Ok, so as I sit here, I’m being bitten by mosquitoes. I’m out of my mosquito repellants, and can’t get new stock at this late hour.
Luckily, there are only about 5 mosquitoes flying around this room. Their friends won’t be joining them until such time that I open the windows again.
So, let’s say I call the mosquitoes Annie, Sir Culexus, Aedesius, and Mr. Annie. The 5th one is unregistered and just lurking, so I can’t identify it right now.
Assume that at t=0 they’ve all bitten me. When are they likely to bite again ? How long can they survive without biting anything ?
Some days I just wish I could offer them a bowl of my precious liquid so they’d leave me alone. That leads me to : Will that work ? If I just fill a bowl with some blood, are they at all likely to go for that ?
I did some searching, but no website seemed to have addressed my specific issues.
First off, if they have all bitten you, get rid of the male names since only the female bites.
When the female bites, it is not for the purpose of sustenance, but to provide mammalian blood for her egg production. In theory, once she has bitten, she should not need to do so again until she has mated and lain eggs, but I will not insist that that is absolutely true.
Hold on… there’s a mosquito.org ? I demand my own .org, this is so not fair!
Ok, we’ve established that Sir Culexus and Mr. Annie are just around 'coz the chicks are there. We’ve also established that the chicks dig my blood and then run off to lay their eggs.
Read through your link, and a host of other links on the topic (most sites seem to say the same thing… and they love telling me about the life-cycle of a mosquito… but we’re still to determine the answers to my original two questions:
What is the time span (on average) (atleast whether it’s minutes, hours, or days ?) that Annie goes and lays her eggs and returns to me ? (If you love something let it go, if it returns it’s yours… and all that)
Well according to this , it takes 2-3 days after the blood meal for the mosquito to lay the eggs and finish that cycle, afterwhich she presumably bites again… so figure on getting bit 2-3 times per week per mosquito.
They probably wouldn’t go for your blood in a bowl; they find their food by a combination of CO2 production (you breathing), heat (your warm body), moisture, smell (probably your BO, not the smell of blood it’s self), and movement. You’ll be far more attractive as a meal than blood in a bowl.
Sorta like if you were looking for some coffee to drink, would you be more attracted to a big starbucks/convienience store sign, a guy walking out with a cup in his hand, and coffee smell as you went through the door… or would you be looking in the street gutter for a little puddle of coffee or the last drops in an old paper cup that someone threw out the car window 6 hours ago?
In your (hypothetical) situation, you should do what I do. Turn on every light in the room, close all the doors and windows, and spend 45 minutes clambering back and forth over the bed and dresser until the mosquitoes are reduced to 5 (or 3) little red splotches on the wall. Only then am I able to sleep. If I later hear that little whine in my ear, I repeat the process.
Actually, it should be “Why is our blood not preferred?”.
I have no clue, but heck I’m glad. It’s tough enough playing second fiddle.
p.s. Your username is the only word in the english language, that I know of, that has no ‘a,e,i,o,u’ or ‘y’. It’s always fun using it in word games. Beats those gry words anyday.
