Ask Lemmy

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

they have. mostly you don't feel the bites until afterwards

They have, the ones that irritate you either make an error or your body has a bad reaction to something in their bite.

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.

Their needle is actually 6 different appendages. Shit is highly evolved

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.

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.

You can feel a mosquito feeding on you?

Painless Microneedle Inspired by Mosquitos

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.

Most mosquito bites I get I don’t find out about until hours later.

They didn't need to.

If you'd ever been really swarmed by mosquitoes or lived in a place where they are ever present you'd not be asking this question.

• When they swarm enough they are nearly impossible to avoid.
• When their presence is constant some people just stop reacting to the bites. I only ever notice mosquito bites on places that get chaffed (like the wrists and hands, around collars and cuffs). If they bite a place you wouldn't normally scratch and can avoid scratching the area after a bite, for some people a welt is much less likely to form.
• They don't go after only people. Your irritation at a few bites is nothing compared to the diversity in the evolutionary arms race between mosquitoes and their prey.
• Only the mothers feed on blood. Other mosquito eat mostly plant nectar.

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.

If I remember correctly, mosquito mouth/tip is so especially made. That it does not cause any pain when it pokes through the skin. Some scientist even manage to use that to create needles that mimic the same behavior.

They do a really shitty job of 'not irritating' your skin. They get it right half the time. The only biological success they've had in evolution is that they are so freaking numerous. Ask a northern Ontarian Indigenous person who grew up in rocky swamps ... you haven't seen mosquitoes until you've breathed in clouds of them.