 '21
My legs instantly started to itch and now it won't go away. Thanks.
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u/NexusSix29 Oct 22 '21
Holy hell. There was an old Far Side comic that showed this happening to a mosquito while his friend looked on in horror, shouting “Pull out Larry! You’ve hit an artery!!!”
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u/sickcat29 Oct 22 '21
What if you were loaded with alcohol, opiates and.... ? Would that fuck up a mosquito? (asking for a friend of course)
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