Killer Mosquitoes!

After a rather long hiatus, I am BACK with a vengeance! However, it's pretty sad to notice that I'm catching up with questions from a month ago. So for the foreseeable future, I'll be answering the questions on a first come first serve basis. Do not despair, patience is a virtue.

Today's question comes from someone who claims she has amazing good looks, and she asks, "do mosquitoes have ears?? if not, how do they hear? or can they even hear?"

Since I'm going to try tackling multiple questions today, here's a quick answer:

• mosquitoes don't have ears
• they hear from these appendages called antennal flagellum, basically, hairy antenna things that vibrate
• if you are interested, read more here.

What's interesting is that the male's antennal anatomy is tuned specifically to capture the fundamental frequency of the female's flight sound, which of course is to help them find their mates ... how romantic.

And the most important fact to note today is that only FEMALE mosquitoes suck blood from animals. I wonder why that is ... I'm forced to conclude that females are bloodsuckers.