Thick swarms of mosquitoes are killing livestock in Louisiana after Hurricane Laura
www.cbsnews.com
The bites leave animals anemic and bleeding under their skins, and they also become exhausted from constantly moving in an attempt to avoid the insects.
  • ConstableJelly@piefed.socialEnglish
    5 hours

    We got terribly swarmed in a very remote area in Michigan’s upper peninsula while walking in the woods. My partner and I grabbed pine branches and started waving them around us while we ran back, but my dog kept thinking I was playing as I tried to wave them around her and would run off from me. Within 20 minutes of getting back, she was covered in massive lumps all over her body, her lips and ears were grossly swollen, and she started breathing really, really shallowly.

    There were no open or emergency vets anywhere nearby, so we tried to give her some benadryl and water as best we could. Luckily, she was well-recovered by morning. But the danger posed by swarms of mosquitos became abundantly clear to me.

  • jlow@slrpnk.netEnglish
    6 hours

    This sounds like an excellent setup for a trashy horror-movie.

    • SillyDude@lemmy.zipEnglish
      5 hours

      Jesus. I’ve seen it in wild rabbits, but that makes sense because the ticks can get larger than their eyeballs. And that looks really bad, like their ears are more tick than ear. With the square cube rule the number of ticks to take down a moose scares me.

      • homes@piefed.worldEnglish
        9 hours

        not if I also have a phobia of sudden falls and the ground! 😬

        ironically, I’m a pyromanic!

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
    9 hours

    The size of mosquitoes in rural Canada confirms this is possible. It could even require 4 of them to completely bleed a human dry.

    • Asfalttikyntaja@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      9 hours

      In Finnish lapland we have mosquitoes so big that my friend takes them and dries them to make sauna stools.

      • MrFinnbean@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8 hours

        God you are lucky in lapland. I have always wanted to do that, but the ones here in northern ostrobothnia dont fit trough the doors so we can use them only as patio furniture.

    • Omgpwnies@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8 hours

      They generally don’t though, they prefer picking people up and dropping them from height on some sharp rocks, then feasting on the corpse.

    • KC_Royalz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8 hours

      Last year I had to take some parts to a pivot crew working in soybeans. I want to preface this that I used to farm and I’ve built fences next to river bottoms I’ve had to deal with some bad mosquitoes.

      With that said I never have seen a mosquito outbreak like last summer fall. I took two steps into that field and was immediately covered. I have no idea how those builders could stand being out there.

      I think, if they wanted to, those mosquitoes could have lifted me off the ground and flown me to their lair.

    • [deleted]@piefed.worldEnglish
      8 hours

      It happened in the One Punch Man anime. There is a movie called Mosquito, but they are giant sized instead of a swarm. Land of the Lost had a giant one that mostly drained what’s his name.

      For movies they appear to have consistently gone with the giant mosquito approach.

      Special mention: The spiders in Arachnophobia drained people completely despite being about wolf spider sized, which is smaller than a tarantula.

    • Quilotoa@lemmy.caEnglish
      8 hours

      Since it takes quite a while, it’s not quite as cinematic as a swarm of bees.