Mosquito Facts
Interesting Mosquito Facts…Just In Case You Think They’re Cute
One of the most daunting and frightening mosquito facts that I have had the displeasure of learning is that they are the animal who is responsible for the most human deaths on a yearly basis. That one doesn’t thrill you too greatly either, I take it. It is true, though, that the mosquito is the most deadly animal known to the planet. He is an insistent parasitic insect whose only missions are to feed, breed, and die. Along with this type of gluttonous behavior there are bound to come consequences, and unfortunately those punishments are for the victim to suffer. Many regions of Asia and Africa had been held in peril of blood born disease for centuries, and the North American continent is now beginning to suffer the worry and strife of mosquito-born illness.
On to a few less disgusting mosquito facts we go. The mosquito’s wings beat from 300 to 600 times per minute. No wonder he needs so much blood for his constant flight patterns. The female mosquito lives longer than the male of any species, and some species indigenes to Australia and Africa can live upwards of 5 months. This is quite a bit longer than the life span of the 150 species known to North America, which is never longer than 5 weeks. Mosquito facts having to do with the life cycle are rather interesting as well. They are so readily adaptable to changing climates and temperatures that they can complete their entire life cycle within four days if that is all that their habitat will stand for.
When the male mosquito is searching for mating opportunities, he can determine the sex of another mosquito merely by the pitch of her wing beats. The average mosquito books along at a respectable pace of approximately 1.5 miles per hour. Though most species tend to remain within 600 feet of their hatching place for the entirety of their lives, some marked and monitored mosquitoes have been tracked as far as 70 miles from the place of their hatching. This is a pretty amazing feat, though it is thought that wind current and intensity may have a lot to do with these migrations.
If you thought that the mosquito facts couldn’t get more informative, you may want to keep reading. Often, we make the mistake of assuming that a mosquito can smell our blood or see our heat, but this is not the case. The mosquito can actually detect the carbon dioxide that we exhale from over 70 feet away. We can outrun them, it’s true, but they can find us again and again if we insist on breathing. A few brave, scientific souls decided to compile some mosquito facts of their own, and this is what they found. In the Arctic, they stripped away their clothes and allowed the free feeding of the aggressive mosquitoes there. They reported 9,000 bites per person, per minute. This rate of attack would cause a human adult to lose half of their blood supply within two hours.