Amazing mosquito facts
You're more likely to be a target for mosquitoes if you consume bananas. Biting activity increase by 500 times when there is a full moon. A mosquito's wings beat 500 times a second.
The animal responsible for the most human deaths world-wide is the mosquito.
Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates their feet.
Mosquitoes prefer children to adults, and blondes to brunettes.
A mosquito can detect a moving target at 18 ft away
The average life span of a female mosquito is 3 to 100 days. the male lives 10 to 20 days.
Mosquitoes: lay up to 300 eggs at a time, fly across 150 miles in their lifetime, range from sea level to altitudes as high as 10,800 feet (3,600 meters), develop from egg to adulthood in 4 to 7 days
Q: How many species of mosquitoes are there?
A: About 2,700.
Q: What does a mosquito weigh?
A: About 2 to 2.5 milligrams (for an Aedes aegypti).
Q: How much blood does a female mosquito drink per, er, serving?
A: About 5-millionths of a liter (for an Aedes aegypti).
Q: How do mosquitoes find new hosts?
A: By sight (they observe movement); by detecting infra-red radiation emitted by warm bodies; and by chemical signals (mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide and lactic acid, among other chemicals).
Q: How fast can a mosquito fly?
A: An estimated 1 to 1.5 miles per hour.
Q: How far do certain mosquitoes fly
A: Salt marsh mosquitoes migrate 75 to 100 miles. .
Q: How far away can a mosquito smell you, or a cow or another host?
A: 20 to 35 meters.
Q: Why does a film of oil on water kill mosquito larvae?
A: Because the oil clogs up the snorkel that the larvae use to breathe.
Mosquitoes don't see very well, but they zoom in like a heat-seeking missile. In the spherical arrangement of their compound eyes, blind spots separate each eye from the next one. As a result, they can't see you until they are 30 feet (10 meters) away. Even then, they have trouble distinguishing you from any object of similar size and shape: tree stump, 55-gallon drum, etc. When they are 10 feet (3 meters) away they use extremely sensitive thermal receptors on the tip of their antennae to locate blood near the surface of the skin. The range of these receptors increases threefold when the humidity is high.
Why don't mosquitoes transmit HIV virus?
Studies with HIV clearly show that the virus responsible for the AIDS infection is regarded as food to the mosquito and is digested along with the blood meal.
Mosquitoes Do Not Ingest Enough HIV Particles to Transmit AIDS by Contamination
An AIDS-free individual would have to be bitten by 10 million mosquitoes that had begun feeding on an AIDS carrier to receive a single unit of HIV from contaminated mosquito mouthparts.Most people have heard that mosquitoes regurgitate saliva before they feed, but are unaware that the food canal and salivary canal are separate passageways in the mosquito. The mosquito's feeding apparatus is an extremely complicated structure that is totally unlike the crude single-bore syringe. Unlike a syringe, the mosquito delivers salivary fluid through one passage and draws blood up another. As a result, the food canal is not flushed out like a used needle, and blood flow is always unidirectional. The mechanics involved in mosquito feeding are totally unlike the mechanisms employed by the drug user's needles. In short, mosquitoes are not flying hypodermic needles and a mosquito that disgorges saliva into your body is not flushing out the remnants of its last blood meal.
Rutgers Cooperative Extension Fact Sheet # FS736
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