This is Scientific American ― 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.It's bad enough that mosquitoes suck our blood, and sometimes pass on disease. But there's more."They can actually give you a disease and pee on you at the same time. Adding insult to injury if you will."Jerod Denton, a pharmacologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center."If you look up almost any picture on Google of a mosquito taking a blood mealyou'll see a clear drop of fluid hanging out of the rear end of the mosquito.That's actually the urine the mosquito has made from your blood."That pee production is vital to the mosquito's survival. Because blood is salty."And as these mosquitoes digest the red blood cells to get at the proteins and other nutrients hiding there,they release potassium chloride which can cause depolarization of the membrane potential of excitable cells and induce 'excitotoxic death.'"Translation: not good.So mosquitoes and other bloodsuckers have evolved a rapid diuretic processto expel salt from their bodies, using kidney-like structures.Basically, while still sucking blood, they start peeing.But Denton and his colleagues found a way to block all that.They developed a chemical compound that blocks the bugs' salt-ejecting pores, "sort of like a cork in a bottle."So when the skeeters come in contact with the compound, they swell up―and stay that way."And in some cases we can actually see the abdomen rupture, because they've basically overfilled with food."
