How many mosquito bites does it take to kill a human being?

The average human at about 150 pounds has about five liters of blood in their body. A mosquito on average will suck five millionths (0.000005) of a liter of blood. So dividing, it would take 5/0.000005 = 1,000,000 mosquitos to drain all five liters from the human body. read more

Mosquito bites can in fact kill you. It is not the amount of blood they extract but it is the amount of reaction produced by your body to the mosquito saliva. You can end up going into shock if you get enough mosquito bites and can ultimately die as a result. read more

If you do the math, you'd need a swarm of 1.1 million Asian tiger mosquitoes to completely drain a human's blood— but chances are you'd die long before all your blood was gone. A condition called hypovolemic shock sets in after you lose about 20% of your blood, and it leads to major organ failures because your heart loses the pressure necessary to circulate blood. read more

No other species, including our own, is responsible for the loss of as many human lives each year as mosquitoes are, Gates continues. Humans murder around 475,000 other people each year. Snakes kill around 50,000, while dogs (mainly from rabies transmission) claim another 25,000 lives. read more