Videos show what happens when a mosquito bites your skin

If you are the kind of person who dies of distress when you see a little mosquito strolling around your head, perhaps the video below makes you a little less fan of these insects. National Geographic recently published a video showing a mosquito that, after biting the skin of an anesthetized rat, unsuccessfully searches for blood vessels.

The researchers made these images after microscopically observing how they bite the mosquitoes responsible for malaria transmission. It is amazing to see how flexible the structure of the insect penetrates the skin, wandering between mouse cells in a rather invasive way, allowing the mosquito to explore the area well without having to bite again.

The structure that the mosquito uses to penetrate a particular food-seeking region looks like a tiny tube at first, but it is actually formed by a complex pattern full of tools that allow the mosquito to perform movements like the ones you do. See in the pictures above.

This “tube” is made up of six main parts, four of which correspond to a pair of jaws and another of jaws. These four structures are tiny and superfine, but ensure the insect can puncture the skin. In the video, you can see these structures in more detail - they “peel off” the larger part that actually consists of two tubes in a channel called the hypopharynx. If you want to see what happens when a mosquito finally finds a blood vessel, watch the video below.