CAPP and TED: The Real Reason why Mosquitoes Buzz

CAPP and TED: The Real Reason why Mosquitoes Buzz

            Some TED talks are built to give the audience some life-altering perspective on deep, important issues that are crucial to our modern world. Some try to teach life lessons. Others teach you why insects annoy the crap out of you. In the case of “The Real Reason why Mosquitoes Buzz,” it’s the third.

            There isn’t much context needed to make a TED documentary such as this. Mosquitoes are—and probably always will be—a nuisance that torments humanity worldwide. For those of us with an inquisitive mind (or perhaps a wish to know our hated foe), Greg Gage, neuroscientist and co-founder/CEO of Backyard Brains, teams up with biologist Haley Smith to discuss why it is the mosquito makes their trademark buzzing. A simple purpose for a TED talk, but an interesting one.

            From the point-of-view of two scientists, dealing with angry, parasitic bugs is an opportunity to teach, and to learn. It turns out that mosquitoes (after being chilled to anesthetize them) can be made to vibrate their wings and thus produce their hum. What’s interesting is that male mosquitoes, being smaller and with smaller wings, create a higher pitch whine than their larger female counterparts.

            This isn’t the buzz about the buzz though (yes, pun intended).

    

        It turns out that when a male and female mosquito are placed together, they will harmonize their hums. This is a form of courtship ritual, and apparently the females (having nearly as many audio receptor cells as a human) are super keen on picking a beau who has the right hum in his step. It’s a choir kid’s dream, micro-scaled.

            When I initially sought out this TED talk, I picked it due to its rather ‘eclectic’ (to be generous) subject matter. So many other TED talks like to focus on big picture, world-shattering topics like refugee rights, women’s rights, racism, and such. However, the humble little video about the humble little bug turned out to be more enlightening than your cliché TED talk. By providing expert testimony, as well as live, demonstrable evidence of the different types of buzzes the little blood-sucker makes, we as an audience are able to find credibility in the reasoning provided.

            There are of course questions one could ask the speaker, such as why he chooses to focus on something like the mosquito when he could perhaps turn his knowledge and talents towards more pressing scientific issues, but to me personally this feels rather wholesome. Sure, I hate mosquitos as much as the next person, but the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge is rather refreshing comparison to today’s more politically-driven scientific community.

            It might not be able to turn me away from brutally destroying every last mosquito that I ever come across, but at the very least, this talk was effective and succinct at providing a little tidbit of information to sate a curiosity I never even knew that I had.

            Still hate bugs though, sorry Mr. Gage…

So if you're out there, bored as the day is long, and decide that you just gotta know some useless science facts, this particular talk gets 5/5 blistering bug bites. Bring your own spray.