To mosquitoes, some creatures – even some people – are tastier than others. We’ll find out why in a moment. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
With four thousand species of mosquitoes inhabiting regions all over the world, they’ve come to specialize in feeding on certain animals over others.
“Some mosquitoes would feed only on mammals. Some mosquitoes would feed only on birds. And some feed on reptiles and frogs.”
Varuni Kulasekera is a research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History. She tells us that mosquitoes have the ability to choose who or what they’re having for dinner.
“They have sensory organs on their antennae and on many parts of their body and they recognize from the sensory organs that they have. The legs, the antennae and there are small bristles and at the edge of the bristles they can have sensory organs.”
Mosquitoes use these sensory organs to detect such things like the temperature of the host, or the various kinds of chemicals which are released through the skin during digestion– information that helps them differentiate a bird from a snake from a human. And of the mosquitoes that take blood from humans, some have a particular appetite for particular types of people.
“Mosquitoes bite some people more than other people. And the reason for this may be the metabolism of the individuals and if people have high metabolism, they will give out more carbon dioxide and the mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide.”
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Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.