Everyone hates mosquitos. Besides the annoying buzzing and biting, mosquito-borne diseases like malaria kill over a million people each year (plus horses, dogs and cats). And over the past 100 million years, they’ve gotten good at their job — sucking up to three times their weight in blood, totally undetected. So shouldn’t we just get rid of them?
Watch the 00:00-1:13 excerpt of the video The loathsome lethal mosquito and fill in the gaps with the missing words:
You might 1. ………. for the horsefly or perhaps the wasp, but for many people the worst 2. ……….. is by far the mosquito. The buzzing, the biting, the itching, the mosquito is one of the most commonly 3. …………… pests in the world. In Alaska, 4. ……………. of mosquitos can get so thick that they actually asphyxiate caribou. And mosquito-borne diseases kill millions of people every year. The scourge that is the mosquito isn’t new. Mosquitos have been around for over a hundred million years and over that time have coevolved with all sorts of species, including our own. There are actually thousands of mosquitos in the world, but they all share one insidious quality: they suck blood and they’re really really good at sucking blood. 5. ………….. how they do it. After landing a mosquito will slather some 6. …………. onto the victim’s skin, which works like an antiseptic, 7. ………….. the spot so we don’t notice their attack. This is what causes the itchy red 8. …………, by the way. Then the bug will use its serrated mandibles to 9. ………….. a little hole in your skin, allowing it to probe around with its proboscis, searching for a blood vessel. When it hits one, lucky 10. ……………. can suck two to three times its 11. …………. in blood.
Key: 1. vote; 2. offender; 3. detested; 4. swarms; 5. Here’s; 6. saliva; 7. numbing; 8. bumps; 9. carve; 10. parasite; 11. weight
Glossary
- to asphyxiate – to be unable to breathe, usually resulting in death, or to cause someone to be unable to breathe; suffocate
- caribou – a large North American reindeer
- scourge – something or someone that causes great suffering or a lot of trouble
- insidious – unpleasant or dangerous and develops gradually without being noticed
- to slather – to spread something thickly on something else
- serrated – having a notched edge or sawlike teeth, especially for cutting
- mandible – jaw
- dengue – an infectious, eruptive fever of warm climates, usually epidemic, characterized especially by severe pains in the joints and muscles
- dastardly – evil and cruel
Practice makes perfect
Fill in the gaps in the article below with the proper form of the verbs in brackets. Use Present Simple, Present Perfect or Past Simple.
As you may have noticed, mosquitoes 1. …………… (not attack) everyone equally. Scientists 2. ………… (know) that the pests are drawn to people at varying rates, but they 3. …………… (struggle) to explain what 4. ………… (make) certain people “mosquito magnets” while others 5. ………… (get) off bite-free.
In a new paper published on October 18 in the journal Cell, researchers suggest that certain body odors 6. ……….. (be) the deciding factor. Every person has a unique scent profile made up of different chemical compounds, and the researchers found that mosquitoes 7. ……….. (be) most drawn to people whose skin produces high levels of carboxylic acids. Additionally, the researchers found that peoples’ attractiveness to mosquitoes 8. ………. (remain) steady over time, regardless of changes in diet or grooming habits.
“The question of why some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others—that’s the question that everybody 9. ……….. (ask) you,” says study co-author Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist and mosquito expert at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Rockefeller University. (…) To answer this question, Vosshall and her colleagues 10. ………… (gather) 64 participants and 11. ………. (have) them wear nylon stockings on their arms. After six hours, the nylons were imbued with each person’s unique smell. “Those nylons would not have a smell to me or, I think, to anyone really,” says Maria Elena De Obaldia, a senior scientist at the biotech company Kingdom Supercultures (…) Still, the stockings were certainly odorous enough to entice mosquitoes.
The researchers cut the nylons into pieces and placed two (from different participants) into a closed container housing female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. 12. ……. they …….. (migrate) to subject number one’s sample en masse or prefer the scent of subject number two’s? Or 13. ……. (be) both equally appealing? The researchers continued these head-to-head battles over several months, Vosshall says, collecting new samples from the participants as needed. When the tournament 14. ……. (be) over, the team 15. ……… (have) clear proof that some people were more attractive than others. (…)
In order to check your ansers/read the whole article, go to: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/some-people-really-are-mosquito-magnets-and-theyre-stuck-that-way
Key: don’t attack; 2. have known; 3. have struggled; 4. makes; 5. get; 6. are; 7. were; 8. remained; . 9. asks; 10. gathered; 11. had; 12. did they migrate; 13. were; 14. was; 15. had
Discuss:
- What springs to mind when you hear the word ‘mosquito’?
- What adjectives would you use to describe mosquitoes?
- What purpose do mosquitoes serve?
- What are more annoying, mosquitoes or flies?
- Do you ever observe a mosquito sucking your blood or do you swipe it instantly?
- How can you protect yourself against mosquitoes?
Explore more to create your own teaching-learning experience!
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