Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Mosquitoes kill more than a million people every year by transmitting diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, making the insects the animal kingdom’s most prolific killer of humans by a wide margin. But what makes them so good at getting through our skin to access our bloodstream? Part of KQED’s science documentary series Deep Look, this short video offers a close-up of how female mosquitoes use a sophisticated set of evolutionary tools – essentially, six ultra-sharp needles – to pierce our skin and suck our blood.
Video by KQED Science and PBS Digital Studios
Producer: Gabriela Quirós
Narrator and Writer: Amy Standen
video
Evolution
How – and how not – to think about the role randomness plays in evolution
60 minutes
video
Physics
The rhythms of a star system inspire a pianist’s transfixing performance
5 minutes
video
Art
Watch as Japan’s surplus trees are transformed into forest-tinted crayons
4 minutes
video
Biology
A spectacular, close-up look at the starfish with a ‘hands-on’ approach to parenting
5 minutes
video
Technology and the self
A filmmaker finds a tactile beauty in the creation of her prosthetic leg
11 minutes
video
Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
video
Biology
Beetles take flight at 6,000 frames per second in this perspective-shifting short
9 minutes
video
War and peace
A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster
6 minutes
video
Physics
What does it look like to hunt for dark matter? Scenes from one frontier in the search
7 minutes