Everyone is happy about the arrival of summer: both children and adults. The weather is warm, the day is getting longer, which means you can stay on the street much longer than in winter. You just have to wait until the sun begins to lean towards the horizon, as a real nightmare begins! Clouds of some small winged creatures, which eagerly seek to suck all the blood out of us, are flying over us. Especially a lot of them can be found near a river, lake or in another place with high humidity.
Fortunately, many products are being produced today to repel these insects. These are all kinds of creams, gels, ointments, sprays, fumigants. Their help is invaluable. But who is still biting us? It turns out that not only mosquitoes are capable of this.
Who drinks our blood?
All small dipteran insects that feed on human blood are collectively referred to as the vulture. It can be both mosquitoes and various midges, biting midges, horseflies. They drink not only human blood, they also like the red liquid of warm-blooded animals. All of them are most active in the first half of summer.
Gnus is a combined team of thousands of species of mosquitoes, and hundreds of species of midges, horseflies and mokrets. Very unpleasant guys. Depending on the area of residence, the vulture, whose photo you see at the top, may have a different species composition.
Mosquitoes
Human or animal blood mosquitoes like to feast on at dusk. Moreover, we are talking only about females and only after mating, which during its short life (30-40 days) is repeated many times. They need blood for laying eggs, which occurs every two or three days. Each clutch is from 30 to 200 eggs.
A female can smell an accumulation of animals or people at a distance of two or three kilometers. Before the meal starts, the female mosquito injects her saliva into the victim’s skin, which prevents blood clotting, and subsequently causes itching and swelling or an allergic reaction. A bite of a gnus can also cause an allergic reaction. Males feed exclusively on plant juices, so their numerous accumulations near the water are not at all dangerous.
Bells
These are the smallest of the two-winged blood-sucking insects. From midges, they are mainly distinguished by the size of the body and the length of the wings. Sometimes their size does not even exceed one millimeter. Biting birds like to settle in places with high humidity. They especially prefer stagnant water bodies, wetlands. Sometimes a person is attacked immediately by 10 thousand biting midges. Their bites are very burning.
Biting midges are especially active in the morning, in the evening, and in very cloudy weather. They do not like heat, the optimum temperature for them is 18 ° C. In most forests, where it is dark and cool, they can attack even during the day. Due to their meager size, these insects are able to easily penetrate under clothing. In the afternoon, biting midges are found in grass, bushes, and tree crowns. Rarely fly into a person’s home.
Midge
If you see insects around you, strikingly similar to flies, but having much smaller sizes, then you see a midge. The gnus, among which there is a midge, is very bloodthirsty. It happened that an animal or person in a forest was overtaken by a group of several thousand of these insects. These insidious creatures can even penetrate clothing.
Biting midges, like mosquitoes, in the morning, evening or in the middle of a cloudy day. During the bite, they inject their analgesic saliva, which subsequently causes severe burning and swelling. Moshka is mainly found near fast-flowing rivers.
Gadgets
Horseflies are the largest representatives of blood-sucking dipteran insects, which are commonly called vultures. These are large insects, the average size of which is two to three centimeters, but six-centimeter individuals are also found. They are often confused with gadflies. Only females drink blood, going hunting on sunny, hot days.
The bites of these insects are extremely painful due to the fact that they let their poisonous saliva under the skin. In one sitting, a female horsefly can drink as much blood as 70 mosquitoes or 4, 000 biting midges drink. These insects got their name because during the bite they completely do not notice the threat hanging over them.
