The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

by Jeff Goodell

It landed on her exposed flesh, likely her arm or lower leg. The mosquito was a female—only females drink blood, which they need to produce their eggs. It worked quickly, knowing, in the genetic coding of its insect brain, that the longer it lingered the less likely it was to survive. First, it spit on Jones’s skin to numb it so she wouldn’t be alerted to the bite. Then it plunged its syringelike proboscis, which is actually a sheath containing six needles, into Jones’s skin. It probed around until it found an ideal place to tap into a blood vessel. Then it inserted two needles, each one serrated like a carving knife, to saw a hole in Jones’s flesh. Two more needles pried the hole open, which allowed it to insert what looks like a tiny hypodermic syringe into Jones’s blood vessel. And here is the important part: as it sucked out the blood, the mosquito spit its own saliva into Jones’s veins, which contains an anticoagulant that prevents the blood from clotting at the puncture site. In this case, it also contained a virus that causes a tropical disease called dengue fever. When its appetite was sated and its belly full of blood, the mosquito flew off.