What Would Happen If . . .

You Were Swarmed by Mosquitoes?

THE FEMALE ANOPHELES mosquito is the single most dangerous creature in human history. According to some estimates, its bite is responsible for half of all human deaths since the Stone Age. Of course, you should not give the mosquitoes all the credit. The real killer is malaria, a disease caused by a parasitic protozoa that hitches a ride on mosquitoes.

More than 247 million people are infected with malaria every year. More than 1 million die from it. On top of that a mosquito bite is annoying (their saliva is an anticoagulant, which most of us are allergic to), and we’re not the only ones who think so. The Alaskan caribou alter their migration routes into colder areas to avoid the bites.

Of course, caribou aren’t the only ones that avoid areas because of mosquito infestation. Huge swaths of jungle in Central America, South America, and Africa were completely impenetrable to early explorers thanks to the mosquito. The preservation of the Amazon rain forest can largely be attributed to it.

The first attempt to build the Panama Canal was a French-led effort that began in 1881. It did not go well. The Panamanian jungle was filled with poisonous snakes and spiders, which didn’t help, but their danger paled in comparison to the mosquito problem. Malaria absolutely decimated the French workforce. Mosquitoes killed nearly 200 workers per month at the height of the project. Deadlines were missed, costs ballooned, and after nine years the project ended in failure. In all, 22,000 workers died—nearly all killed by the mosquito. It wasn’t until the U.S. project twenty years later—and after doctors better understood the link between malaria and the mosquito—that the canal was completed, and still at the cost of 5,600 more lives.

There still remains a question for those of us who swat a lot of mosquitoes but don’t live in malaria country. Can mosquitoes kill you without the help of the protozoa? Can enough mosquito bites suck you dry? Is there such a thing as death by a thousand bites? Mosquitoes take a small amount of blood each time they bite, which isn’t a problem on your typical camping trip. You can afford to lose it. But it could become a problem if you happen to be camping on Alaska’s North Slope and find yourself naked in a large swarm. We know the specifics of this fate thanks to researchers in the Arctic who, after what we assume were a lot of dares and at least some vodka, ventured outdoors without shirts on. For one minute they stood outside in the thick cloud of mosquitoes before scampering back inside and assessing the damage.

They each counted more than 9,000 bites.

Mosquitoes drain only 5 microliters of your blood per bite, and you have roughly 5 liters pumping through your veins, which equates to roughly 1 million mosquito meals. So you can afford a few bites on your next camping trip, but 9,000 per minute is a different story.

If you followed in those brave shirtless scientists’ steps, but then stayed in the swarm, here’s what would happen.

Roughly fifteen minutes into your ordeal you would lose 15 percent of your blood, which is about the same amount taken at a blood bank. You would experience some slight anxiety and a lot of itchiness, but nothing a glass of orange juice and a cookie couldn’t fix.

After just over thirty minutes, however, the mosquitoes would have sucked 30 percent of your total volume. Your blood pressure would begin to drop and your heart would be forced to speed up to compensate. At the same time you would begin to feel a cooling in your extremities as your body focused on providing oxygen to your internal organs at the expense of your hands and feet. Meanwhile, your breathing rate would increase as your body tried to compensate for the oxygen deficit.

Forty minutes into the biting you would have lost two liters and reached a critical stage. You would be anxious and confused, with your heart racing at more than one hundred beats per minute. As your body concentrated the remaining blood and oxygen to your brain, kidneys, and heart, the tissue in your arms and legs would begin to starve and die.

After forty-five minutes and more than 400,000 bites, you would have lost more than 2 liters of blood. At that point your heart would no longer be able to maintain the minimum necessary blood pressure and you would go into shock followed by cardiac arrest. Without the blood flow needed to carry oxygen from your lungs, your brain cells would begin dying. Within a few seconds you would enter an unconscious state and suffer irreparable brain damage. Depending on which brain cells died and in what order, you would have between three and seven minutes from heart failure to total brain death.

And, in a most unusual way, you would join nearly half of all mankind to succumb to the mosquito.