Top 10 Mosquito Fun Facts

10.  An adult mosquito can live as long as 5 months.  It may take several months for a larva to devleop to the adult stage in cold water.  Eggs of floodwater mosquitoes may remain dormant for several years, and hatch when they are covered with water.

9.  An adult female mosquito weighs only about 1/15,000 ounce (about 2.0 milligrams).

8.  An adult female mosquito consumes about 5-millionths of a liter of blood in a single meal.

7.  A mosquito's wings beat from 300 to 600 times per second.

6.  Male mosquitoes find female mosquitoes by listening to the sound of their wings beating.  The males can actually identify the correct species by the pitch of the female's wings.

5.  Mosquitoes can fly about 1 to 1.5 miles per hour.

4.  Most mosquitoes do not fly very far from their larval habitat, but the salt marsh mosquito migrates 75 to 100 miles over the course of its life.

3.  A mosquito can smell the carbon dioxide you exhale from about 60 to 75 feet away.

2.  Some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others.  It is not clear why, but probably has something to do with the 300 odd chemicals produced by the skin.

1.  In the interest of science, Arctic researchers uncovered their chests, arms, and legs and reported as many as 9,000 mosquito bites per person, per minute.  At this rate, an unprotected human would lose one half of his or her blood supply in approximately 2 hours!  That's amazing!

*Information retrieved from CDC Neato Mosquito Program.