When female mosquitoes bites their proboscis through your skin. They can suck some of your blood to be later used to make eggs, they inject you with some of their saliva. The saliva injected into your body helps them to drink your blood more quickly, because it contains a group of anticoagulants. Once the female mosquito is full up of your blood or is disturbed, she flies away, leaving some of her saliva behind on your skin. Your body then kicks your immune system in gear as a response to the presence of this saliva. It produces various antibodies which in turn binds to the antigens in the mosquito’s saliva. This triggers the release of histamine. Histamine is a nitrogen compound that, among other things, triggers an inflammatory response. It also helps white blood cells and other proteins to engage invaders in your body by making the capillaries of these cells more permeable. Bottom line, the histamine ends up making the blood vessels near the bite swell up. This produces a pink, itchy bump where the mosquito poked you.
Scratching the bump only makes this worse because it causes more irritation and inflammation of the sight, resulting in your immune system thinking it needs more antibodies to get rid of the foreign protein. So the more you scratch, the more it will swell; the itchier it will get; and the longer it will last
Some interesting facts about mosquitoes:
1. There are more mosquitoes on this planet than humans. It’s probably not surprising that mosquitos outnumber humans. There are 100 trillion tiny buzzing vampires from 3,450 different species ready to suck your blood. To give you an idea of what exactly that number looks like, if 100 trillion mosquitoes were stacked together on a football field, the pile would reach more than three miles high.
2. Your blood helps create MORE mosquitoes. Only female mosquitoes bite, because blood provides the protein that mosquito eggs need for development. Consider yourself a walking bottle of mosquito baby formula. Yuck.
3. Mosquitoes think you smell nice. It’s true! And it’s not just your fancy perfume. Mosquitos are attracted to the scents emitted by humans including carbon dioxide, lactic acid and natural skin oils. Mosquitoes even change their flight pattern depending on what they smell, like a heat-seeking missile.
4. Mosquitoes inject you with their saliva. Before sucking your blood, the female mosquito injects you with her saliva, which contains an anticoagulant, allowing your blood to flow freely into her. If you’re wondering how mosquitoes transmit diseases – this is how. The little red bump you get from a mosquito bite is actually your body’s reaction to a protein contained in mosquito saliva.
5. Mosquitoes transmit deadly diseases. You could say that giving people diseases is a mosquito’s favorite hobby. Mosquitoes are solely to blame for the propagation of Malaria, which affects 300 million people every year. The only way to get Malaria is from a mosquito bite. Mosquitoes also transmit West Nile Virus, commonly seen in the US. The Center for Disease Control claims that since 1999 more than 30,000 people in the United States have become sick with the West Nile Virus from mosquito bites. Both Malaria and West Nile Virus can be fatal.
1. There are more mosquitoes on this planet than humans. It’s probably not surprising that mosquitos outnumber humans. There are 100 trillion tiny buzzing vampires from 3,450 different species ready to suck your blood. To give you an idea of what exactly that number looks like, if 100 trillion mosquitoes were stacked together on a football field, the pile would reach more than three miles high.
2. Your blood helps create MORE mosquitoes. Only female mosquitoes bite, because blood provides the protein that mosquito eggs need for development. Consider yourself a walking bottle of mosquito baby formula. Yuck.
3. Mosquitoes think you smell nice. It’s true! And it’s not just your fancy perfume. Mosquitos are attracted to the scents emitted by humans including carbon dioxide, lactic acid and natural skin oils. Mosquitoes even change their flight pattern depending on what they smell, like a heat-seeking missile.
4. Mosquitoes inject you with their saliva. Before sucking your blood, the female mosquito injects you with her saliva, which contains an anticoagulant, allowing your blood to flow freely into her. If you’re wondering how mosquitoes transmit diseases – this is how. The little red bump you get from a mosquito bite is actually your body’s reaction to a protein contained in mosquito saliva.
5. Mosquitoes transmit deadly diseases. You could say that giving people diseases is a mosquito’s favorite hobby. Mosquitoes are solely to blame for the propagation of Malaria, which affects 300 million people every year. The only way to get Malaria is from a mosquito bite. Mosquitoes also transmit West Nile Virus, commonly seen in the US. The Center for Disease Control claims that since 1999 more than 30,000 people in the United States have become sick with the West Nile Virus from mosquito bites. Both Malaria and West Nile Virus can be fatal.
