Their bite feels "like being stabbed."
Here in San Francisco, residents are waking up to the news about huge mosquitoes in Florida.
The Sunshine State is already home to sinkholes, pythons and sharks. And now it will be home to giant mosquitoes, says the Christian Science Monitor
These mosquitoes are said to be around 20 times the size of normal mosquitoes and they can give you a nasty bite through your clothing. They are expected to reach Florida this summer.
The news has gotten as far as the UK and that country's Daily Mail newspaper calls the mosquitoes 'notoriously aggressive'."
The giant mosquitoes even have a special name. University of Florida professor, Phil Kaufman, says they are known as 'gallinippers'.
“The gallinipper is a floodwater mosquito, with females laying eggs in soil at the edges of ponds, streams and other water bodies that overflow when heavy rains come. The eggs can remain dry and dormant for years, until high waters cause them to hatch,” Kaufman said in a press release issued by the university.
You can see more on the giant mosquitoes from the University of Florida in this report.
San Francisco resident, Amy Tan says: "That sounds horrible. I wonder if regular bug repellent is going to work on them. What if they come to California? Will we be prepared? It sounds like something out of the Bible with giant insects attacking us."
It's believed that the giant mosquitoes are the result of tropic storm Debbie and the flood waters that resulted from that storm last year.
Kaufman says that being bitten by the giant mosquitoes really hurts and the bite from these “huge Florida mosquitoes” has been described by the Huffington Post as similar to "being knifed."
The question that Amy Tan has above is answered by the University of Florida, who say the giant mosquitoes can be repelled with a product that contains DEET, but because the mosquitoes are large in size, Kaufman warns: “They may be more tolerant of the compound than smaller biting mosquitoes."
If you are traveling to Florida, follow the rule of wearing long pants, long-sleeved shirts, and avoiding wooded areas. Avoid, too, any place where water collects after it has rained.
Is there any possible silver lining to this story? "They're not known to carry any diseases, though that may be small comfort to beleaguered Floridians," says Yahoo News
And when it comes to surviving nature, see this story about a teenager who survived a night in sub-zero temperatures because he had watched TV survival shows: Teenager lost at Sugarloaf used TV survival show
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Source: Examiner.com
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