Stuff You Should Know - Mosquitoes: The Worst

Episode Date: June 25, 2015

Sun Tzu said know your enemy, and so it is in this spirit that we present this episode on one of the worst airborne pests in the world. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lacher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. Just being a little prankster. Yeah, pre-show shenanigans. Yeah. Well, this is StuffYouShouldKnow.com, no, podcast. There is a StuffYouShouldKnow.com.

Yeah, that was my not-so-subtle way of working in a plug for our website. I thought it was great. How about plugging Twitter and Facebook? Yeah, you should do that as well. Oh, okay. Go to Twitter and Facebook. Yeah. Look up S-Y-S-K Podcast.

That's right. You know, a lot of people, if you go to iTunes to listen to our show, you might think, man, these 300 episodes are awesome. I love these guys. Here's a fact for you. We have close to 750 or more. Is it more now? I think we're right at it.

Right at 750 right now. That's right. So you are getting really short change. So all you need to do is go to StuffYouShouldKnow.com. We have our entire podcast archive there. Yeah. I think it's StuffYouShouldKnow.com slash podcast slash archive, something like that. Yeah.

You should go listen to the early episodes when we just rambled on about nothing for five minutes at the beginning of every show before we got tight and professional. Bam. Tight as a drum. Mosquitoes go. I hate them. Who doesn't? I mean, everybody hates mosquitoes and I was thinking, well, like it's kind of, I understand

like mosquitoes need some blood to go procreate. So what's the big deal if they take a little of your blood and go lay some eggs and it's fine. It's part of the circle of life. And then I remembered how many mosquitoes need your blood and that how much disease mosquitoes carry. They're a disease vector. Yeah.

They're a pretty good one too. I'm one of those people that they flock to. Oh, yeah. You know, my mom used to say it's because I was sweet. But what she really meant was it's because you're a sweaty monster. It's because you probably admit a lot of non-nannaldehyde. I admit a lot of everything. Well, you definitely do non-nannaldehyde.

What I don't admit. Why can't I say that? Non-nannal. Your eyes just rolled back in your head. I mean, it's spelled, you can pronounce it however you like, N-O-N-A-N-A-L. But it's an oil that mosquitoes are bonkers for. I must have it in spades. Yeah.

Chuck is half that. Non-nannal. Bam. And then it's technically non-nannaldehyde. I was just inhabited by a spirit that can really say some words. Oh, he's gone. All right. All right.

Mosquito buddy is Spanish for little fly. Or a little nat. Or a little nat. Yeah. I think in Europe they called them nats. Or maybe still call them nats. Right? I think so.

Are they not on the mosquito train? I don't know. I haven't asked. Somebody from Europe, let us know. Let us know what you call mosquitoes. That's right, and the use of the word mosquito dates back to about 1583 in North America. Which is weird that they can trace the etymology back to that. Yeah, that is weird.

But I saw no sourcing, no like, oh, well it was Vasco de Gama or something like that who said mosquito, it's a little nat. Uh-huh, let's call them that. No idea where it came from, but I've seen it as honed as 1583. Yeah. That sounds made up maybe. Even etymology dictionary is usually pretty on point, and they said 1580s but had no attribution really.

Interesting. Well, they've been around for 30 million years. No, no. More? Yes. Well, I figured at least 30 million. The oldest fossilized blood that's ever been found was found in, I think, Wyoming in a mosquito that was 46 million years old.

Was that one in Amber, and did they extract its DNA to make dinosaurs? It was in granite, but it was still colored, so you could see the blood. It was, it's crazy, it's intact, like it went and ate, and I was like, oh, something killed me, no, I'm fossilized. The blood of tuk-tuk. By the way, go listen to our fossils episode, that is fascinating stuff. It is a good one. Agreed, sir.

So mosquitoes, they like to drink your blood, which we'll get into later, but they do this. That makes them, by the way, hematophagic. And jerks. Or hematophagic. Just one of us, too. Yeah, there's nothing creepier than being on your deck and seeing a brand new mosquito land on you, and you smash it, and there's a lot of blood already there. And you know it's not yours.

You know it's not yours. Because to you, it's brand new. You're covered in your neighbor's blood, guy down the street, who knows. And who knows what's in that blood, which is why mosquitoes are disease vectors. That's right. So they're going to find you and attack you by using, and I like how this article puts it. It sounds more like a military aircraft than an insect.

Because all of these sensors, they have chemical sensors that can sniff out that carbon dioxide and lactic acid up to 100 feet away. Yes. And if you're breathing, you're giving that junk out. Well, yeah, you exhale CO2, and mosquitoes hone in on that. They actually have a neuron receptor that's designed to accept CO2 and say, oh, well, there's a bunch of CO2 over here. I'm going to go attack whatever it's coming out of.

There's a blood meal waiting to happen. Exactly. And so they track CO2, they track non-enaldehyde, I got it. And other stuff too, it comes out of your lactic acid and your sweat, they track that too. So very much the way that we smell things or taste things or see things or hear things, those sense CO2 and other volatile compounds that humans and other warm-blooded animals emit.

Yeah, they actually have visual sensors as well. So if you're in the green woods and you're wearing a white t-shirt, if it contrasts heavily with the background, you're going to stand out. You want to wear camouflage clothing at all times. All the time, even when you're not in the woods, just to show off to others. Even that movement, if you're moving around, if you're doing a dance out in the woods with your white frock, you're going to get attacked because you're going to be sweaty too. If you're a member of the Polyphonic Spree at a show in the woods, you're getting bit

by a mosquito. That's right. And what else? Heat sensors. This one's pretty unbelievable. They actually can detect heat with infrared, like the predator. Yes, they are basically like the predator. So you want to talk about body parts?

Yeah. Tommy? I mean, we kind of have to, you know? Oh, I'm sorry. It was Joey. It was an airplane, right? Yeah. It was Joey.

I saw about half of that the other night for the first time in forever. I could watch it every week. It's so classic. And Emily wasn't laughing. I was like, this is not your bag, is it? She said, I laughed a lot when I saw it when I was 12. She didn't like it anymore? It didn't hold up, huh?

No, she's not a big fan of the absurdist humor. That's a shame. It's a good movie still. Yeah, agreed. I like it. I haven't seen airplane two in forever, but I'm quite sure it's still pretty good. Joey, have you ever been to a Turkish prison? Yeah.

It's so wrong. You couldn't even make that joke today. No. You know? No. It's like, write a pedophile joke into your new comedy and see how quickly that gets like, ew, why don't we just take that out? It'll sound funny, you're coming out a Rupert Everett.

All right, so body parts. You have your head, and that's where all these lovely sensors are that we talked about, the chemical, visual and heat sensors, and the biting apparatus, the probiscous. Depending on whether it's a male or a female, you know, it's longstanding what you would think is a myth of some sort, that it's just females that bite female mosquitoes. That's absolutely true. The men are just like little hippies eating flower nectar. They don't bite.

They're not even equipped to bite. Nope. They're incapable of biting you. So if you're ever bitten or stung, whatever you want to call it, by a mosquito, that's a lady. It is a lady. Although she's not acting very ladylike. Blood meals aren't very ladylike.

No. She's like the bride. That's right. You're also going to find two compound eyes, some antennae, and then the mouth parts, which we just mentioned, the probiscous mouth part for the lady. Just call it a mouth. It makes it so gross. Yeah, but I get it.

It's science. Okay. And then the palpus is another mouth part. Another disturbing word. A thorax. That's the body segment where the wings and legs are attached. Yes. All this makes it an insect has two wings and six legs attached to a thorax.

That's an insect, buddy. That's right. They actually have a heart, a little compound heart in that thorax. Yeah. And then they have their abdomen, which is where they store the digestive organs and... It's where the poop's from. Yeah. And that's where the blood is, too, I imagine.

Right? Yeah. Where their blood meal's stored. Blood meal's really gross. It is. That was from what? The flea episode? Ticks and fleas and anything that eats a blood meal.

No thank you. No. It's a 2,700 species of mosquitoes all over the world in about 13 genera right here in the U.S. And Chuck, there's actually three... The big three is what they call them. Oh, that's what I call them. The big three...

Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird. You wouldn't include LeBron in that list? Not yet. I think already. He just surpassed like Jordan and two other guys, I think last night, in stats. He needs to win some more championships before he's on that list. How many does Jordan have? He won like seven or six.

Yeah. I hear that. Let's see your point. LeBron's got time though. So yeah, he does. Jordan doesn't. No, Jordan's time is up. He's finished.

Sorry, Michael Jordan, we still think very highly of you. He's going to have someone, he's going to put out a hit on both of us. We saw his plane once at PDK airport. How'd it have been, his plane? Because it said Air Jordan. Yeah, it had the Air Jordan logo but in North Carolina blue. We're like, pretty sure that's Michael Jordan's airplane. That's probably his.

And it was nice too. That's awesome. I went saw him play baseball when he played minor league baseball. Oh yeah? It was pretty neat. He wasn't very good. No, he went over for four, but it was just neat, you know? Sure to see Jordan.

Absolutely. Went over to Birmingham, Alabama. Oh yeah. That's who he played for. And then we're the feeder team for the White Sox. Yeah, I think so. It shows how hard baseball is, you know? He's like one of the greatest athletes of all time and he can hit a curveball.

Yeah. All right. I was talking about the big three. Oh right. And you facetiously pretended I was talking about basketball players, but no, I was talking about the big three species of mosquitoes that afflict the U.S. All right, so break it down for me. What are they?

Aedes. Floodwater mosquitoes. Right? Yeah. And those include the yellow fever mosquito, which basically does what it says on the tin. Spreads yellow fever. That's right, as advertised. And the Asian tiger mosquito, which I think is probably my favorite mosquito, just because

of how it looks. Really? They just look compact and striped and just like little... Sleek, meant for business? Yes. Yeah. The second one is called the anopheles. I think so.

And they breed in permanent freshwater, and the malaria mosquito is a member of that one. So that's when you want to avoid as well. Yeah. No good. No. And then lastly, there's culex or culex. I think it's culex. Yeah, that's what I would say.

C-U-L-E-X. And they breed in quiet standing water, water that's in an introspective repose. You know, like the stuff that builds up in like an old tire or something like that. Yeah. You don't want that. What? The... Standing water, like in an old tire in your yard, because that is going to breed the heck

out of some mosquitoes, especially culex or culex. They sound like kind of the dummies of the mosquito world. They only live for a few weeks in the summer. And I think these are the ones that attack me most in Georgia, if I'm not mistaken. They're weak flyers is what it says. So then you can imagine those ones that kind of like come at you like, still will you? Yeah, I can't land very well. I just need to bump into you with my probiscus.

But they actually, the culex, prefer birds over humans. Oh, really? Kind of like that weasel jumping on the back of the woodpecker. Oh, that's right. I just saw... God, I feel terrible when I think about a bird being bitten by mosquitoes and not having an arm just a hand to smack it. Yeah.

You know? I do the same thing when they're around my animals too. You smack them? Yeah, I just, I don't like it. No. No one eats a blood meal off of my dog, except me. It's gross. All right.

How about we go splash our faces down with some aquavelva and continue talking about the life cycle after this? Okay. I'm Mangesha Tickler and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running

and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. They're curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Like the Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast, and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed?

What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was, whatever love I have for you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts. No, stuff you should know, stuff you should know. All right, we mentioned that mosquitoes were insects, and that means that they hatched from eggs. That's right. Like all insects. They could also be precocial birds, but in this case they're not, they're insects. The females are going to lay their eggs in that water, then the larvae in pupa stages

are going to live in that water. Pupa or pupa, eventually change into adults. They leave the water and they become the annoying pests that you hate so much. Yeah, and I didn't realize this, but mosquitoes, they can live from a few days to several weeks depending on the species, depending on the environmental conditions. And I would have thought that they live a shorter period in colder weather, but actually the opposite is true. They hunker down?

Yeah, a female can stay alive in a cool, damp spot over the wintering months until spring comes around, she can get a blood meal, and then lay some eggs, which is why she needs your blood. You have proteins in your blood that she needs, and she needs it to lay some eggs. So let's say she's got a blood meal, right? She's stuck you. Yeah. And she goes and she lays some eggs, and she's going to lay them in water.

And again, depending on the species, different types of water are going to attract them, like 80s, which is a very tough word to say. It's almost all vowels. They're going to lay their eggs in a place that will eventually, water will come in contact with it and carry them away, rather than directly into water. If you've ever seen standing water in that old tire in your backyard and you see a little grouping of little white, looks like a lot of little eggs floating together. Those are mosquitoes.

Those are eggs floating together, that's exactly what they are. Exactly. They're sort of laid there in a group, and I think you said this, but it's one blood meal per hatch. Or egg laying. Yeah. Anytime they want to lay eggs, they have to drink that blood meal. And is that the only reason they drink the blood meal?

That's all, that's what I saw, yeah. So when you have a mosquito biting you, that means that they have eggs that they're ready to hatch. Yeah. So when you're killing that mosquito, you're actually even better killing all of its future young. Yep. Wow.

That makes me feel even better. And then you can also, apparently, you can tell what kind of mosquito species you're looking at based on what hatches out of the eggs, the larva. Oh yeah. Because the eggs hatch and live, they spend the larval stage and the pupil stage in water, I think like you said. That's right. The larvae are also called wigglers, and if you've ever seen that same group of eggs

look like teeny, teeny, teeny little worms, that's the larva. Yeah. And so Anopheles larvae will be parallel to the surface of the water, like floating right below it or on the water surface. And then Aedes and Culex extend down into the water, and they breathe through air tubes. Like Bugs Bunny using a reed. Yeah, like a bamboo reed. They're going to, the larvae are going to molt, which is shedding their skin a few times.

And I believe it's on that fourth molt, is when they become real, is that right? No, they become pupae. Oh, okay, they become the pupae. Or pupae, or tumblers is what they're called, and basically they stop eating and they get ready to spin a sort of cocoon of sorts around themselves, although they're not spinning. Sure. They're enclosing themselves. Yeah.

And then they go in and they turn into adults. They grow their wings, their legs grow out, their probiscous grows out. If they're the hippie male version, their hair grows out down to their shoulders. Yeah. They actually bust out of that case with air pressure. Yeah. And I look this up. This article makes appearances all over the internet in various forms.

Like it has been ripped off plenty of times. Oh, really? And I can't find anybody who's like, and this is how. This is how they use air pressure to break open the cocoon. I have no idea. The only thing I can think of is that they flap their wings enough that it increases the air pressure inside of the enclosure and it breaks open. Oh, see, I was going to say they blow it out their probiscous or something.

But what if it's a male? They don't have a probiscous. No, they can blow it out. All they have are mouth parts. They can blow it through their mouth parts. No? I don't know. Yeah.

I mean, that's a legitimate suggestion is mine. Or maybe science got to that point and they're like, who cares? Yeah. Just kill them. You know. Yeah. When mosquitoes finally do spread their wings and fly like beautiful doves, they want to go out and like most animals find a mate and mate to make more of themselves.

That's right. It's like their job, basically. And so the males, they're just sitting there feeding on plant nectar and they're like, me? Me? Yeah. You? Great.

And the female is like, yes. Let's do this. And then I'm going to go get a blood meal and you go off and die and then I'll die later on. Yeah. Pretty much. Not a lot of purpose to the mosquitoes life. Well, we'll talk about that a little bit later about whether or not we even need mosquitoes.

Oh, good. I would love to talk about that. Okay. But not right now. Let's talk about the bites. When they bite you with that probiscus, they actually have an anticoagulant protein in the saliva that they're going to spit out on you and it's going to keep that blood free flowing while they're sucking it up.

Exactly. A female mosquito will eat until she's full. And apparently if you cut the sensory nerve to her abdomen and cut off her indicator that she is full. Yeah. Until she exploded. Yeah. Like that's what the sadist with too much time on his hands does in very tiny tools.

Yeah. He captures mosquitoes, severs that thing so they can gorge themselves to death. It's like, here, here's an arm, go to town. Could you imagine seeing that? Oh my God. I kind of have seen it. There was a Tabasco commercial from years ago where like this kind of Cajun dude is eating pizza with Tabasco on it.

Remember? No. The mosquito comes and like sexes blood and flies off and it's flying away and explodes in flames. Oh. So you have seen it. Kind of. On TV.

That's very nice. After you get bitten, the saliva is what causes that immune response that you know as the bumpy itch. But science calls it a wheel. Yeah. W-H-E-A-L. Yeah. That's the puffy area around the little center prick part.

Yeah, and that's your body's immune response being mounted against that anti-coagulant saliva that remains after the mosquitoes flown off. And the wheel will eventually get better and go away. But the itch will remain and the itch is an indicator that your white blood cells are still fighting off or breaking down that protein in the anti-coagulant saliva. Have you ever heard the old wives tale that if you put an X or cross with your fingernail that won't itch? No.

You never heard that? No. That was a big like childhood thing. Like if you cross make an X on the mosquito bite with your fingernail really deeply it won't itch anymore. And it always seemed to work and I looked that up and it's actually a thing. Researchers at the American Allergy Institute released findings about four years ago that said that's actually an effective technique.

They said it outperformed. They did studies on several hundred people and outperformed any anti-itch remedies like over the counter stuff that you could put on it. And they, yeah, they reckon that it works because it limits the immune response from the binding of antibodies to antigens in the saliva. Basically it just digs deep and disrupts that. So there you have it. Apparently it's true.

Old wives write again. That's right. So Chuck, in addition to having an itch from a bite and having the anti-coagulant protein from the mosquitoes saliva stuck in your skin, it gets way worse than that as far as mosquitoes go. Mosquitoes like I said, I said it before and I'll say it again. Mosquitoes are a disease vector to the nth degree. One of the things that they're very famous for spreading as a matter of fact is we saw

there's a mosquito species that included a type called the malaria mosquito is malaria. And malaria is a viral infection. No, I'm sorry. It's a parasite that you catch from the anopheles mosquito. And it takes anywhere from a few days to a few months for symptoms to develop as the infection grows in your bloodstream and you're in big trouble. Yeah, you're going to be a headachey and muscle achy and feverish and chilly. It can kill you.

But they do have anti-malarial drugs. And I think that's one of those you can get, not a vaccine, but can't you take drugs before you go on a trip like that to combat malaria? Yeah, and you can drink gin and tonics, which originally developed by the British when they took over India and were exposed to malaria. Really? Yeah. Tonic water contains quinine, which is found in the bark of the chachona tree, aka the

fever tree, and it cures and prevents malaria. So they would drink gin, which they already had on them all the time, and this tonic water, and then apparently tonic water was even more bitter back in the day than it is today. So they would add something like lime or cucumber or something like that, but lime had the added benefit of chasing off scurvy as well or preventing scurvy. Yeah, I knew that. So the average sailor in the British Navy in the mid-18th or 19th century had a supply of gin, tonic water, and limes.

Put them all together. You got a gin and tonic. And you're preventing malaria or preventing mosquitoes? It's done more than mosquitoes, does it? No, it prevents malaria. Like I guess it prevents the parasite from spreading in your body. Gotcha. Like the chachona, the quinine prevents the parasite from taking hold.

Well, I guess I'm safe then. You're safe, but apparently one million people die every year still from malaria. Unbelievable. That's inexcusable in this day and age with the ubiquity of malaria drugs in the West. Agreed. It's like share the wealth. A million people a year from malaria. That's really sad.

It is. Yellow fever is another big problem. We don't have it here in the U.S. or Europe anymore, but it is still all over the place in South America and Africa. And it's sort of symptomatic like malaria, except worse, but nausea, vomiting, jaundice, and it can also kill you. Yes. They can't treat.

They treat the symptoms, but there is no cure, right? Yeah. There's no cure and the only prevention really is to prevent mosquitoes from biting you. Which is a tall order, I imagine, in parts of South America. Yeah. Then there's encephalitis, and the most famous of the encephalitis that's spread, viral encephalitis that's spread by mosquitoes is West Nile virus. Yeah.

I thought this was interesting. It said several types include Western equine, Eastern equine, West Nile, and St. Louis. Yeah. Just sort of stood out as odd to me. Yeah. You will get a high fever, stiff neck, headache, confusion, laziness, sleepiness. I might have West Nile, actually, now that I think about it. We'll talk a little more about West Nile when we talk about mosquito repellents.

There's a couple more that mosquitoes are well known for spreading dengue fever spread by my favorite, the Asian tiger mosquito. That produces everything from viral flu to hemorrhagic fever. Apparently, it just mainly stuck around East Asia, and then in 1985, it made its first appearance in the United States. Introducing dengue fever in the U.S.? Yeah. And then worms, too.

They spread worms. Oh, really? Specifically, types of worms that like to root into your eye and make you blind. Wow. Yeah, they're disease factors. HIV is not spread by mosquitoes. Nobody knows this by now, but... Yeah, don't you remember being a kid though and being like, oh, God.

Yeah. I remember growing up in that generation thinking, wait a minute, and I didn't even see it on the news as a concern. I remember having my own original thought of, hold on a minute. If you can get HIV through blood and mosquitoes, that's not my blood, and it's like a little needle. Oh, God. I know.

I was actually like, someone's going to get this, and things are going to change. But luckily, thankfully, they found out that the virus cannot survive in a mosquito. No, apparently, it's really... It has a lot of trouble surviving outside of its human host. Yeah. It just doesn't live very long. We really need to do an HIV. I know.

It's been long promised. We will do that very soon. So Chuck, we talked about all the stuff mosquitoes can spread. And a lot of these things like yellow fever and West Nile virus, they're difficult to treat. And the best thing you can do is to prevent mosquitoes from biting you. And actually, I mentioned, what was it, dengue fever that made its appearance in the United States in 1985?

Yes. In 1999, I don't know if you remember this or whatever, there was a panic. I do. All of a sudden, in New York State, I think something like five or six people, seven people died in just over a month from September to October of 1999. They died of an viral encephalitis, and the health officials were like, what is going on? They couldn't find anything in common with these people.

There was no normal epidemiological marks. They just couldn't figure out where it's coming from. And then they finally identified it as West Nile virus that was being carried by mosquitoes. And everybody freaked out. Part of the problem with this was that at the time, a lot of people were suddenly questioning what we were using as mosquito repellent, which is also called DEET. That was the primary mosquito repellent that was in use and still is today. And at the time, people were just starting to question it because there are a lot of

studies about whether DEET was safe specifically for pregnant ladies and kids. Yeah. Do you want to read the word that is DEET? Sure. All right. Go ahead. N-N diethylamide. Yeah.

Toluamide. Let's try. Almost had it, man. Try it again. N-N diethylamide. Yeah. I think that's exactly right, my friend, which is DEET somehow. That's what it's abbreviated as.

Yeah, DEET, and it was created by the USDA, the Department of Agriculture in 1946, of course. For the Army. It's a military thing, like so many things created. And eventually, it made its way over to consumers in the 1950s. And like you said, over the years, it's been sort of maligned and embraced like a roller coaster. Sure.

But in 1999 at the height of this West Nile Panic, it was also like the height of or the bottom of faith in DEET as a safe thing, a safe product. That was DEET's lowest day. Yes. Yes. It was a dark day. So one of the reasons that people were suspicious of DEET is that it's a plasticizer. Which means it can melt plastic?

Yeah. That's one thing. So that's enough for me. So spray that on your skin. And then there was a study in 2002 of about 900 pregnant women in Thailand. And it investigated their bloodstream for DEET. And the thing is with DEET, when you put it on your skin, most of the time, it's absorbed at a rate that your liver can break it down.

And when you finally pee it out, it's been completely metabolized and it's safe, I guess, right? That's what they said. Well, this study in Thailand showed something different and it scared everybody. Yeah. It showed that they actually found the chemical in the umbilical cord of 8% of the women. Yeah. So that crossed the placental barrier and that freaked people out.

Yeah. So understandably. Right. That spread like wildfire. Everybody was freaked out about DEET. And then simultaneously, there were longstanding reports of children having seizures from using DEET. Yeah.

Is that true? I can't quite tell. What I get is if you use DEET in normal concentrations on your skin. Which they say, it used to be 75% but then they found that anything over 50 is really about the same, right? Yeah. It's diminished returns. Yeah.

So you want to just use 50 or no more than 50 and when they figure that out, they just dropped it down to 30. They rounded down for some reason. Right. So apparently if you use it in normal concentration on your skin, you're okay, allegedly. And a bunch of different groups have come out and said, DEET's okay as long as you follow the label and you're using a normal concentration. If you get it in your mouth, for example, though, then all of a sudden the concentrations

are hundreds of times higher than if it's on your skin. So these kids licking their arms and stuff? Supposedly that was the common link to the seizures in kids. But apparently it was never demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction and some people are like, well, seizures are way more common in children than in adults. So maybe it's just a coincidence that these kids also had bug spray on at the time they had their seizure. Gotcha.

I try not to use DEET. No. And you are one of enough people that there's a pretty decent market for alternatives to DEET for mosquito repellents that have been developed over the years. That's what I usually do. What do you use? I mean, back in the day, use the old skin so soft, which, yeah, I don't know. Maybe it worked a little bit.

Well, you know, what's funny is this whole DEET scare. People started asking questions about DEET and they're like, well, how does it work? And apparently scientists were, they had to say like, we're not 100% sure. We think that it confuses the, it masks the CO2 that's emitted by humans. Interesting. So that's what they think. And we've also found that since DEET is really effective at doing that, they found other compounds too that do similar things that fit a CO2 receptor or a non-on-on receptor.

And so the mosquito is confused and doesn't know where to bite or sting or whatever. Gotcha. I think Emily made a little homemade concoction once. I think out of that lemon eucalyptus oil that you mentioned in your own article. Yes. That's one lemon eucalyptus oil. There's soybean oil. Yeah.

That's supposed to work pretty good, right? Supposedly a 2% concentration of soybean oil prevents mosquitoes from biting between one and a half and seven hours. That's pretty great. And this is soybean oil. This is the same stuff you can like eat in your food. So it's very safe. What about citronilla oil, because Jerry came in here bragging about all her citronilla

oil plants that she has surrounded at her lavish gardens? Jerry was wrong. So the citronilla oil apparently does kind of work, but it works way better if you extract the active ingredient, geranium. So if you've got the citronilla torches, then that's doing a better job than just having the plant around. I would guess, if anything, that's probably attracting them through the heat. Oh, attracting them?

I would guess. But see, I think the smoke helps get rid of them, too, though. So there's two things you can do with mosquitoes, right? You can protect yourself by masking yourself from the volatile compounds that you're emitting. And then you can also distract and bait them. And somebody did a study in 2013 at UC Riverside. They analyzed half a million compounds that had a structure that fit mosquito CO2 receptors. They found 138 that were safe-ish, and they zoned in on two of them.

One is ethyl pyruvate, which has a fruity smell that humans find pleasant in testing. It's safe for use in foods, and it apparently masks the skin as well as DEET does. And then there's also cyclopentanone, which has a minty smell that attracts mosquitoes that you could use for a trap that you put in the back of your yard. I will say this. They make a lot of things like mosquito traps, bug zappers, which do not work. If you have a bug zapper, all you're doing is killing a lot of really cool insects, like moths and things.

Those things that you hook up to a tank and roll out into your yard, I don't think those are supposed to work very well. It's like propane? I don't know what it is. I've seen it before, though. Okay. I don't think it's propane. I'll have to look into that, but I've heard they don't work.

Do you remember that years back, it was kind of a trend among radio stations? They said that they were playing a low-frequency sound that humans couldn't hear, but repelled mosquitoes. I did not know that. Yeah. Why, just to listen to their station? I guess. I don't know if it was actually transmitted, or if it was just a hoax.

That sounds like a hoax to me. So you said you had something about mosquitoes and whether we actually need them or not, right? Yeah, but real quickly, they also make mosquito-proof clothing, where this iron suits. No, but chemicals are actually in the fabric itself to ward off mosquitoes. Nice. I remember I wrote something about that at one point, and I just remember thinking, I'm never going to buy something like this and wash them with my regular clothes.

Yeah. Maybe I'm an alarmist. Supposedly there's a chemical that is just to be used on your clothing, not your skin. The reason why is because it's a deadly, deadly poison neurotoxin to humans. Yeah, that is, we should actually say the name of that, permethrin. Yeah. Yeah. That is for clothing only, and if I see something like that, I'm just not going to use it.

Right. Like, don't get any on your skin, but you can put it on your t-shirt. Just fine. Don't look at happy fun ball. So we have another article on our website called What If Mosquitoes Went Extinct, because apparently there are some scientists that have been investigating how to increase the male population enough that there just aren't females anymore and no more offspring. And there's a few things.

There are some birds in the arctic tundra that migrate and feed on mosquitoes, so could disrupt that. And then, of course, the whole chain reaction thing that we've talked about before in the food chain. What could that mean? There's actual mosquito fish and other fish feed on mosquitoes in their larvae. But the general consensus from science is, you know, if mosquitoes went away, they'd probably just adapt and find other meals, and it wouldn't set off some awful reaction

like bees would, you know? Well we could use this as proof positive once and for all that humans are capable or never-ever should intervene in ecology and ecological stuff. Let's do it. Let's see if we can remove mosquitoes from the planet and just see what happens. You know, there's not-I was waiting for some big thing, like mosquitoes are really so important. But not really. Nope.

Like the animal-dilders, those fish, the mosquito fish, I guess, will be the whatever, the nat fish or the fly fish. Yeah. They're like fly larvae more anyway, I don't care. Yeah, I'd say that's worthy of an experiment. Let's get rid of it. I have feel not bad at all about saying that. Yeah.

Change. Well, if you want to know more about mosquitoes, your born enemy, you can type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I am going to call this one. What? What's this? Oh, my, I'm going to call this, I see dead people.

Guys, I've been listening to your awesome show for about a year and I'm working my way through the back catalog. Last week I listened to you, How Stunt Men and Stunt Women Work. It's a great episode. Chuck mentioned the Vic Morrow helicopter accident from the Twilight Zone and said it was actually on YouTube, which is something I never knew. Despite the warning from Chuck not to watch, I did it. Yeah.

Next time I'll listen. It's pretty rough. It is rough. The concern though from the accident was the subsequent research on it was that John Landis directed that segment, which I knew, because he's brought it on charges. This brings me to the reason I'm writing. I met John Landis a couple of years ago at the Burbank Airport. He was really friendly and jovial and took a picture with my friend in my opinion, in

the opinion of many others, by the way. Landis' actions heavily contributed to the tragic deaths of Vic Morrow and the two children. Despite living in LA and working in the entertainment industry, I really don't meet many celebrities and consider life to be easier because of it. However, other celebrities I have met include Aaron Hernandez, who's the New England patriot that's in prison for murder right now, and Ray Lewis, who was acquitted of murder back in the day. And while I didn't officially meet him, Charles S. Dutton was in my office once and we exchanged

a polite nod. So when you add them all up, the celebrities I personally encountered range from definitely to possibly responsible for nine violent deaths. Wow. How about that? Geez. Charles Dutton, did he kill somebody? Yeah, he spent like his youth in prison for murder.

Oh, that's right. He went to prison and got out and became famous. Right. Okay. I've learned a great deal from your podcast over the year that I've been listening and now I have learned that for my own safety and for the betterment of humanity in general, my celebrity interactions must be kept to a minimum. I know for legal reasons, this email will never make it unlistner male.

Reverse psychology. I think that kind of always works, actually. I don't see what the legal reasons are. It's nothing. This guy's like signed a lawyer. Inflammatory in here. And that is from Name Redacted. Thank you, Name Redacted.

You have an unusual name. Yeah. He also goes by anonymous. Oh. Or YADDETROIT. That's right. That's what we should use as a Name Redacted or anonymous. YADDETROIT.

All right. So thank you, YADDETROIT for that email. Way to go, YADDETROIT. If you want to get in touch with us and let us know any weird stuff about yourself, that's pretty cool. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the

web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas

are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace.

The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. This is Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.