I used to think, and occasionally say, that the most dangerous animal is Man. Turns out that’s not true: on average, mosquitoes kill more people than wars and crime. Most of mosquitos’ death toll is due to malaria.
But can mosquitos kill even when they’re not transmitting fatal infectious diseases? I’ve experienced them within seconds covering my exposed forearm so that I couldn’t see my skin. Fortunately, I had a headnet and long sleeves and got away with a bearable number of bites. Could they kill someone with their bites alone?
While there have been cases of people dying from mosquito bites because of anaphylactic shock, there seem to be no cases of anyone being literally bitten to death.
Have there been any cases of people being driven to suicide because of mosquito pressure? It’s not implausible: In some places, mosquito pressure is strong enough to make people desperate. But apparently not desperate enough to kill themselves: no single credible case has been documented.
The only documented instances of death by mosquito that I could find happened in the gulags of Siberia: Prisoners were stripped naked and tied to a pole, fully exposing them to the ravenous Siberian mosquitos. They were dead within hours.
Nehaveigur 