
How mosquitos deal with getting hit by raindrops - davi
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/24/raindrops-keep-falling-on-my-head-a-mosquitos-lament/
======
developer1
Of course the video doesn't show anything interesting, the mosquito's leg is
hardly even grazed. I was definitely hoping for the version where a drop
smacked the insect dead on target. Fairly strange for a lab result - if that's
the only video that was captured, it really doesn't seem to divulge much at
all. Where's the cool video? :D

~~~
e2e8
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM)

~~~
lucb1e
Direct hit just after the minute mark:
[https://youtu.be/LQ88ny09ruM?t=1m3s](https://youtu.be/LQ88ny09ruM?t=1m3s)

~~~
mordrax
Watching it several times, it looks like only the left most mozzie came out
unscathed. The other two took it hard and went down... definitely didn't 'walk
off the bus' :\

------
upofadown
>A study says a mosquito being hit by a raindrop is roughly the equivalent of
a human being whacked by a school bus, the typical bus being about 50 times
the mass of a person.

That is not a sensible comparison. When you scale something mass changes as
the cube of dimension. Strength changes as the square of dimension. So small
things are inherently stronger with respect to their mass.

~~~
abandonliberty
[Citation Wanted]

Very believable; how does the math work out?

~~~
troymc
Galileo. _Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New
Sciences_. 1638.

It's known as the square-cube law.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-
cube_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law)

~~~
abandonliberty
Thanks - I hadn't realized that muscle strength was proportional purely to
cross section.

------
dgemm
> But because our mosquito is oh-so-light, the raindrop moves on, unimpeded,
> and hardly any force is transferred. All that happens is that our mosquito
> is suddenly scooped up by the raindrop and finds itself hurtling toward the
> ground at a velocity of roughly nine meters per second, an acceleration
> which can’t be very comfortable, because it puts enormous pressure on the
> insect’s body, up to 300 gravities worth, says professor Hu.

Interesting article, but in the span of one paragraph here we have confused
velocity, acceleration, and pressure - and there are similar errors in the
following one. For an article about physics, I would expect this to at least
be proofread.

The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:
[http://harmful.cat-v.org/journalism/](http://harmful.cat-v.org/journalism/)

~~~
joncameron
From your link:

> In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in
> a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and
> read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about
> Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what
> you know.

Which is of course intriguing, since cat-v.org hosts frothing-at-the-mouth
vitriol about topics like women in tech and gay marriage in the always
trustworthy and well reasoned medium of reposted reddit and slashdot comments.
And presumably I'm supposed to click over to the technical stuff with a
straight face.

~~~
roghummal
It's telling that you'd apply a derogatory label and attack the source medium
rather than say anything of substance about the content that offended you.

cat-v is chock-full of food for thought. You don't have to agree with any of
it and in fact disagreement is a large part of the site.

"Other than total and complete world domination, the overriding goal is to
encourage and stimulate critical and independent thinking."

------
daniel-levin
From an io9 article on the same research:

>> [Hu] and Dickerson constructed a flight arena consisting of a small acrylic
cage covered with mesh to contain the mosquitoes but permit entry of water
drops. The researchers used a water jet to simulate rain stream velocity while
observing six mosquitoes flying into the stream. Amazingly, all the mosquitoes
lived.

The researchers used _simulated rain drops_ on _six_ mosquitoes. There are
more than six species of mosquitoes. They controlled for wind effects (which
are part and parcel of rain). So they excluded horizontally travelling
raindrops. My immediate reaction to the conclusion that mosquitoes can fly in
rain was "Really? Not always". Here is a methodologically lacking and wholly
unscientific anecdote: I have lived in Johannesburg my entire life, where
mosquitoes are quite prevalent during the summer months. When it is raining
heavily (it is usually quite windy as well), the local species of mosquito
that feeds of humans do not present a problem as the number of airborne
mosquitoes tends to zero.

~~~
joeyspn
^This

I live in a mediterranean zone near a huge lake and during summer mosquitos
are your every night companions (specially if you're working during late night
hours). But when a summer storm brews the mosquitos disappear for two or three
days. Why? This has been for me a recurrent question, and the answer has been
always obvious: few of them survive being hit by raindrops.

You can make 1000 theories about how our tiny vampire friends deal with
raindrops, but it's pretty clear that intensive rain (>3hours) wipe out
mosquitos population for several days...

~~~
soneca
I also agree.

> _" And yet (you probably haven’t looked, but trust me), when it’s raining
> those little pains in the neck are happily darting about in the air, getting
> banged—and they don’t seem to care."_

I have looked and I don't trust you. I live in Brazil where mosquitoes are
present all the time, even in the city (obviously, on a smaller scale than
places closer to nature). I do notice that whenever is raining there is a
sharp drop in mosquitoes number flying inside our homes. They don't completely
disappear, but is notorious they are in much smaller numbers. As this is
common knowledge over years and years, across basically all the people, I
don't consider it anecdote, but empirical observation.

I cannot answer if that is because raindrops kill them, or they just preserve
themselves sheltered in their nests, or they breed less in rainy days, or
whatever. But the article (not sure about the research) is based on a false
premisse.

~~~
daniel-levin
Well, no, it's not empirical until we design some experiments to test the
theory, make predictions, test them, come up with potentially observable data
that would falsify our hypotheses, publish our results and let them be peer
reviewed, reproduced elsewhere etc... The jump from anecdotes to empiricism is
a large one that is not to be undertaken lightly.

------
nippoo
"Had the raindrop slammed into a bigger, slightly heavier animal, like a
dragonfly, the raindrop would “feel” the collision and lose momentum. The
raindrop might even break apart because of the impact, and force would
transfer from the raindrop to the insect’s exoskeleton, rattling the animal to
death."

Has anyone actually done any research on dragonflies being hit by raindrops,
or is this just speculation?

------
chrismorgan
The drawings in this article tend to be absurdly large, with the outcome that
the document is, transferred, around 23MB, for no good reason. _Sigh._

~~~
Jgrubb
Because editors.

------
Kiro
> In most direct hits, Hu and colleagues write, the insect is carried five to
> 20 body lengths downward

> If you want to see this for yourself, take a look at Hu’s video

What? Nothing like that happens in it.

~~~
dasmoth
Are you confusing wing span with body length?

In the right hand panel of the video, the insect certainly moves several body
lengths, and is still moving downwards at the end of the clip.

~~~
Kiro
No, it says "20 body lengths downward, and then [...] gets up and “walks” to
the side, then steps off into the air". In other words 20 body lengths while
being in the raindrop, which doesn't happen in the video. In fact, the
raindrop barely touches it.

------
ebbv
If it wasn't for the cute child like drawings this would be a truly terrible
piece of link bait. As it is it's still pretty and, and I expect better from
NatGeo.

Anyone who lives in a mosquito heavy area knows that mosquitos (like almost
all airborne insects) go into hiding during heavy rain and/or wind.

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jbert
Does this places a reasonable selection pressure on the kinds of flying
insects we can have?

Big enough to shrug off a raindrop hit, or small enough to surf along the
surface tension until it can slide off?

~~~
baddox
Butterflies just seek shelter.

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-do-
butterflie...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-do-butterflies-
do-wh/)

------
theVirginian
It would appear they haven't yet evolved to deal with being hit by cars quite
as gracefully.

~~~
whoopdedo
I think this can be approached the same as the "ants can lift 50 times their
own weight" bit of trivia. It doesn't translate to "if a human were as strong
as an ant he'd be able to lift an elephant" because size doesn't scale that
way. Ants and mosquitoes get away with larger forces relative to their mass
because the skeleton and muscles needed are still within reasonable material
and fuel costs. A human-sized animal that wanted to survive being hit by a car
would need to spend much more energy per mass than the insect does.

~~~
eru
I think theVirginian was commenting about mosquitoes getting smashed on a
car's windshield, not about cars and humans.

~~~
whoopdedo
Oh, right. I thought it was a reference to "the equivalent of a human being
whacked by a school bus" from the article.

------
rokhayakebe
I just realized how making things fun and funny can help to teach anything.
The drawings and the comical tone made this seem so approachable. I wish they
had a series of 1000 of such lessons I could read.

~~~
KnightOfWords
Here's his old blog on NPR:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/](http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/)

Probably not 1000, but perhaps getting on for it.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Thank you for sharing.

------
jokr004
Not really important but.. "nine gravities _(88 /m/squared)_"

I don't get it, the scientificamerican blog that they are quoting has the
right units, where did they come up with this?

------
mordrax
> But because our mosquito is oh-so-light, the raindrop moves on, unimpeded,
> and hardly any force is transferred.

So if the mosquito's weight is insignificant compared to that of the heavier
and denser water drop and that's what keeps it from having the force
transferred, would this equally apply to hailstorms? (Where our mosquitoes are
pelted by small hail balls the size of raindrops)

~~~
acyacy
You don't really find mosquitoes where you're likely to find hailstorms.

~~~
RBerenguel
In Spain we definitely have mosquitos, and most Augusts we have these summery
storms, sometimes bringing also hailstorms (sizze varies though between drop
sized ice and golfball sized ice)

~~~
acyacy
You find them in these areas. When it gets cold there tends to be far fewer of
them.

And compared to the equators its nearly incomparible.

~~~
Dove
Cold isn't required for hailstorms. The ice forms at altitude. We have a lot
of hailstorms in the spring and summer in Colorado, and while it isn't the
mosquitoiest place I've _ever_ lived, there _are_ mosquitoes.

~~~
acyacy
Compared with where its mosquito haven like by the Equator?

I suppose raindrop vs hailstone is a reason is one of the reason's the density
issues are so different.

~~~
Dove
Yeah. Mosquitoes are densest in the tropics where hailstorms are rare, but
just about everywhere on earth short of Antarctica has _some_ mosquitoes. I'd
think mosquitoes would meet hailstones occasionally, though I can't really see
the mosquito surviving it.

------
mleonhard
The article embedded a short video. Here's longer video with explanations:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM)

------
state
Can't help but immediately notice: "Drawing by Robert Krulwich"

~~~
sohkamyung
Yes, Robert Krulwich has joined the Nat Geo Phenomena blogging platform [
[http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/blog/curiously-
krulw...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/blog/curiously-krulwich/) ]

~~~
k_brother
I think the commenter meant that Krulwich actually illustrated the piece too.
Who knew Krulwich could draw!

~~~
sohkamyung
Ah, I see. My bad.

Yes, Krulwich does draw pretty well.

------
dharma1
if you like watching slo mo videos, recommend this channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/theslowmoguys/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/theslowmoguys/videos)

------
bnolsen
so if mosquiotos are oblivious to rain is there some way to make artificial
rain with different properties that could destroy mosquitos en masse?

~~~
chinathrow
Yes, it's called poison and it's being done a lot.

[http://www.local10.com/news/plane-to-spray-for-mosquitoes-
ov...](http://www.local10.com/news/plane-to-spray-for-mosquitoes-over-south-
fla/27244642)

Ah you mean different mechanical properties ;)

------
stillsut
Send this to Bill Gates, that guy _HATES_ mosquitoes.

~~~
Kluny
A man who thought, "When I'm a billionaire, I'm going to dedicate my life to
getting rid of those nasty fuckers (mosquitoes)" and then _did_ it.

------
cJ0th
very interesting article. It is a pity that his column has no rss feed.

------
blumkvist
A commenter on the site says that some type of mosquitoes (Texas) are used in
oil drilling. I tried googling "texas mosquitoes oil drilling" and variants,
but didn't find anything.

>"Why, one species even secretes an enzyme to dissolve the organic matter in
blood leaving only the iron in haemoglobin. Then another enzyme causes the
iron atoms to join to form biological drill pipe! These structures are known
to be as much as 6 inches in diameter and to extend a mile deep."

Is there something to it or he just went to on the internet to tell lies?

~~~
coconutrandom
That is a joke that makes more sense once you've been bitten there.

~~~
briandear
In Texas, we'd call that a tall tale.

~~~
dalke
Up north a few winters back the weather was so cold that words froze up as you
talked. People had to stand around a fire to have a conversation. When spring
thaw finally came the sound of all the melting conversations was deafening.

Then there was the time that Pecos Bill lassoed and rode a twister, but that's
a tale for another time.

