Or is it that the victims pest warning system is currently winning the biological arms race, in which case how are mosquitoes able to successfully reproduce? Or is it that mosquitoes have evolved such that their spawning numbers offset the difficulty they have biting?
Biology is hard.
They have! For the most part you don’t even notice mosquitoes biting you until after they’re long gone, the part that itches is from the mosquitoes saliva that is left behind! They have evolved to the point that you should never even feel them sticking their proboscis into you so if you actually catch one biting you it’s probably because something went wrong or you just happened to see it land
If you’re aware enough, you can feel one landing on you. Easier to do if you’re aware there’s one in the room and you try to focus. No real way for them to evolve around that.
Does vary by mosquito species but yeah for the most part.
Alpine mosquitoes with shorter seasons tend to have swarming strategy, they’re loud and you notice when they land on you. It’s just that there’s about 1-200 of them flying about you so lots will still be successful. These ones mostly don’t spread disease but they ruin a hike.
The sneakiest ones are in the tropics and are the species that spread malaria and other disease.
For real, those “wild” mosquitoes will land even on moving limbs and keep sucking without you noticing. I consider myself an expert mosquito assassin but even I fear them.
It would need to be us that needs to evolve away from being sensitive to mosquito saliva. But our immune system went the other way to be allergic to it so we could defend against any infection or disease the bug might carry. Further proof of human stupidity in our evolution, that we trigger the defense mechanism after the the attack instead of preventing it.
They have, the ones that irritate you either make an error or your body has a bad reaction to something in their bite.
The mosquito likely evolved to try, but the body evolves to defend just the same. Your irritation is your own body’s immune response after all.
Biological arms race
From what I know, when a mosquito stings you, it injects some stuff that prevents the area from hurting, probably so that you wouldn’t notice it, but the said stuff also makes the stings super itchy. I’m not completely sure about this though.
Right, you don’t feel the bite. They fly away, and then you start to itch. Most of the time they’re done and give before you notice
Most mosquito bites I get I don’t find out about until hours later.
You can feel a mosquito feeding on you?
i can, often. you can’t?
I did not know there were people who could not feel this 😬
If I remember correctly, mosquito mouth/tip is so especially made. That it does not cause any pain when it pokes through the skin. Some scientist even manage to use that to create needles that mimic the same behavior.
I am sure I read somewhere that they defecate in the hole after they have drawn blood and that is what causes the irritation. That does not sound as if they are particularly worried about being regarded as annoying, in fact it feels like they see it as a bonus.
That sounds completely made up. Why would they do that?
I definitely had that as vaguely factual, I thought heavy from blood they lightened the load before flying off and the hole was a too tempting target plus they enjoyed the symbolism. I asked ChatGPT and it said it was made up and was quite sneering about it so I suppose that is that.
You might be conflating with the housefly which will throw up on food it lands on because the enzymes break it down so they can suck it up.
Dominance.
My understanding is that when they bite you, they also inject a bit of anticoagulant to prevent clotting as they suck blood out. The foreign material creates an allergic reaction that itches.
I don’t think there would be much of an evolutionary advantage to irritating your victim until they start a pesticidal war against you and your kind.
They just seemed to have the correct attitude to do it anyway.
The real question is at the evolutionary level which is, what the fuck do the little assholes get out of making their bite a slight irritation?
A tick can bury its head in the tip of dick, spend days sucking so much blood it’s an engorged blimp. Assuming I am blind and my arms are too short to reach my dick, the thing could be there for years and I would have no fucking clue it was there unless I got lime disease or someone else sees it.
Hyperbolic scenario with the whole dick tip thing but I have gotten back from hunting. Saw what looked like a scratch on my neck line, thought it was weird cuz I didn’t remember any prickers scratching me. Fast forward 3 days and I look in the mirror and see what looks like a skin tag. I’m like what the fuck, grab tweezers and rip it off to learn it was a fuckin tick sucking on my jugular for days. They are like the opposite of the mosquito, the tick releases a numbing agent or something so you don’t even feel the bite or the tick the whole time its on you.
Tldr: mosquitoes r dum 4 itching. Ticks r pros at stealth biting.
