Blood-sucking insects cause a lot of trouble for humans. Indoors, we may be bothered by annoying squeaking, especially in the evening. Bites, although they do not pose a great danger to the body, cause itching and pain in the area of the skin.
Various methods are used to protect a home.
This is, first of all, the installation of thick doors and windows with additional protection in the form of a mosquito net. But where do mosquitoes come from in an apartment with tightly closed doors and protected windows? Let's consider this issue in detail. Rating: 10 best mosquito repellents
Rating: 10 best mosquito repellents
Even the best spray against mosquitoes and ticks in nature does not always protect against other blood-sucking insects...
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Danger
Where do mosquitoes come from? They enter a house or apartment through open doors, windows, cracks and cracks. If a female mosquito laid larvae in the warm season, this question disappears by itself. Mosquitoes are not at all harmless insects. In addition to the fact that they make unpleasant annoying sounds, bite and prevent you from falling asleep at night, mosquitoes often become carriers of dangerous diseases, infections and allergic reactions.
These insects attack several people at once. Therefore, they can easily transfer an infection from an infected person to a healthy person. They are the cause of malaria, tularemia, yellow fever, and lymphatic filariasis. In addition, a mosquito bite itches. Sometimes such trauma to the skin leads to the appearance of scars.
Ultrasonic protection
Another very effective method of saving your home from mosquitoes is the use of ultrasonic repellers. The action of these devices is based on the generation of ultrasonic signals that repel mosquitoes.
Ultrasonic protection has many advantages:
- does not emit unpleasant odors;
- there are no secretions dangerous for humans;
- works absolutely silently;
- Ultrasound of this power is completely harmless even for infants;
- does not interfere with the operation of home equipment.
When purchasing an ultrasonic device, you should correlate its radius of action with the size of the room in which the device is intended to be installed. Otherwise, only part of the room will be protected.
Peculiarities
Where do mosquitoes come from and how long do they live after they bite? Most often, these insects enter the house from the street, where they breed. That is why they cause so much inconvenience to humans in winter. Mosquitoes are weaker and easier to kill. The mosquito attacks a person as soon as it senses him. An insect can hunt for a long time, because its main goal is to bite.
During a bite, a kind of exchange occurs: the mosquito takes blood from its victim and gives saliva. It prevents coagulation and the insect is able to “enjoy” its prey for a long time. The substance found in the mosquito’s saliva causes discomfort at the affected area, causing redness and itching. It causes severe allergic reactions in people with sensitive skin. The lifespan of female mosquitoes is approximately forty to one hundred days. It all depends on the ambient temperature. Males live much shorter lives.
Where do they disappear to?
In nature, the activity of mosquitoes is highly dependent on the ambient temperature. Insects do not tolerate temperatures below 10 degrees Celsius very well, and die at 2 degrees. Therefore, with the first frost, insects cease to exist and disturb.
As for living quarters, mosquitoes do not disappear anywhere, they simply die without food. Males come first, and then females later, even if they have drunk blood. The fact is that strategically important foods for mosquito nutrition are nectar and plant juice, and if such pleasure is not observed in the living room, the female will die in 2-3 days. The presence of indoor flowers significantly prolongs the life of a female mosquito. If she manages to drink blood and become fertilized, she may well lay her eggs somewhere in a damp place under the bathtub, in the underground or in a watered indoor plant.
In general, our mosquitoes are not such dangerous insects; the only harm they cause is intrusiveness at night and severe itching from bites the next day. A mosquito bite is nothing more than a microallergic reaction of the body, which manifests itself according to all the rules of this direction:
- swelling,
- redness,
However, antibodies that are constantly present in human blood are able to suppress the pathological effects of protein antigens in mosquito saliva. But some people, especially those with a reduced amount of immune defenses, may experience more serious reactions that develop into a system-wide form - shortness of breath, changes in blood pressure and even loss of consciousness, which disappear with proper treatment.
Here are some of the most interesting facts about mosquitoes that have made these insects particularly famous among the many species of insects in their large family.
Tropical mosquitoes, or mosquitoes, are the deadliest insects on our planet. More mosquito-related deaths have been reported there than from any other insect or animal. This fact is due to the fact that mosquitoes can be carriers of a large number of deadly diseases, including:
- malaria,
- dengue fever,
- yellow fever
- encephalitis.
Mosquitoes can also spread heartworm, which can be fatal to domestic dogs.
Red blood protein - hemoglobin - is needed by female mosquitoes so that fertilization by males is more effective and a denser protective shell of future eggs is formed.
Some laboratory studies confirm the fact that when certain species of mosquitoes are absolutely disgusted by human blood, they will not come near us. A person was placed in a room filled with female mosquitoes. Some insects absolutely refused to attack him, but greedily attacked the dog placed next to him. It is difficult to say whether such a phenomenon occurs in nature or not, since it is impossible to track those insects that do not fly up to humans.
Mosquitoes are capable of flying at speeds of 1.5 to 2.5 kilometers per hour. This may seem fast, but in the insect world it is actually very slow. A mosquito's wings make 300-600 movements per second. In a fly, this figure is almost two times lower, so the mosquito buzz is more like a squeak.
Adult individuals, hatching from their pupae in the depths of distant forest swamps or streams, are able to cover a distance of 1.5 to 2 hundred kilometers in search of potential prey.
All mosquitoes require water to reproduce. Our species are able to reproduce even in puddles left after a rainstorm, as well as in wet grass. Therefore, a day after heavy rain there are the most mosquitoes. An adult female mosquito does not live more than 5-6 months.
With the arrival of the spring-summer period, not only the season of frequent walks in nature begins, but also many inconveniences and problems. But the whole point is that there are insects that bother us very much and create a lot of discomfort. We're talking about mosquitoes. Humanity has always known about them, they just called them differently. Their spread across continents was caused by geographical discoveries. They reached other territories through water in barrels. And since insect larvae develop in water, there were no difficulties in transportation or adaptation. Now they are distributed throughout Europe, America, and Africa. There are several species of mosquitoes that can live in certain climates, and some species are completely picky about conditions.
A mosquito can ruin your summer holiday
Kinds
Where do mosquitoes come from after winter? Most often, these insects lay eggs in apartments, entering them through basements or stairwells. It is not difficult for them to get into living quarters, especially during peak migration periods. With the onset of spring and sharp warming, their activity increases. There are about three hundred species of mosquitoes in the world. The most dangerous is malaria. The threat is that they can feed on the blood of dead animals and then move on to humans. The following are the types of these blood-sucking insects:
- Squeak mosquito. The most common type that quickly adapts. This mosquito is wild, lives in forest areas, parks, but is also found in cities. Some mosquitoes of this species have adapted well to civilization; they are able to reproduce in extreme conditions. “City ones” do not hibernate, so they are easy to meet even in winter.
- Malarial. A tropical mosquito in whose stomach small worms develop. When bitten, they enter the human lymphatic system, where they multiply.
- Tigers. This species also poses a danger to humans and becomes a carrier of dangerous diseases and infections.
Where do big, non-biting mosquitoes come from? These insects frighten people with their appearance. They are also called centipedes. The large species lives in the wild, near water bodies. Almost never found in cities.
Life cycle of an insect
A mosquito is easy to recognize when it lands on a part of the body that is free from clothing and begins to bite. Most people do not consider it necessary to look closely at this insect, trying instead to slam it harder at the moment of the bite.
Mosquitoes belong to the family Culicidae, whose insects exhibit general characteristics that can always be identified upon closer examination.
In entomological terms, mosquitoes are true flies with long mustaches. Mosquito antennae have 6 or more segments. The antennae of the male are slightly different from those of the females. They are quite feathery, providing a large surface area for detecting females ready to mate. During this period, females emit a special tone when buzzing, the frequency of which is captured by the feathers on the antennae of the males.
As strange as it may sound, adult mosquitoes do not feed on blood. Females need it only for procreation, although some of the blood is spent on digestive needs.
Males are not destined to learn the taste of blood throughout their short lives; they do not even have an oral apparatus adapted for piercing the skin and sucking blood. By the way, female mosquitoes bite not only humans, but also any other warm-blooded animals and even birds, reptiles and amphibians.
Mosquito larvae feed on organic matter dissolved in water, including algae, protozoa, decaying debris, and even other larvae of their species when particularly hungry. Adult insects of both sexes feed on flower nectar.
The life cycle of a mosquito is completed in four stages, when complete metamorphosis must occur.
- The female mosquito lays her eggs on the surface of standing water. Less often this happens on the surface of wet soil, when it can be flooded with water.
- The larvae form and live in water, bringing out a breathing device, which is sometimes called a siphon.
- Within one to two weeks the larvae pupate. The pupae are not able to take food, but can be active, floating on the surface of the water when temperature conditions allow it.
- Adult insects usually appear within a few days and sit on the surface of the water for some time, and when they are completely dry, they are ready to fly. Adult females live from two weeks to two months, males - no more than a week.
After the adult female has fully formed, she begins to search for her prey. This type of insect has a very well developed system for detecting potential sources of fresh blood. On the antennae of females, each segment is capable of subtly responding to any stimulus that signals the insect that the prey is close. If you are bitten by a mosquito, find out what you need to do by following.
The concept of “close” for a mosquito is very relative. When the smell of human sweat containing the strong irritant octenol is present in the air, mosquitoes detect it 5 km away. Segments of antennae that react to carbon dioxide in exhaled air allow the mosquito to accurately determine the direction of its flight to the victim from a distance of a couple of hundred meters. These insects are able to feel the warmth of the human body, being 50 meters from their prey. All these indicators can increase by half when the wind blows from the victim to the mosquito.
Many readers wonder where a mosquito can come from in a city apartment if the nearest body of water is several dozen kilometers away. As noted in the previous section, mosquitoes are capable of flying hundreds of kilometers in search of prey. In addition, our domestic mosquitoes, which have easily adapted near humans, do not require a swamp or river at all. A puddle in the shade or basement of a house, as well as thick wet grass, is quite enough.
Insects enter a city apartment directly only through open windows, doors or ventilation shafts.
They have no other ways here. There is an opinion that mosquitoes do not rise above the third floor. It's a delusion. The hovering altitude of a mosquito is greatly influenced by the atmospheric pressure at the current time and the static altitude at sea level. The higher above sea level and the lower the atmospheric pressure at a certain storey line, the more effective the overcoming threshold for mosquitoes it will be. For this reason, in some foothills and mountainous areas there are no mosquitoes at all.
Residents of rural areas were a little less fortunate. In addition to the fact that insects also fly into doors and windows, they also hatch directly under the floor, in cellars and so on, especially if there is a lot of dampness here. They also successfully fly into rooms through open vents. From there, on cool evenings, heat comes out, which female mosquitoes feel very well, so they fly towards the warm air, ending up in the very heart of the room.
Daylight blinds insects, especially the upper ultraviolet range, for which their vision is not adapted. Therefore, insects attack mainly in the morning and evening twilight or at night.
Where do mosquitoes come from?
The answer to this question interests many people. Mosquitoes are nocturnal insects. They reproduce quickly and are most active in humid and warm environments. They choose wet, warm and damp places to live. Where do mosquitoes come from in houses? These insects are common not only in rural areas, but also in cities. Their favorite habitats are basements of high-rise buildings, balconies, bathrooms, and garages. They often hide under suspended ceilings. During the day, mosquitoes are practically inactive. At an air temperature of 0 degrees, insects fall into so-called torpor.
Insects appear in city apartments in spring and autumn, when the temperature outside is still or no longer comfortable for them. Sometimes mosquitoes become active in winter, crawling out of basements and secluded places. They accumulate where there is a lot of water. They enter apartments through ventilation, elevator shafts, staircases, and garbage chutes.
Interesting Facts
Reproduction is impossible without saturating the females with human blood. Therefore, mosquitoes are spread over almost all areas of land where humans live. They stay close to settlements so that they can drink the blood of people at any time.
Each species has its own preferences in temperature and lighting conditions. Some people like shady ponds, others like well-lit ones. Biologists have calculated that the larvae are able to develop when the water temperature is 10–35 °C, but between 25 °C and 30 °C is considered most comfortable.
Mosquitoes rarely lay eggs in large bodies of water where many fish live, because they readily feed on eggs.
The larva will die if the water is contaminated with oil products: they form a film on the surface through which the worms cannot breathe. But some species show enviable adaptation, having adapted to use oxygen dissolved in water for breathing.
The process of how mosquitoes appear has been sufficiently studied by science. These insects are characterized by high fertility and feeding on human blood. Both of these traits are directly dependent on each other.
Causes
Where do mosquitoes come from? Their appearance in a house or apartment is not related to the arrangement of life and other factors. The specificity is that they always settle next to a person. The main way they spread is migration. Insects breed close to a food source. The appearance of mosquitoes in the city is due to rainy and warm weather. They enter apartments from the street, especially if the summer is rainy and warm.
During unfavorable periods (drought, severe cold), they wait in shaded, as humid places as possible. Mosquitoes often hide in houses and apartments:
- in curtains, on ceilings or walls - where there is little light;
- behind pictures, cabinets, under carpets;
- in window frames, narrow cracks.
Mosquitoes breed in dark and damp places. However, the survival rate of larvae in residential areas is low.
Reproduction
The lifespan of mosquitoes depends not only on environmental conditions, but also on the sex of the individual. The female, under favorable conditions, can live 56 days. The young generation of mosquitoes is born after approximately 21 days. Initially, the males emerge, fly to the grass near the place where they lived as larvae, and wait for the females.
The active process of insect reproduction begins at the end of April, in May. Insects gather in flocks, fertilization occurs on the fly. Young females attract individuals of the opposite sex with a special squeak.
Mosquito breeding cycle
Within 10 days after fertilization, males die, females look for a victim to drink blood. This food source is necessary for the egg formation process to begin.
Having satisfied its nutritional needs, the insect looks for a place to lay eggs. This should be a body of standing water or a basement with running water. Less commonly, mosquitoes lay eggs in damp soil.
Inside the female, the young generation develops in about 3 days. Lays future larvae in groups or one at a time. Upon completion of this stage, the insect again looks for a victim to repeat the process.
How to get rid of it?
Where do big mosquitoes come from? Despite their terrifying appearance, they are absolutely harmless to humans. These mosquitoes do not attack and live in forested areas and wetlands. If they fly into a living space, it is by accident. They are usually attracted to warmth and bright light. There are many ways to get rid of insects: chemicals, traditional methods, or calling specialists to your home. Natural remedies are considered one of the safest and most effective. For example, a sprig of elderberry and the smell of walnuts and pine nuts can drive mosquitoes out of your apartment forever.
Preventive measures
The main ways to repel mosquitoes:
- Plants (geranium, tomato, citrus);
- Essential oils (cedar, eucalyptus, clove);
- Basement disinfection;
- Ventilation, regular cleaning.
First of all, pay attention to all possible loopholes for parasites in your windows and on the balcony. A durable mosquito net will solve this problem. Since this is not the only way pests can enter your home, it is recommended to purchase some types of flowers that can repel mosquitoes. Geranium and regular tomato will be an effective repellent for insects that do not tolerate their pungent odor.
Citrus fruits also have an unpleasant odor for bloodsuckers. The effect of lemon can be complemented with cloves. You can also use eucalyptus or clove essential oil. When aromatherapy, you should keep in mind that the aroma used should not cause you any unpleasant sensations. General cleaning in the house, in the basement, in the attic, in the barn, using special disinfectants will provide you with a quiet life without annoying insects. With the correct implementation of preventive measures, you can forget about domestic bloodsuckers, and not rack your brains over where mosquitoes come from in the apartment in the fall, or even in winter.
How long can they live without bleeding?
The lack of blood does not affect the life expectancy of males. The female needs such food only before breeding; if she does not eat, she can live for a maximum of 2 days after laying eggs. Thus, the life of individuals without blood is affected only by temperature. The mosquito is able to hibernate in the bark of trees or indoors; during cold times it goes into diapause, during which the metabolism is slowed down; with the onset of warmth, the individual wakes up again. Thus, suspended animation can prolong the life of a female up to 1 year.
