From what I know, when a mosquito stings you, it injects some stuff that prevents the area from hurting, probably so that you wouldn't notice it, but the said stuff also makes the stings super itchy. I'm not completely sure about this though.
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2025
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The mosquito likely evolved to try, but the body evolves to defend just the same. Your irritation is your own body's immune response after all.
I hate mosquitoes. I'm one of the people that feel them bite nearly every time, it is painful and the bite they leave behind swells and itches. I've clawed skin off because of how irritating it feels. I'll go outside and they naturally gravitate towards me versus others. Existence is pain.
I am the same, blood brother. ✊
Hell yeah ✊
Vitamin B-2 in high doses is your friend! You literally cannot overdose on the stuff, and you'll start sweating it out. You'll know it is working when your skin smells faintly like the B-12 tablets. At that point all the mosquitos, ticks, fleas, and chiggers can smell is the riboflavin seeping out your pores. Since the biting insects can't smell your blood, they don't bite! They will still crawl on you, so check each other for ticks, fleas, etc. when you come out of tall grass/ wooded areas.
I take a multivitamin with B-12 (folate) that also has riboflavin (B-2) in them. I also eat fortified cereal (has a bunch of folate in it too btw) with fortified soy milk since I've always had anemia and need all the vitamins I can get. My doctor has looked over my levels before and said it was all normal but I can look into it again. Thanks for the tip.
B-2 then not B-12. You want riboflavin. I always mix those two up.
O blood eh?
It's not O. I keep forgetting which one I am but I know it is not O.
I have type -O and have never experienced the itching the previous commenter indicated. I also rarely get bitten, thanks to vitamin B-2
They have! For the most part you don't even notice mosquitoes biting you until after they're long gone, the part that itches is from the mosquitoes saliva that is left behind! They have evolved to the point that you should never even feel them sticking their proboscis into you so if you actually catch one biting you it's probably because something went wrong or you just happened to see it land
It would need to be us that needs to evolve away from being sensitive to mosquito saliva. But our immune system went the other way to be allergic to it so we could defend against any infection or disease the bug might carry. Further proof of human stupidity in our evolution, that we trigger the defense mechanism after the the attack instead of preventing it.
Does vary by mosquito species but yeah for the most part.
Alpine mosquitoes with shorter seasons tend to have swarming strategy, they're loud and you notice when they land on you. It's just that there's about 1-200 of them flying about you so lots will still be successful. These ones mostly don't spread disease but they ruin a hike.
The sneakiest ones are in the tropics and are the species that spread malaria and other disease.
If you're aware enough, you can feel one landing on you. Easier to do if you're aware there's one in the room and you try to focus. No real way for them to evolve around that.
You only feel the ones that you can feel. The goddamn ninja mosquitoes permeate the air we breathe. They're constantly feeding on us — sapping our life force — and we never even notice.
They’re more like goddamn vampire mosquitoes, as they drink our blood
Well duh. It takes a ninja to sense a ninja. Visit your local dojo to learn more!
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If only they evolved to not emit high pitch irritating noise.
Honestly, I can see it being a selective trait too. Surely loud mosquitos get detected and killed more often
This might be an evolutionary war, since it's plausible, that detecting mosquitos led to less infestations and thereby to a higher survival rate.
Mosquitoes are not a big problem for me, and their bites do not make me itch.
My kid, however.. mosquitoes just swarm him, and the poor thing swells up when he's bitten.
Shove 500-1000 mg of vitamin B-2 down the kids throat every day. In less than a week, they'll stop getting bitten at all.
I've noticed that too. When out with friends, some people get bitten more than their fair share.
It's genetics. We produce some oil or something that mosquitos smell. And some people produce more then others.
Basically bad luck.
I have hypohidrosis, so that might affect it?
It depends on blood type. They prefer O’s and +’s
O+ here and I am the magnet.
O- and got swarmed as a kid. A fucking cloud around me and only me :-/
Got bitten so much I developed a resistance or something so there's that!
Have heard that blood type (O) but not about rhesus (- or +) attracts the bastards.
A is their second favourite after O, IIRC.
Yep my mum is AB+ and she is the magnet if I'm not on holiday with them :)
I'm so delicious I manage to protect the full villa.
mosquito bites are epic
You can feel a mosquito feeding on you?
i can, often. you can't?
I did not know there were people who could not feel this 😬
Well of course, and if the cases you don't feel it in the moment, you inevitably feel it a minute later
They have, the ones that irritate you either make an error or your body has a bad reaction to something in their bite.
Their needle is actually 6 different appendages. Shit is highly evolved
I didn't give consent to be penetrated by those appendages.
Evolution doesn't work that way. They don't evolve X because of Y. They develop essentially random mutations, and the ones that make them fitter for survival get passed on to their offspring. They don't get to decide that they don't want you to itch and then evolve that ability.
It's a common rhetorical shortcut to anthropomorphize evolution. Doing so doesn't necessarily indicate that the writer doesn't understand how evolution works. It's just cumbersome to repeat an explanation of random mutation and natural selection in every discussion of evolved trait.
Neither creatures nor evolution get to "decide" to develop a trait but, as countless evolutionary arms races show, useful traits and refinements do tend to happen in a way that evokes a sense of conscious decision making.
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