How mosquitoes hitch a ride on raindrops

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This season's official tally of people who fell ill with dengue fever, transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, was the highest for years at more than 37,000, with 227 recorded fatalities. Picture: Karen Sandison

London - They can outwit nets, fly swats and the strongest of insect repellents.

So when it comes to raindrops big enough to kill them, it’s little wonder mosquitoes have developed a cunning defence mechanism.

Scientists have worked out how the insects survive the impact of raindrops 50 times their size – they treat them like flying carpets.

They latch on to the droplets, which are plummeting to earth at up to 20 miles an hour, and hitch a ride to lessen the impact.

David Hu, an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, compared raindrops to “plummeting comets”.

“You’d think a mosquito wouldn’t stand a chance,” he said.

“If you were to scale up the impact to human size, we would not survive. It would be like standing in the road and getting hit by a car.”

In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers filmed mosquitoes flying through simulated rain in a “flight arena”, a small acrylic cage covered with mesh, as well as ones which flew freely.

According to the team, the combination of a lightweight body and strong exoskeleton allows a mosquito to stick itself on to a raindrop for a fraction of a second.

To separate from the droplet, it uses its long legs and wings to harness the wind and create a drag force, allowing it to fly off unharmed rather than being flung to the ground.

mosquitoes are responsible for 200 million cases of malaria each year, resulting in 650,000 deaths. - Daily Mail

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