MOSQUITOES
Insect    

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). ​

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• 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.

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• 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 drinks 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.

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• 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.  

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• Insects, enjoy a good meal of mosquitoes. 
• The ecological approach could be to put 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

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