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Mosquito splinters (lemmy.cafe)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just a random shower thought.

Mosquito's proboscis is sharp enough to penetrate your skin. So when you smack it while it is in the process of drawing your blood, isn't there a chance of its proboscis being forcefully jammed into your skin, leading to some sort of "splinter"? Or does it somehow loses its stiffness the moment it feels the impact?

I've never encountered nor heard of such occurrence in my lifetime of killing those buggers, but wondering if such a thing is even possible. If such could happen, I could only imagine the risk associated with having a piece of foreign organic matter being embed in the body

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This is a noted issue with Ticks. When removing them, unless you do it properly, you may end up with the mouthparts left embedded in your skin.. However, even with those, the body will usually deal with it without too many problems.

Mosquito proboscii are much smaller and so I would not anticipate any issues for anyone with a functioning immune system to deal with without ever noticing.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

You do have to be careful with them, though. Manhandling them and ripping their heads off can cause them to vomit tainted blood back into your body, which can be filled with different diseases depending on the region and type of tick. Lone star ticks (which can cause that odd red meat allergy) and lyme-disease come to mind, but there are other bad things like rocky mountain spotted fever, too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Oh, ticks are rare in my region, that's why I have no prior experience with them.

I was thinking in the context of us slapping the mosquito would be equivalent to slamming a thumbtack into your skin which could increase the damage dealt and penetration depth.