Ever wondered how a mosquito bites you? It looks like it just sticks a needle into you and sucks your blood doesn’t it? Well that was what I thought anyways.

It turns out, it is not that simple. First of all, only the female mosquitoes will seek out your tasty blood. I found this out while I was in Thailand when I reacted to a mosquito bite on my arm. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, it happened when I was back at home in Melbourne too. So I searched it up to see if this huge tough swell on my arm was anything serious. That was when I read only female mosquitoes sucks your blood for egg development.

Among the prepared slides I purchase, there is one of a female mosquito mouth. So I thought I would have a closer look and search up for more information on the internet. So it turns out, a mosquito uses six needles to suck out your blood.

SIX SHARP NEEDLES!!!!

I tried to look for the six needles under the microscope and I could not distinguish them because of the protective sheath protecting them which I initially thought were two needles.

This illustration shows the six needlelike mouthparts that female mosquitoes use to bite people. Usually sheathed by a flexible tube, the weapons include two maxillae (blue) to saw into the skin and two mandibles (yellow) to hold the tissues apart as the maxillae saw. The bugs drool saliva into humans with the hypopharynx (green) and suck up blood with the labrum (red).

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Look at it sawing away, dam nasty buggers. You can also see the protective sheath bending to expose the needles and have them do their work.

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As a female mosquito's gut fills up with blood, she filters the nutritious red blood cells from the fluid and excretes the water.

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I found this most interesting but at the same time made me feel annoyed at how greedy they are just so they can take as much of your blood and leave what they don’t want on your skin.

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Searching further, it appears the prepared slide may have been labelled incorrectly as a female when it looks to be a male instead.

Male mosquitoes have more flagella or fine hairs on their antennae, so many so that it appears noticeably bushy to the naked eye. These flagella are important to a male mosquito’s hearing, which comes in handy when the male is looking for female mosquitoes—his primary interest.1

A female mosquito’s antennae are less bushy and contain several odor receptors that help her target blood sources so that she can reproduce—her primary interest.

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What do you think?
Do you think the specimen is a female or male?

Note: Don't be fooled by the length of the palps, some female species do have long palps.
Although, if it is a female, I would hate to see how bushy the male antenna is. Because this one is pretty bushy to me.