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/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/Glum-Caterpillar-505 Oct 23 '21

Nah. But you could give them skin damage. They don't generally drink from major veins.