Blood bank

(Photograph) - Biologist Angela Priestman is giving blood-sucking African mosquitoes a taste of their own medicine by sucking them from the walls of rural African houses after they have feasted. Dr Priestman, from Staffordshire University, is studying the mating habits of malaria-carrying anopheles gambiae mosquitoes. She uses a glass tube to catch live specimens in the early morning when they are full of blood and too heavy to escape quickly. "Students do tend to suck too hard initially and we get mangled mosquitoes," Dr Priestman says. "But they soon get the hang of it."