Only the females bite and only then because they need the blood to make eggs. The welts they give you are your bodies reaction to the saliva they inject in you to make your blood flow. No, this is not an erotic vampire script, it is the facts of what mosquitoes do to you. What is worse is that the really dangerous disease carrying mosquitoes have acquired a taste for humans.

The threat that mosquitoes can pose to the unprepared can be well out of proportion to their size. They are just a part of summer as watermelons and sunburns but with all the rain we have been having everywhere this summer, they are multiplying in large numbers in that old bucket round back your house.

Mosquitoes are found in every state on every continent except Antarctica. 2012 has been a very good year for the bug because there really wasn’t a snowy winter this year. So, the experts at Rockefeller University Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior in New York City are trying to find out exactly why and how mosquitoes hunt for humans.

Because of the mild winter in the northeast this winter there are a lot of predictions that came true this year that there will be a high population of mosquitoes and with that comes more diseases being transmitted. They are mobile needles full of diseases at your service delivered right to your blood stream no charge.

The Anopheles mosquito spreads Malaria and prefers humans over other animals and have been found in the mid west of America.

 

The Aedes Aegypti mosquito is found mostly in the south east and is the Dengi Fever carrier.

Culex Pipiens mosquito is the carrier of West Nile virus that can be found coast to coast according to Rutgers University.

The tiny needle packing predators are attracted to your smell. Your sweet smell; and if they get to taste your blood and decide it is sweet like the blood of a diabetic, a person with higher levels of sugar in their blood, you can be more appetizing to a hungry mosquito who can typically smell your sweetness from 50 yards away.

The researchers have developed a respect for the tiny insect and so has the CDC the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency was created in 1946 to fight Malaria and while Malaria has all been wiped out in the United States, there has been reported more than 700 cases of the West Nile Virus for last year alone. So, in places like Fairfax County in Virginia, outside Washington DC, they keep a close eye on mosquito traps.

Many are suffering with not being able to walk from the nerve damage West Nile Virus can do to your legs. There are reports of children playing, get a mosquito bite and this case was a 5 year old girl who got the rare Eastern Equine Encephalitis Virus or known as the triple E Virus near their home in South Boston. The child seemed to have flue like symptoms and then within 24 hours she was having seizures and after a week life support was suggested to be stopped and she died. Adrianna Nicole Owing was buried on the day she was to begin kindergarten. Her parents have become full time advocates for skin care repellents.

Still, death by mosquito is extremely rare in the United States. In 2010 just over one hundred people died from mosquito borne diseases. The number would be higher if not for the aggressive mosquito control where like in the Lee County Florida Control District is the largest in Florida and probably in the country where they monitor mosquito viruses.

There they have a dozen air crafts that cover the 1,200 square mile county spraying mosquito larvae that is there wherever there is standing water.

In Florida where the insects naturally thrive it is about more than public health. It is about promoting tourism. If they can get the mosquito population way down the tourist season goes from 2 months a year to 12 months a year. Bottom line, protect yourself and empty any standing water around you unless you like living dangerously.