Trivia question for Jul-16-2011

Olivia decided to feature these insects for her trivia today since we were visited by these pests daily as they taught their “Plastic Awareness Week” program to the kids at the Riverside Retreat in LeBelle FL.  Lets see how knowledgable you are about these guys.  Females lay from 9-12 batches of eggs during their lifetime, and each batch contains from 180-270 eggs.  They lay their eggs one at a time which floats on the surface of water.

While many species are native to tropical and subtropical regions, some genera such as Aedes have successfully adapted to cooler regions. In the warm and humid tropical regions, they are active the entire year long; however, in temperate regions they hibernate over winter. Eggs from strains in the temperate zones are more tolerant to the cold than ones from warmer regions. They can even tolerate snow and sub-zero temperatures. In addition, adults can survive throughout winter in suitable microhabitats.

So here are Olivia’s questions:  Tell us what kind of insect this is and also tell us what type of diseases they can pass on to dogs and cats?  Finally, the females of this species eat one thing in particular while the males eat something completely different, tell us what they both eat.

Good Luck 😉

Answer:

Wow… congratulations are in order to lots of folks with this trivia.  We had Angela Williams from Riverside CA answer the type of insect. We had Petr Major from Hořovice city in the Czech Republic for identifying the types of diseases these guys can pass on to cats and dogs (although he was not sure of the correct pronunciation in English ;-), Napat Scimu (not sure where they are from) correctly identified which gender drinks blood, and Carmel Severson from Cooper City, FL for also identifying that these insects pass heart-worm on to pets, also to Eva Ries (my sister) from Fort Pierce, Florida for providing us with more interesting facts about these guys, and finally to Gina for posing the question about why some of us are favored by these bugs more so than others. The answer to all of this is as follows:

The insect we featured is the Mosquito and depending on the species, females can transfer malaria and dengue fever and a form of encephalitis (contracted by humans, equines, canines, avians, and rodents) and even heart-worm if the right microbes are present in the female’s body.  As for the food preferences between the genders, Females: Blood. Males: Nectar.  This is because the female requires blood to nourish her developing eggs. She is the one responsible for providing the necessary proteins to her developing eggs and she comes well equipped to accomplish this task.

Here is more on these guys and also information as to why they bite some people more than others: Mosquitoes, Why are mosquitoes attracted to some people more than others?

Thanks for playing along 😉