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Mosquitoes have a narrow body and long slender wings. The males feed on nectar
and water, whereas the females prefer blood of warm-blooded animals, which can be
everything from polar bears to birds. When they bite, they inject some of their salivary
fluid into the wound which causes the swelling and irritation you probably know from
mosquito bites.
In the
Arctic, mosquitoes can emerge explosively - millions of them in a
single day. When this happens, the caribou that were spread out in small groups over
hundreds of square miles suddenly clump together into enormous herds, sometimes containing
thousands of animals. To escape the mosquitoes they snort and toss their heads and tails,
flick their ears and shake themselves, or they may even run into the wind.
Polar bears along the western part
of Hudson Bay are also plagued by mosquitoes. When the ice melts in late July the polar
bears are forced ashore where some of them dig deep dens where they are protected from the
mosquitoes and the heat. |