MOSQUITOES

Mosquitoes are a nuisance for life, leaving itchy bites on your skin and waking you up with a shrill hum. Not only that, but mosquitoes are the number 1 killer in the world, causing more deaths than sharks.

  Mosquitoes

A mosquito is any member of a group of about 3,500 species of small insects belonging to the order Diptera. Within Diptera, mosquitoes constitute the family Culicidae (Wikipedia).

They have scaly wings, a pair of hard wings, a thin body, and long legs. Male mosquitoes suck sap and fruit to live, female mosquitoes suck more blood from humans and animals. Dimensions vary by species, but are seldom larger than a few millimeters. Most weigh between 2 and 2.5 mg. They can fly at speeds of 1.5 to 2.5 km / h. Mosquitoes have existed on our planet for about 170 million years. The Culicidae family belongs to the order Diptera and contains about 2,700 species in 35 varieties including Anopheles, Culex, Psorophora, Ochlerotatus, Aedes, Sabethes, Wyeomyia, Culiseta, Haemagoggus, 

  Ecological characteristics

Mosquitoes grow mainly in swamps, lakes, or puddles. They lay eggs in the water, the eggs hatch into larvae. Larvae live in the water for a while, then pupate, then turn into adult mosquitoes, flying out of the water. 

The suitable temperature for mosquitoes to grow and develop is about 20 to 25 degrees. So they appear in tropical countries, including Vietnam. Mosquito's life cycle is species and temperature dependent, ranging from a few days to about a month. Female mosquitoes have a special type of proboscis that can pierce human and animal skin to suck blood. The female mosquito needs to absorb more blood, get the protein to produce eggs. Mosquito's normal food is sap and fruit, which doesn't contain enough protein for female mosquitoes. The male mosquito does not have a suitable proboscis to feed on blood, and eats only sap and fruit. There is also a branch of mosquitoes, called Toxorhynchites, that do not suck blood.

The female mosquitoes determine their target for blood intake through taste and body temperature. They are particularly sensitive to CO2 in animal breath and certain odors in sweat. Some people, for example men, are fat and type O blood and are more attractive to mosquitoes. Mosquitoes sense infrared rays emanating from objects with high body temperature, making it easy to find warm-blooded animals.

  Mosquito and health

Some mosquitoes are capable of vectors for human-to-human or animal-to-human disease transmission. Mosquito-borne diseases can cause high mortality, including dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever ...

In Vietnam, every year during the summer and rainy season, mosquito growth causes epidemics that kill many people. In the summer of 2004, several tens of thousands of Vietnamese were infected with dengue fever, of which several dozen died from mosquitoes. Around the world, more than half a billion people get malaria every year, concentrated in Africa, with mosquitoes spreading the disease.

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