Mosquitoes Love To Chow On You For This One Gross Reason

Perhaps you can't relate. Maybe you're that annoying person who stands around at parties in shorts and a tank top making casual remarks about how mosquitoes don't bother you. How lovely for you. It's irritatingly true that some people seem to be blessed with natural mosquito repellent qualities. Others aren't that lucky — they can slather on the DEET, dress in long sleeves and jeans, and still walk away with millions of itchy welts.

If there's one life form on Earth that almost everyone could agree needs obliterating, it's mosquitos. Even a sensitive person who gently carries insects to the window or the door to let them out of the house might unleash unrestrained fury on a mosquito if it lands on the skin. Smack, blam, dead, hooray. At minimum, everybody would be a lot less itchy and a lot happier if this scourge against sanctity didn't exist, right?

So everybody loves mosquitos, right? Those cute, cuddly, swarming, biting, itchy insects that we'd all just love to slather on our bare, unclothed skin as soon as we eradicate our stockpile of bug repellant. Did that sentence make your skin crawl? Now add to the mix: the biotech industry, genetic engineering, sterility tests, population suppression, and lots of other terms that might conjure imagery of a sci-fi horror nightmare.

In the 21st century, this horrific illness is still a major problem across Africa and Latin America. Those who contract the virus exhibit flu-like symptoms along with the tell-tale yellowing of the skin and eyes. Unless the afflicted patient is very lucky, they will go on to experience internal bleeding and eventually organ failure. Yellow fever still kills between 20 to 50% of those who catch it, and for those who haven't been vaccinated, there is no known treatment available beyond waiting it out and praying for deliverance.