During summer, mosquitoes are often considered a natural annoyance to the human population. Butler County Conservation Naturalist Annette Wittrock shares why they seek out blood to consume.
“Mosquitoes don’t actually bite us,” Wittrock says. “The females feed on nectar and blood, but they only need the protein in the blood when they have eggs and need to reproduce. So they actually pierce our skin with their proboscis, which they use to suck our blood. So no teeth, they’re not actually biting. So why does that bite itch later? Well, that’s our immune system doing its job of fighting an enzyme that the mosquito injects, which keeps our blood from clotting while she’s feeding. And then the males, we don’t have to worry about, because they only eat plant nectar. They’re of course the busiest at night and they will fly up to 14 miles to find a blood meal. They find animals by body heat and the carbon dioxide that they give off.”
Wittrock says the amount of precipitation throughout Butler County this summer has caused a growth of the mosquito population, providing an abundance of food for their predators.
“We have had clouds of mosquitoes this year because of all the rain and flooding, but they are a very reliable source of food for thousands of other animals. Lots of birds eat mosquitoes, especially during the spring and summer when they have all those young to feed. Mosquitoes are a good protein source for those babies. Bats, of course, are a big predator of mosquitoes. Each bat eats several hundred every night, so I wish we had more of them this summer. Dragonflies and frogs will eat them as well. And it’s important to note that humans are not a mosquito’s first choice for a blood meal. Those females actually prefer horses, cattle, and birds over us.”
Wittrock appeared on last week’s edition of Outdoors in North Iowa on 104.9 KLMJ.
