Do mosquitoes spread diseases like dirty needles?
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No, the issue is that mosquitos, ticks and other blood feeders converged on a simple solution to a common problem: how to keep the prey from noticing your attack, how to fool their immune system if that’s an issue, and most of all how to stop the clotting cascade so you can actually get a meal. Mosquitoes and ticks solved this in a straightforward way, have a foregut full of enzymes and fun compounds that stop clotting and induce local anesthesia. So the first thing Ms. Mosquito does once she’s tapped a blood vessel is throw up the contents of that foregut.
Unfortunately some bacteria, viruses, and other fun such as the parasite responsible for malaria have adapted to reproduce in that foregut. So what happens isn’t like a needle with contaminated blood, the mosquito is actually infected, and passes that on to you.
No but they can spread lots of other diseases. Besides, it’s only the females of breeding age bite humans
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Most pathogens can’t be transmitted by mosquitoes. It takes some pretty special adaptation for a pathogen to be able to survive the trip from human host to mosquito to human victim. There are a few that do this like Malaria and Zika, but most pathogens can’t be spread this way.
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