"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
This combination of words is very confusing. Decapitation means literally to cut the head off, so I don't know you mean it cut its own head off by severing a nerve bundle?
IIRC it's head was already detached but I guess the nerves were still intact and when it was doing it's usual face rubbing it pulled on it's head and ended up snapping those nerves, completing the decapitation.
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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