“She gently lands on your ankle and inserts two serrated mandible cutting blades and saws into your skin, while two other retractors open a passage for the proboscis. With this straw she sucks your blood, while a sixth needle pumps in saliva that contains an anticoagulant that prevents that blood from clotting. This shortens her feeding time, lessening the likelihood that you splat her across your ankle.” In other words, she knows what she’s doing. And she’s a stone cold killer. Timothy C. Winegard on what he calls the apex predator, the deadliest hunters of human beings on the planet. NYT: The Mosquitoes Are Coming for Us.

+ The New Yorker: How Mosquitoes Changed Everything. “In total, Winegard estimates that mosquitoes have killed more people than any other single cause—fifty-two billion of us, nearly half of all humans who have ever lived.”