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Thanks to Kaiden who suggested we learn about mosquitoes this week! You know what eats a lot of mosquitoes? Bats!\xa0If you don't already listen to the excellent podcast Varmints!, jump on over to it to listen to last week's episode about bats! I cohosted with Paul and had a great time, and I know you'll like the episode and the podcast in general. It's family friendly and lots of fun!\n\nFurther reading:\n\nThe Paleobiologist Who Inspired the Science in 'Jurassic Park'\n\nSMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK:\n\n\n\nMosquito larvae:\n\n\n\nAn elephant mosquito in amber:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nThis week we have a great listener suggestion from Kaiden, who wants to learn about mosquitoes! This is especially great because last week I was a guest co-host on the awesome podcast Varmints!, and we talked about bats! As you may know, bats eat a LOT of mosquitoes. I\u2019ll put a link to the Varmints! page in the show notes in case you don\u2019t already subscribe. I think you\u2019d like it.\n\nThe mosquito is a common insect that lives all over the world, except for Antarctica and Iceland. There are something like 3,500 species of mosquito known. In areas where it gets cold in winter some species of mosquito may hibernate, but most enter a state called diapause. This basically means that any eggs and larvae delay their development until it warms up, then develop into adults normally.\n\nThe mosquito is a type of fly, and like other flies it only has one pair of wings. Most mosquito species are only 3-6 millimeters long, gray or black in color, with long, extremely thin legs and narrow wings. The largest known species of mosquito is called the elephant mosquito, which can grow up to 18mm long. That\u2019s almost three-quarters of an inch. Its wingspan is even larger, 24 mm, which is just shy of a full inch across.\n\nThe mosquito eats nectar. Oh, sorry, that\u2019s the male mosquito. The female mosquito is the one who drinks blood, and she needs the blood to develop her eggs. But in fact, the female mosquito also eats nectar too, and mosquitoes even help pollinate some flowers. Some species of mosquito can develop eggs without blood, but most need the extra protein and nutrients that blood provides. In some species, the female can produce one clutch of eggs without blood, but she has to have blood to develop more eggs.\n\nThe female mosquito has a long, thin proboscis that she uses to pierce the skin of an animal and suck its blood, although the process is a lot more complicated than it sounds. The proboscis is made up of a sheath that protects the other mouthparts, including a pair of mandibles and a pair of maxillae. The mandibles and maxillae are actually the parts that cause the bite. If you look at a mosquito that has landed on your arm and is biting you, it looks like the proboscis must be stuck in your skin like a teensy hypodermic needle, but what you\u2019re seeing is the proboscis sheath. The mosquito touches the sheath to your skin and bends it back slightly, which exposes the mouthparts and acts as a guide as the mouthparts bite you. The mandibles are the pointy ones and the maxillae have flattened ends. The mosquito moves her head slightly back and forth to lever them all into your skin, and the only reason this doesn\u2019t hurt like crazy is because they\u2019re so incredibly tiny, plus it happens very quickly.\n\nOnce the mouthparts have pierced the skin, the mosquito injects saliva, which contains proteins that act as an anticoagulant so the blood continues to flow without clotting. The itching and swelling associated with a mosquito bite are due to this saliva, which your body reacts to as a foreign substance, which of course it is.\n\nThis biting and saliva injecting process actually takes place very quickly, and then the mosquito sucks the blood up. She can hold up to three times her weight in blood. Not only that, but if she\u2019s not disturbed, she will start digesting the blood quickly and will ejec...