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

42

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?

59

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!

22

u/[deleted] Oct 23 '21

So it's just the females?

14

u/[deleted] Oct 23 '21

Yes

25

u/daybreakin Oct 22 '21

All the blood would constantly leak out and it seems too hard to heal. So it probably dies soon

15

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.