Top 10 facts about mosquitoes

Only female mosquitoes suck blood from animals

AUGUST 20 is World Mosquito Day, commemorating the day in 1897 when Sir Ronald Ross confirmed the Anopheles mosquito as the vector that carries malaria.

1. Being a doctor rather than a zoologist, Ross did not name the species that carried malaria but said it was “grey moquito with dappled wings”.

2. His discovery earned him the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1902, the first Briton to win a Nobel.

3. The word ‘mosquito’ comes from the Spanish for ‘little fly’.

4. Only female mosquitoes have the mouth parts needed to suck blood from other animals.

5. They use the blood not for their own food but as a source of protein for their eggs.

6. The first reference to a mosquito in English came in 1572 when it was described as “A certeine gnat or flie … which biteth both men and women in their sleepe.”

7. A mosquito can drink up to three times its weight in blood.

8. It would take 1.2 million mosquito bites to drain all the blood from a human body.

9. Male mosquitoes live for only about ten days; most females live six to eight weeks. Some females hibernate and can live up to six months.

10. According to the World Health Organisation, mosquito bites kill over a million people every year.