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WASHINGTON Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are killed annually by malaria and other diseases spread through the bite of mosquitoes, insects that date back to the age of dinosaurs. All of these bites are inflicted by females, which possess specialised mouth anatomy that their male counterparts lack. But it has not always been that way. Researchers said they.
Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are killed annually by malaria and other diseases spread through the bite of mosquitoes, insects that date back to the age of dinosaurs. All of these bites are inflicted by females, which possess specialized mouth anatomy that their male counterparts lack.
In modern mosquitos, only females have long puncturing, blood-sucking mouths. But fossils from the Cretaceous era show male mosquitos once sucked blood too.
Researchers found a male mosquito trapped in amber 130 million years ago, the oldest ever discovered. And it could do something no male mosquito alive today can do.