Do all mosquitoes carry diseases? Detailed answer

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Do all mosquitoes carry diseases? Detailed answer

Big encyclopedia for children and adults

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Do all mosquitoes carry diseases?

Has it ever happened that you were on a hike or for a walk, and suddenly a swarm of mosquitoes suddenly swooped in and spoiled your whole vacation? These little creatures not only interfere with our rest, but can even make us feel unhappy due to their incessant raids. For a long time, people considered mosquitoes to be just an annoying nuisance and nothing more. But only towards the end of the century did we begin to realize that they were also dangerous.

Some scientists suspected that mosquitoes carried diseases, but they had no real evidence. Then it was proved that certain types of mosquitoes carry worms that cause elephantiasis - a terrible tropical disease, and other mosquitoes are carriers of malaria and yellow fever.

As a result of these discoveries, scientists began to seriously study mosquitoes. They described their varieties, learned about their life and developed ways to observe them. For example, we currently know that there are about a thousand species of mosquitoes. While mosquitoes are generally found throughout the world, some species can be found anywhere, while others can only be found in certain regions.

One of them is anopheles and related species, which are known as carriers of malaria. Anopheles has black spots on its wings. In a calm state, his head is lowered, and the proboscis and torso form a straight line.

There is another type of mosquito that poses a significant danger. This is aedes, which spreads yellow fever. This mosquito has white stripes around the legs and also across the back. In a calm state, his proboscis is located at an angle to the body. It is best to avoid encounters with mosquitoes! Systematic drainage of swamps and the use of insecticides help control these harmful insects.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

Why do flowers have a smell and color?

It's strange, but often we admire the "flowers" of some plant, not knowing that these are not flowers at all! If we believe that flowers are something brightly colored that has grown on a plant, then we are deeply mistaken.

For example, the "petals" of a dogwood flower that bloom in the spring are not petals at all.

On the other hand, the bearded tassels at the tip of the grass are flowers! An unripe ear of corn is also a flower. Botanists define a flower as a part of a plant intended to produce pollen or seeds, or both. Only plants that reproduce by seed have flowers. And only those parts of the plant that are directly related to the formation and maturation of seeds can be considered as belonging to the flowers.

Why do flowers smell? Flowers are scented by the presence of certain oils on the petals. These oils are produced by the plant and are an integral part of its growth. Such oils have a complex structure. Under certain conditions, this structure decomposes and forms a volatile oil, which evaporates quickly. When this happens, we smell the scent that the flower gives off.

The different smells that flowers give off depend on the chemical elements of the volatile oils, and their combination creates different scents. Incidentally, these same oils are present not only in plant flowers, but also in leaves, bark, roots, fruits, and seeds. For example, these oils in lemon and orange are in the fruits, in almonds in the seeds, in cinnamon in the bark, and so on.

Why do flowers have color? "Anthocyanin" - the so-called pigments that give colors red, lilac, blue, purple and other shades. These pigments are dissolved by the juice of the flowers. Other colors, such as yellow, orange, green, are formed due to other pigments. These include chlorophyll, carotene and others. These pigments have different chemical structures.

So, the coloring of flowers depends on the presence of pigments "anthocyanins" and "plastids". Some pigments provide one color, others another.

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Random news from the Archive

Sleep duration depends on genes 18.12.2014

Sleep duration and diabetes may be linked by genes that affect both sleep and metabolism.

It is believed that normally we should sleep an average of eight hours a day. However, exactly what is "on average" - all people are different, and someone sleeps longer, someone less. Of course, it depends on many things: how tired we are, what we ate, how our health is, etc. Obviously, the duration of sleep also depends on genes, but so far no one has such genes in our DNA. searched.

Researchers from the Center for Sleep Disorders in Boston (USA), led by Daniel Gottlieb, analyzed the genetic data of more than 50 people and compared them with the usual duration of a night's sleep for everyone. As a result, two regions in the genome were identified that could be said with great certainty that they affect how much we sleep. In an article in Molecular Psychiatry, the authors write that one of them is associated with more and the other with less sleep. But it is very rare for a gene to be associated with only one trait. Here it turned out that the "long sleep zone" also improves glucose metabolism and reduces the likelihood of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a neurological-behavioral developmental disorder beginning in childhood that manifests itself as difficulty concentrating, hyperactivity, and poorly controlled impulsivity.) The 'sleep zone' is known to be associated with a high risk of depression and schizophrenia. The LiveScience portal writes briefly about the results.

The fact that too long or too short sleep accompanies various diseases has been discussed in the scientific world for a long time. For example, a year ago, an article appeared in Sleep magazine describing the harmful effects of "abnormal" sleep. According to them, if you sleep less than six or more than ten hours a day, then you, along with a nervous breakdown, may have problems with the heart, blood vessels and metabolism. There are other works on this topic, and, for example, the relationship between relatively short sleep and type XNUMX diabetes (not to mention neuropsychiatric disorders) has been repeatedly traced in various medical studies.

However, it should be remembered that in such cases they mean correlation, the coincidence of parameters, so that in fact it cannot be argued that it was the lack of sleep that caused diabetes - at least until we understand the physiological mechanism connecting them. After all, it may turn out that both obesity with diabetes and too little sleep are the result of the same mutation. And just genetic research is indispensable here.

On the other hand, it remains to be seen how exactly the aforementioned zones of long and short sleep affect its duration. Daniel Gottlieb and his colleagues believe that in the case of a zone of long sleep, it is worth paying attention to thyroid hormone (or thyroid hormone). A piece of DNA that increases sleep duration is located next to the PAX8 gene, which affects the development of the thyroid gland. Nearby regions of the genome often influence each other; in this case, this effect is supported by the fact that people with a poorly functioning thyroid gland develop increased drowsiness, while an overactive gland and too high a level of thyroid hormone are accompanied by insomnia. So far, these are only assumptions that require direct experimental verification. The authors of the work themselves emphasize that, when exploring the genetic causes of too long or too short sleep, it is always worth remembering how strong the influence of external factors is here, from ecology to our habits.

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