Just a random shower thought.
Mosquito’s proboscis is sharp enough to penetrate your skin. So when you smack it while it is in the process of drawing your blood, isn’t there a chance of its proboscis being forcefully jammed into your skin, leading to some sort of “splinter”? Or does it somehow loses its stiffness the moment it feels the impact?
I’ve never encountered nor heard of such occurrence in my lifetime of killing those buggers, but wondering if such a thing is even possible. If such could happen, I could only imagine the risk associated with having a piece of foreign organic matter being embed in the body
This is a noted issue with Ticks. When removing them, unless you do it properly, you may end up with the mouthparts left embedded in your skin.. However, even with those, the body will usually deal with it without too many problems.
Mosquito proboscii are much smaller and so I would not anticipate any issues for anyone with a functioning immune system to deal with without ever noticing.
You do have to be careful with them, though. Manhandling them and ripping their heads off can cause them to vomit tainted blood back into your body, which can be filled with different diseases depending on the region and type of tick. Lone star ticks (which can cause that odd red meat allergy) and lyme-disease come to mind, but there are other bad things like rocky mountain spotted fever, too.
Oh, ticks are rare in my region, that’s why I have no prior experience with them.
I was thinking in the context of us slapping the mosquito would be equivalent to slamming a thumbtack into your skin which could increase the damage dealt and penetration depth.
I’d say this is plausible, but not a huge risk. A healthy individual won’t have trouble either breaking it down or expelling the foreign matter when the flesh heals (like wooden splinters often do).
I’m not an expert, though, and I’d love for one to chime in on this subject!
I had this happen to me when I was a kid. I was able to get it out with tweezers pretty easily though. It was so small I highly doubt it would have caused issues outside of itching.
One time I fell into a thorn bush then weeks later after I the bad cut on my hand was healed but it was still itchier than that one spot on a dog’s butt they can’t quite reach. It was driving me nuts, I kept scratching and scratching then out shot a thorn that was almost 2 cms long.
Long gross way to say: Our bodies are really good at homeostasis, it’s why tattoos fade
Had to look up homeostasis… Seems like a big umbrella term for many different things. 🤷♂️ I am none the wiser after 30 seconds of skimming.
Homeostasis is a giant catch-all term for normalizing things in or about the body. In this context, something foreign is introduced to the body (thorn or the tattoo ink) which is affecting the “normal”(equalibrium) state of the body. The body will then do its best to return to this equilibrium, and in these cases, that involves expelling (thorn) or slowly removing (dye) the objects from the body.
I’m going off of memory, but homeostasis also covers our body temperature and chemicals. It’s why medical personnel can take blood and learn about issues; there is an expected range for everything to be in. Homeostasis is just that over-all term for “things should be this way”. There are dozens of equalizing processes under the term “homeostasis”.
Very interesting. Thank you for going into more detail for me! :-)
To put it another way, the mosquito beak won’t stay in your skin for long. A 2 cm thorn that got much deeper and healed over still got pushed out.
The body deals pretty well with tiny objects becoming embedded in the skin. Generally, the immune system breaks it down, and flushes it out of the body through the lymphatic system.
If the immune system can’t break it down, fluid will build up. Pus may expel it through the wound it made upon entry. If the wound heals over the object, an abscess may form. Fluid will collect in a pocket, like a pimple or boil. And like a pimple or boil, it will eventually pop, hopefully expelling the foreign object at the same time.
While we’re on the topic of mosquitos, is it true that if you flex your muscles while they are slurping away, that the change in pressure will cause them to explode?
