MOSQUITOES
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ANOPHELES MOSQUITO
MOSQUITOES
The females of many species of mosquitoes are blood-consuming.  During feeding, some transmit harmful diseases - to both humans and animals.  

The Anopheles Mosquito
  • The most dangerous creature on Earth.
  • Causes more than 300 million cases of Malaria annually.
  • Causes 1 - 3 million deaths annually.
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Some of the diseases transmitted by mosquitoes:
  •   Malaria
  •   Dengue Fever
  •   Yellow Fever
  •   Elephantiasis
SOME MOSQUITO TRIVIA

There are approximately 2,700 species of mosquitoes and more than 50 species are resistant to at least one insecticide.

Scientists have found a fossilised mosquito in North West Montana.  It was fossilised in amber and its belly was full of blood.

Mosquitoes:
  • Live for approximately 20 days.
  • Have 47 teeth.
  • Need stagnant water to lay eggs.
  • Can fly at an estimated 1 - 1.5 miles per hour.
  • Weigh about 2 - 2.5 milligrams (for an Aedes aegypti).
  • Most fly less than a mile during their lifetime, but the ferocious salt-marsh mosquito - found in the Everglades and other coastal locations - can migrate 75-100 miles.
  • Can survive at sea level and up to altitudes as high as 10,800 feet (3,600 meters). ​
  • Can smell a new host from between 20 - 25 meters away.
  • Can find you by sight - observing movement - and the infra-red radiation emitted by warm bodies.
  • Are attracted to the colours blue and green, and patterned clothes.  Best to wear pale colours and white.
  • Are attracted to people who have jut eaten a banana!
  • Prefer blondes and vegetarians.  They are attracted to one of the chemicals released by the metabolism used for digesting vegetables.
  • Some people are unusually attractive to mosquitoes, depending upon one or more the 300-odd chemicals produced by the skin.
  • Aside from skin chemicals, mosquitoes have other ways of finding you - they can detect both carbon dioxide and lactic acid (produced by metabolism in your muscles) in your breath.
  • Do not like Vitamin B or Iron.
  • Do not like Citronella because it irritates their feet.
  • Do not like flying anywhere near a Neem Tree - so create Neem Oil from the seeds, using 2% with coconut oil and put it on your skin, or burn the oil in candles.
  • A still breeze will keep the mosquitoes at bay.
  • The male mosquito never sucks blood - he drunks nectar and the females drink more often than necessary.
  • The female mosquito drinks about 5-millionths of a litre of blood in one sitting.
  • Mosquito saliva and rat poison both contain anti-coagulants - chemicals that prevent the blood from clotting.
  • Bug zappers do work.  However, several critics say that these zappers fry more beneficial insects than harmful ones, including the insects that eat mosquitoes!
  • Malaria parasites have evolved resistance to Choroquine ... and then to several successor drugs.  
  • Swallows, Purple Martins, Bats and some predatory
  • insects, enjoy a good meal of mosquitoes.  The ecological approach could be to up a bat-house.  Bats gobble hundreds of mosquitoes each hour!

​If you are bitten by a mosquito, consider relieving the itch by rubbing the bite with any of the following:
  1. Alcohol
  2. A clove of garlic
  3. Vanilla essence
  4. Aloe Vera
  5. Table salt
  6. Lemon juice
  7. Cube of ice - but this will only last until the ice melts
  8. Tea Tree oil
Visit:  Mosquito  .  COLLECTIVE NOUNS