26 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



CHAPTER III. 

 HABITS OF MOSQUITOES. 



THE MOSQUITO BITE. 



No questions are more frequently asked than : Why does a 

 mosquito bite ? Why does it produce the pain ? Does a mosquito 

 feed on anything other than blood? ^lust a mosquito have 

 blood before it can reproduce? Does a mosquito bite more 

 than once? 



Answering these in the inverse order, there is no doubt that 

 a mosquito will bite practically as often as it gets a chance to do 

 so. Actual obser^-ations on Culex cantator and C. sollicitans 

 has proved that a full meal of blood is completely digested in 

 less than three days. Anopheles in captivity will bite daily for 

 several days in succession and hungrily if made to fast longer 

 than fort}--eight hours. Culex sollicitans will bite after all the 

 eggs are laid and sheer blood-thirst is the only excuse. These 

 are all matters of direct observation and experiment and, based 

 upon these obser\-ations and upon others that are recorded, it 

 seems safe to say that mosquitoes that suck blood at all, will do 

 so as often as opportunity serves. 



As to whether blood is a necessary food to enable a female 

 mosquito to mature her eggs there is yet considerable doubt. It 

 is certainly proved within my own experience that Culex pipiens 

 may oviposit without food other than that which could be 

 found under the net covering a common wooden pail in which 

 the parent developed. It is certain too, that there are long 

 stretches of salt marsh breeding areas on the New Jersey Coast 

 where mosquitoes occur by the million, where the foot of man 

 does not touch once a year, where no warm-blooded things save 

 a few birds abide, and where blood is absolutely unobtainable. 

 Of course, a large percentage of these salt marsh breeders 

 migrates inland and feeds bountifully ; but none of these migrants 

 seem to be fertile and the blood food produces no developing 

 ovaries. On the other hand, the vast majority of specimens in 

 which ovaries were found to be well developed, showed traces 

 of blood food in the stomach. This statement should be quali- 

 fied, however, so as to apply to C. sollicitans only; in C. cantator 

 there is usually no trace of food observable to the naked eye 

 when ovaries are fully developed. 



