Do mosquitos really have teeth?
Not the same kind of teeth we do. The mosquito’s mouth looks like a hollow hyperdermic needle to us, but actually there’s a whole Swiss-Army kit of tools in there that the mosquito uses to get their blood meal. There are a pair of mandibles that are like long, straight blades – used like a pair of scalpels or scissors to slice a tiny hole in the skin. Then there’s a pair of maxillae, which have serrated tips. The mosquito saws these back and forth in the wound to make the hole bigger. It’s at the tip of these maxillae that the mosquito has “teeth” – which are more like the serrations on a steak knife. In a few species, the shape, size and number of these teeth are used to identify the species. Once the hole is cut, the mosquito injects a double-tubed system that looks a little like an over/under shotgun in cross section. The lower tube of this system (the hypopharynx) injects anticoagulant saliva, while the upper tube sucks up the blood. The whole assemblage of tools is sheathed in a t
