Or is it that the victims pest warning system is currently winning the biological arms race, in which case how are mosquitoes able to successfully reproduce? Or is it that mosquitoes have evolved such that their spawning numbers offset the difficulty they have biting?
Biology is hard.
I meant as the ones that have mutations that cause them to itch get whacked, the remaining ones that dont get to pass on this trait to their offspring,creating a generation of itchless bugs, not that this mosquito one day decides to evolve a non itching bite because he thinks it might benefit his bloodline.
The itch doesn’t begin until well after the female mosquito gets her food and leaves, so what reproductive advantage does it give to that specific mosquito over the others to make the itch not happen at all? The answer is “none”.
The fact that people often notice and whack mosquitos when they bite suggests that there is still a reproductive advantage to be had
But the question is: how would a mosquito that develops this trait have an easier time reproducing? Assuming it reproduced and had quite a few offspring, would that collective group of thousands of mosquitoes have an easier time reproducing? It wouldn’t, because humans don’t have some kind of vision that tells them the mosquito won’t make them start itching 5 minutes later or whatever, by which point the mosquito is long gone. Even if they did, they’d still smack it upon noticing it, because it carries deadly diseases and is an annoying insect.
It’s like you failed to read the first 2/3 of my reply.
The fact that many people are able to notice and whack many mosquitoes when they bite shows that it isn’t only after 5 minutes that people notice, leaving room for an evolutionary improvement that would allow them to live longer and thus reproduce more
When I start itching from a bite, I’ll go on a killing spree and the one that bit me is most likely to meet its demise. But maybe that’s just me
Animals don’t do this, and humans are not the only prey for mosquitos. Also humans live in enclosed spaces which are hard for mosquitos to escape, which is only a few thousands years old, and evolution usually takes more time.
That makes sense