5 Creepy Creatures Out to Suck Your Blood | Deep Look

Chances are you’ve got one of these bloodsuckers lurking nearby. Mosquitoes, ticks, lice, kissing bugs and tsetse flies are all looking to grab a bite ... of you. See *exactly* how they do it and what you can do to stop them. 0:00 - Intro 0:16 - Mosquitoes 3:11 - Ticks 6:48 - Lice 10:13 - Kissing bugs 14:48 - Tsetse flies 👉Sign up for Deep Look's newsletter, Nature Unseen, here: https://bit.ly/NatureUnseenSignUp SUBSCRIBE to Deep Look! https://www.youtube.com/user/kqeddeeplook?sub_confirmation=1 Please JOIN our community on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/deeplook DEEP LOOK is an ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED in San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small. --- -Mosquitoes use six needlelike mouthparts to saw into our skin and tap a blood vessel. Sometimes they leave a dangerous parting gift in their saliva – a virus or parasite that can sicken and even kill us. -Ticks, on the other hand, dig into us using two sets of hooks. Their hooks wriggle into the skin and anchor the tick to us for the long haul, like mini harpoons. That’s why it’s hard to flick a tick. -Head lice can only move by crawling on human hair. They feed on our blood several times a day. The main way they get around is by simply crawling from one head to another using scythe-shaped claws. -In Latin America, five species of kissing bugs are largely responsible for infecting around 6 million people with the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes Chagas disease. The parasite enters people’s bodies when they rub the poop of an infected kissing bug into the bite wound or their eyes. -Tsetse flies, which are only found in Africa, feed exclusively on the blood of humans and other domestic and wild animals. As they feed, they can transmit microscopic parasites called trypanosomes, which cause sleeping sickness in humans and a disease called nagana in livestock. --- How do you remove a tick? Grab the tick close to the skin using a pair of fine tweezers and simply pull straight up. --- How do you kill lice? Lice have become resistant to over-the-counter insecticides, called pyrethrins and pyrethroids. Prescription treatments that contain the insecticides ivermectin and spinosad are effective. ---+ Find a transcript on KQED Science: https://www.kqed.org/science/1994611/5-creepy-creatures-out-to-suck-your-blood ---+ More great Deep Look episodes: Creepy Crawly playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Jw5ib-s_I&list=PLdKlciEDdCQBYF3x2RYLhPH0-tP_u2nRX Busy Bees and Other Pollinators playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjOfbEWVBpE&list=PLdKlciEDdCQCfoI8E24mbuk259unmiwG9 ---+ Shoutout! 🏆Congratulations🏆 to the following 5 fans, who were the first to correctly answer both questions in the GIF challenge we posted on our Deep Look Community Tab. The correct answer is tsetse flies. Instead of laying eggs, a female tsetse fly gives birth to a larva almost as big as itself. While the larva was growing inside her, it fed on milk through a pair of tubes on its head. Tsetse flies live four to five months and can deliver up to eight offspring, one at a time. This reproductive strategy is extremely rare in the insect world, where survival usually depends on laying hundreds or thousands of eggs. @CodeCombine @TheBestInsects @chaotic4433 @kittie-star1151 @sshadylukiph36 ---+ Thank you to our top Patreon supporters ($10+ per month)! Darby Sullivan Rachel Fenichel Edgar Betancourt Susan Fuhs Hank Poppe Walter Tschinkel Marco Narajos H.M. Andrew Joan Klivans Stephanie Dole Kevin Sholar J Schumacher Lily, Vinny, Izzy Altschuler Eric Marsh Jamie Edwards Elia Gourguechon-Buot Kristy Folsom Laurel Przybylski 吳怡彰 Kevin William Walker Oliver Wakeling Jessica Hiraoka Laurel Przybylski Jeremiah Sullivan Mehdi Salarkia Mark Jobes Carrie Mukaida Cristen Rasmussen Wade Tregaskis Burt Humburg Noreen Herrington Roberta K Wright Brigitte Xia Louis O'Neill Jellyman Titania Juang El Samuels Laurel Przybylski Companion Cube Chris B Emrick Kristine Wee Karen Reynolds SueEllen McCann David Deshpande Daisuke Goto Elizabeth Ann Ditz Levi Cai ---+ Follow Deep Look and KQED Science on social: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@deeplookofficial Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/deeplook Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kqedscience/ Twitter/X: https://www.twitter.com/kqedscience ---+ About KQED KQED, an NPR and PBS member station in San Francisco, serves Northern California and beyond with a public-supported alternative to commercial TV, radio and web media. Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios and the members of KQED. #mosquitoes #ticks #deeplook


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