The Menace!

Would mosquitoes have evolved to be sensitive to compression waves? The kind caused by clap/slap, the age-old tool to fight their incessant buzzing and piercing. They do scoot by very fast when we hastily compress the air to get to them. Or is it simply because they are agile and nimble and/or we need a lesson or two from The Terminator? I did my research and found no studies on mosquitoes and compression waves, but how cool would that have been. Imagine clinging onto a woofer, playing some tunes as it drives off the pesky arthropods. 

I learned something else, though, from a 2018 study published in Current Biology. Mosquitoes, creatures with an elevated sensory system to locate human beings, connect the vibrations from a clap/slap to the sweat of the human being and avoid them for at least a day. 

Hmm..interesting and unsettling. 

So you are saying that the clap/slap does work in some way. But you are also saying that, at a time, there is not just one but several of these hooligans out to get me?! That the one I just shooed away from my arm is not the same as the one biting my ankle right now?

And here is another one - there is an invasive species of mosquitoes that have evolved “a taste for humans” and “prefer the human odor” over other animals.

Ouch!

<<Now there’s one on my thighs!>> The menace!

So…Evolution, let me ask you…
Why you do this? 
There are too many of them and too few of us. 
This is not how you are supposed to work!
I don’t want to scamper around for eternity with flailing arms. 
At least do something about the woofers. 
Please.

<<begging, groveling, pleading>> Ouch! $%#!!!!! The tenacious jerks with those bloodshot eyes!

Out for my blood!