I Can't Stop Staring at This Siberian Mosquito Tornado

[Demovictory9]

https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2021/07/siberian-mosquito-tornado/



I Can’t Stop Staring at This Siberian Mosquito Tornado
Take a look, if you dare:

Exceptionally heavy rains, the kind that are sometimes linked to human created climate-change, can create new wet areas where mosquitos lay eggs and bring about frightening swarms after hatching. But according to the Twitter account of the Siberian Times, a highly-followable English language content-creator from Russia’s far east, what you’re seeing here—roughly one gazillion male insects circling and looking for females—is typical Siberian summer fare.

Link to tweet

[KentuckyWoman]

1. Excuse me but.

Jebus effing God on a cracker.

No wonder the Russians are lunatics.

[Amishman]

23. I think the vodka consumption is to replace all the missing blood

Or perhaps give mosquitoes alcohol poisoning

[TexasBushwhacker]

2. HOLY SHIT!!!

[Nevilledog]

3. Nope. Nope. Nope.

[Mosby]

4. They are midges, not mosquitos.

[JHB]

5. Take a good look. If Trump flees to Russia...

...this is where Putin will park him after the photo-ops are done.

Bug central.

[Maraya1969]

6. WHAT do they EAT? There doesn't seem to be enough animals around to suck the blood out of.

I don't know what else a mosquito eats.

ICK!

[DFW]

13. The article specifies that the tornado swarm is made up of males only

They won’t touch you. It is the females that are the blood suckers.

(Not misogyny, by the way, just entomology!)

[Ferrets are Cool]

7. I would rather be in a swarm of zombies than this nightmare

[smirkymonkey]

11. Same here!

I absolutely HATE mosquitoes.

[mn9driver]

8. Had a lake cabin in NW Wisconsin once upon a time. We would get these.

They were gnats or midges, and they would form these towering tornado vortexes. The sound was the really spooky thing. The video doesn’t pick it up too well.

[Bev54]

9. Reminds me of Manitoba Canada

[House of Roberts]

10. Needs a barn swallow tornado.

Those little buggers could clear that sky really fast!

[Brother Buzz]

12. I'll pass on that, but I never get tired of a murmuration of starlings

[Demovictory9]

14. that is beautiful

[StarryNite]

15. Amazing!

[secondwind]

16. Wowza!!!!

[Hekate]

17. Are there other birds that do that? I saw something very like that in San Bernardino County, CA....

… some 50 years ago when I was in college. I was utterly transfixed by the sight, and have never seen it again in any place I have lived. It was unforgettable.

[Brother Buzz]

21. I saw them almost daily on my commute along the tidal wetlands ....

between Sears Point and Vallejo (Sears Point/Black Point cut-off, Hwy37). Maybe five, six, ten murmurations over a ten mile stretch, but I witnessed the Mother-of-all-Murmurations out at Point Reyes. After a day of whale watching above the light house I saw a river of birds flying overhead near the maritime radio station. What the hey, I pulled over to have a look. A river of birds serpentining overhead, growing wider then narrowing, but a constant stream of birds as far as you could see in both directions. Totally hypnotic! While I was marveling at the sight, a farmer approached me carrying a shotgun, apologizing profusely, "Blanks, only blanks!" I learned from him it was a daily event, and that the starlings were returning to Drakes estuary to roost. He was patrolling his freshly seeded fields because if they landed, they could clean out his fields faster than you can spit.

I can't address if other birds do it, but I ofter wondered if the river of starlings I witnessed was a bunch of murmurations that hooked up for the final run home for the night.

[Hekate]

22. No wetlands tht I know of where I was: Cucamonga/Alta Loma's in the high desert in sight of Mt Baldy

But it was a singular, unforgettable, event.

[Hortensis]

18. ! While parked on a lonely country road in NW Montana, or NE Idaho,

I saw my husband, who'd been fishing and had covered himself in repellent, walking stoically back up the road as a dim form inside a dense, brown swarm of ravenous mosquitoes. Much thicker than this because concentrated on him. And never forgotten of course.

[onethatcares]

19. are they the Russian version

of incels?

[Mysterian]

20. Any way nuclear bombs could be used against this?

Mosquitos suck!

Oh never mind. Someone said they're midges. Disregard.