system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Do mosquitoes share blood with each other? Also, do they "steal" blood from other mosquitoes, like from a dead one for example?
gpt
No, they don't. In fact, it is notoriously difficult to get female mosquitoes to feed on a hemotek in the lab; this is a system, with a membrane, in which the blood is heated to body temperature and left on mosquito cages in the dark. Field populations have to be 'weaned' onto this system to become lab colonies, initially they will only arm feed. Mosquitoes in the wild require host cues to take a blood meal, little is known about these other than carbon dioxide, heat and a volatile called octan-3-ol are attractants. People have a very complex array of volatile chemicals on the skin, and different combinations of these make people more or less likely to be bitten. As mentioned above, mosquitoes can be completely sustained by sugar, and feed on nectar in the wild, a blood meal is necessary so the mosquito can become gravid and lay eggs. It may be worth mentioning that most mosquitoes do not preferentially feed on humans, live stock, dogs, birds etc. are bitten a lot, the preference for humans leads to some species' extreme competence in transmitting disease.