IT’S NOT ANY MOSQUITO, NO
Pernilongo is a popular term for long-legged mosquitoes from the Culicidae family. The most common species in the world, Culex quinquefasciatus, measures up to 70 mm, weighs 1 mg and reaches up to 2.5 km/h in flight.
ALWAYS ALERT!
The males feed on the sugar present in the nectar and sap of the plants. Only females drink blood. They use their antennae (less furry than those of males) to sniff out “victims”, identifying substances in the air: the CO2 released by breathing indicates that there is blood nearby.
NIGHT VISION
As with other insects, the compound eyes of mosquitoes, made up of thousands of tiny lenses, are extremely sensitive to light, making it possible to fly in the dark.
BICO DE BICO
The lips hide a lethal weapon: the proboscis, a retractable needle that the female uses to pierce the skin of mammals and birds and suck their blood. The irritation and itching of the skin are not caused by the bite itself, but by the anesthetic and anticoagulant substances in the animal’s saliva.
OPEN VEINS
The heart is integrated into a system in which the insect’s blood, the hemolymph, circulates freely throughout the body. A single channel runs through the body, from the chest to the abdomen. At the rear, the canal divides into chambers, which contract to pump out the greenish-yellow liquid.
SIMPLE DIET
The digestive system is also a single duct, from the mouth to the anus. Saliva dissolves food at chest height and nutrients are absorbed in the abdominal area. In the rectum, 90% of the water in the feces is reabsorbed and this prevents the mosquito from dying of dehydration in extreme environments.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…
The hum is caused by frantic wingbeats, driven by the wing muscles – up to 300 beats per second. During flight, the front legs are shrunk and the hind legs are stretched backwards, increasing aerodynamic efficiency and boosting performance.
BLOOD OF YOUR BLOOD
Sex (copulation) between mosquitoes happens as soon as the female becomes an adult. As soon as the relationship ends, they go after blood to irrigate the ovaries, which produce up to 200 eggs per clutch. To incubate the young, the belly supports three times the weight of the insect.
LEGS, WHY I WANT YOU
The legs, light and long, facilitate flights and landings. As in other insects, they are composed of the coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia and tarsus. To stick to landing surfaces – our skin, for example – mosquitoes use claws called tarsal nails.
The red liquid you see when you hit a mosquito is probably your own blood!
Insect respiration dispenses lungs and blood to carry out gas exchange. oxygen enters through the trachea and goes straight to the cells.
A female can suck blood for more than ten minutes without stopping.
Read too:
– The gruesome anatomy of a zombie
– What is the anatomy of a spider?
Photograph: Frank Greenaway | Consultancy: Sirlei Antunes Morais, biologist at the Faculty of Public Health at USP and author of the blog mosquitoculex.blogspot.com; and Cláudio Von Zuben, biologist at Unesp-Rio Claro.