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blood, and sponge it up. The pain comes as they aggravate the wound by twisting their serrated proboscis around in the cavity they've produced.
• Most haematophagous insects are elevated to a plane above by their sucking mouthparts. These straw-like mouthparts are inserted through the skin, and increase the efficiency at which the insect can extract their blood meal.
• This increased efficiency is important, since getting caught in the act of sucking someone's blood elicits an unfavorable reaction by the host (a deadly smack). Entomologists dub this the "safe feeding period", and insects use many strategies to extend the length of time they can suck blood before the host realizes it.
• Blood feeders only go to a certain re

gion of the body that has reduced nerves, fur, or is hard to reach (rarely the neck). Mosquitoes do not inject digestive enzymes or even toxins into the host (much different from predatory insects with similar feeding machinery), because these would alert the host to the parasite. The itch that we experience is actually an allergic reaction to the mosquito's saliva. Note that to our knowledge, no insects practice the hypnotic gaze of the vampire, but it is fun to imagine this scenario in play.
• In the end, vampiric insects- or rather, the diseases they transmit- are far more

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