How Much Blood Can A Mosquito Drink?

When the tell-tale itch and swelling of a mosquito bite appears you can be sure that a female just made a meal out of you. Female mosquitoes, unlike their male counterparts, actually require the nutrition of blood for the development of their eggs—though they also dine on various sugars for sustenance as well. Without regular intakes of blood, a female mosquito’s ability to reproduce quickly diminishes due to the lack of protein. Male mosquitoes, on the other hand, make do just fine feeding on the nectar of plants. Even so, what can be considered a full course dining experience for a female mosquito is really not that much at all. For all the biting they do, mosquitoes are not the biggest eaters.

Female mosquito will suck about five millionths (or 0.000005) of a liter of blood in a single serving. It doesn’t take much at all to really fill a mosquito up, even if they can drink two to three times their body weight. Receptors in a female’s abdomen release chemicals that will tell a female when she has had enough and, when she’s done and on her way, she will look for a safe place to process the meal over the next few hours. Females do not rest for long though. The hunt for a new host begins once again after a female lays her eggs.

But, how many mosquitoes would it take to completely drain a human of all their blood? The common amount of blood that an adult human can carry varies anywhere from 4.7 to 5.5 liters of blood in their body. This, however, is all based on variables like weight and age. Given that females drink so little, the number of mosquitoes it would hypothetically take to suck someone dry can go upwards of 1,000,000.  Though the number of mosquitoes it would take to turn a human into a raisin varies, that is still a lot of mosquitoes. For More…