16 Things You Didn’t Know About Mosquitoes

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Mosquitoes are our worst enemies during summer. You’re hanging out, minding your own business, but these little assholes come up and take your blood without asking you. Sometimes, they’ll give you a disease. Kill them. All of them.

1. Mosquitoes live up to two months. That’s two months of pure torture for us. Luckily, they’re fragile and can be — ahem — removed from your house with a swift, single blow of a rolled up magazine.

2. Male mosquitoes find their mates by the sound of the female’s wings. That high pitched noise you heard is probably from a female. Female mosquitoes are freaking rude as hell. The females are the ones doing the biting.

3. Apparently the top speed of a mosquito is 1.2 miles an hour, or 139 mph for them. That’s pretty fast for a teeny, tiny bug. Just stop hanging out on my ceiling.

4. Mosquitoes find your delicious blood by detecting the CO2 emissions from your breath. That means you have to hold your breath when you go outside.

5. Sweating attracts mosquitoes too. Sucks for people who sweat for no reason, then.

6. Mosquitoes are old; that is, they’ve been around since the Jurassic period.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjV0JpIAH78&w=584&h=390]

7. Mosquitoes actually pollinate flowers.

8. Heartworm can be passed from mosquitoes to dogs.

9. Mosquitoes are the most dangerous animals on the planet because infected mosquitoes spread West Nile Virus, Dengue Fever and Malaria with every bite.

10. Researchers determined that chocolate is able to confuse mosquitoes’ sense of smell.

11. A 2003 paper argued that Alexander the Great died from a mosquito bite.

12. Mosquitoes are usually dawn and dusk feeders. They hide out in the shade to avoid the sun (and possibly die from heat exposure), but they’ll still bite you if you wander and disturb them from their rest.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ku0x_2kHCI&w=584&h=390]

13. There’s a giant-ass mosquito statue in Canada — Manitoba, to be precise.

14. It would take about 1,200,000 mosquitoes to fully drain the average human body of blood.

15. Scientists believe that mosquitoes originated from South America, and then spread around the world.

16. A 200-person mosquito net was developed in Nigeria to fend against mosquito bites!