and
spit and suck. And there are even some species whose females
don’t even bite - they don’t bite at all! Hah! This has been the #1 most responded to question so far! Nice job all you BUG-Trivia fans out there. Most of the folks who answered thought mosquitoes bite to eat.
Some of you even took BUGMAN to task a little about the wording of the question. Since we think it is very important to be as precise and correct as possible (whenever we can!), we love it when you catch us!
R., age 22, from Georgia said: Mosquitoes do not bite. Mosquitoes do not have the mouthparts which would enable them to bite.
T.J., age 65, from New Athens, Illinois said: They do not bite they suck blood.
Whew! Tough crowd!
D., age 8, from Alvin, Texas & K.S.R., age 11, from Chico, California said: They bite to suck our blood.
Can’t argue with that!
And then a whole slew of ya’, including:
O., age 6, from Seattle, Washington, M., age 13, from somewhere, S.R., age 12 from Mildura, Victoria, S.J.R., age 62 from Nantucket, Massachusetts, M.R., age 18, from St. Helens, Oregon, S., age 7, from Sharon, Massachusetts (yea Heights Elementary School!!), C., age 12, from Waterloo, J.C., age 12, from Sharon, Massachusetts, and many others
all said that mosquitoes bite to get blood for nourishment and for food to survive!
J.S., age 15, from Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania said: Mosquitoes bite because the blood from a host is needed to reproduce. Since the mosquitoes produce sexually, only the female needs to find an animal to drink their blood. That way they are nourished and able to lay eggs, to insure (sic) that there will be another generation of "little" mosquitoes. The male mosquitoes do not bite. Only the females do. (Good answer...close...)
A., age 14, from Calgary, Alberta said: hmm...let me see...why do we eat?!?! Mosquitoes like... blood...they think it's yummy!! Without it they's die! But with it we could die to! You see
mosquitoes can bite more then one person! So if they bite someone with AIDS then well you got it!!
(even though this is what many people believe, thank goodness it just sin’t true. Check out this link for the real BUG-Facts.)
S.F., age 13 from Dayton, Ohio (yea Ohio!) said: Mosquitoes feed on blood. The mosquito uses its mouth parts to pierce the skin of an animal and inject a substance which prevents blood from clotting
(this is good, S.F. Here’s a lot more information about mosquitoes biting & sucking)
G.S., from Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington said: Because this is how they eat. They eat by sucking the blood from their victims. It's not really a bite either it is more like a poke because their noses are just like the needles that doctors use to take the blood from us.
(Hey, check out this cool info on how mosquitoes really "poke")
And finally, D., age 11, a homeschooler said: Females, and females ONLY, bite before they lay their eggs, so I'm assuming that it has something to do with the healthiness of the babies, or for food when they hatch.
But the winner for this question is Catlin, age 9, from Mascotte, Florida who said: they sip the victims blood, which they need for the development for the eggs inside their bodies.
(Way to go Catlin!)
Now there’s a batch of some really great answers! We, the BUG-People, are impressed!
Okay, here’s the answer according to BUGMAN (and our huge panel of experts)...
It’s true, mosquitoes bite to get blood. But not all
mosquitoes... Only the female mosquitoes bite. Well, perhaps
"bite" is not the best word for it, they
kind of stab and
spit and suck. And there are even some species whose females
don’t even bite - they don’t bite at all!
But if the male mosquitoes never bite and suck blood, and some mosquitoes don’t bite at all, they can’t be actually feeding on blood. So what do they eat?
Mosquitoes are nectar feeders. That means they eat the sweet, sugar water that plants make to attract pollinators. We like to think of it as Kool-Aid for animals! The nectar is actually flavored and each type of flower makes a different flavor. That’s why if you get clover honey it tastes different than, say, blackberry honey. (Honey is just nectar and pollen that bees eat, regurgitate, mix up with other bee stuff, and make honey from it. Yup, you heard right... honey is bee throw-up!) Mosquitoes eat nectar just like all those other animals we like so much - butterflies and hummingbirds and bees.
So why the vampire behavior? Female mosquitoes need blood meals to make the shells for their eggs! Mosquito eggs are sort of like chicken eggs (but obviously much smaller... imagine how big mosquitoes would be if they came out of eggs the size of chicken eggs! Run for your lives!). The eggs are surrounded by a hard shell. This shell is made out of protein. Most female mosquitoes cannot make this protein, so they take it from blood. Sometimes from our blood. But mosquitoes can get blood from just about any animal. Some are very picky about where they get their blood.
Just about everything about mosquitoes is fascinating (if not a little disgusting). One really cool thing is the way they bite. And since the babies live in water, they do all kinds of strange, unbelievable things. Some are even vicious predators. They eat a diet of other mosquito and various insect larvae, and even little fish and tadpoles - if they can catch them! In some cases, they even get enough protein to make egg shells. The truly beautiful Toxorhynchites rutilis is an example of a mosquito that would freak-out most people, because it’s huge. But it doesn’t bite as an adult, and it even eats other mosquitoes that do bite. And it is beautiful!
Mark Berman, 1999
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