We’ve been gone and I didn’t get around to posting this yesterday…but I figured I shouldn’t let this kind of day go by withough mentioning it. So it’s a little late, but….They’re annoying summertime pests, but mosquitoes are also responsible for spreading malaria — a disease that kills over half a million people every year.
Today, August 20 is World Mosquito Day — it honors the date when Sir Ronald Ross — a British army surgeon, working in India, proved that mosquitoes transmit malaria by identifying pigmented malaria parasites in mosquitoes that fed on an infected patient. The discovery revolutionized our knowledge of the disease and led to preventive measures. Ross won the Nobel Prize in 1902.
Worldwide, there are nearly 16,000 mosquitoes for every human.
One of the deadliest animals on Earth (search the archives of this blog for more,) mosquitoes cause the deaths of more than 725,000 people every year.
There are more than 3,500 species of mosquitoes, but only about 6% of them bite humans — the rest feed on other animals or plants.
Only female mosquitoes bite, because they produce eggs from blood proteins.
The only place mosquitoes don’t exist is Antarctica.
The lifespan of a male mosquito is 6 or 7 days — but — the lifespan of a female mosquito can be up to five months.
So even though it sounds like we’re honoring mosquitoes today, we’re not. The day is set aside to honor Sir Ronald Ross. There are a lots of quotes about mosquitoes about their size, irritation, persistence, and so forth. But I think the one I like the best is by Benito Mussolini, who said, “The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito.”
So I hope you celebrated World Mosquito Day appropriately…
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