I always thought that mosquitos just kind of died off in the winter but I was having a think about this the other day and came up with a few other equally probably theories. Here are the possible options as I see it:

  1. They die off – ok, we’ve all assumed this, but let me ask you a question, Shanghai is virtually swarming with mosquitos until October, then they all but disappear at the same time, where are all the bodies? You’d think we’d be wading through drifts of mosquito carcasses at the first sight of cold weather. Do they all fly off to some mystical mosquito graveyard to die like elephants in the old Tarzan films? What’s more, if they all die then how do they reappear the next year? Let’s assume that this is the correct theory, what actually makes them die off, is it just the cold? (surely they would have evolved special winter coats if this were the case) or is it that their food source dries up, i.e. us. Makes sense, come autumn the locals roll down their string vests and trousers and dig out their padded pyjamas, all of a sudden it’s a lot more difficult for mosquitos to get their lunch and they starve to death (in the mystical mosquito graveyard of course).
  2. They migrate to somewhere warmer for the winter, possibly Biarritz in the South of France or Guernsey – not as daft as it sounds, birds do it every year and mosquitos are clearly related to birds because they both have wings and fly about. Hell of a long way though considering their maximum speed of flight, so maybe they call in a favour from their feathered cousins and migrate on their backs. In return the mosquito sacrifice one or two of their numbers by picking straws (small ones mind you) during the journey to keep their pilot fed and flying. Coming to think of it, if I find out they ARE migrating to France for the winter I’ll consider investing in land and setting up a mosquito breeding program next year
  3. They hibernate – ok, back to point 1, winter is on its way, it’s getting a bit nippy and their major source of food is inaccessible so they sneak into somewhere warm and sleep it out until spring, maybe in the coats of those guys that sell baked sweet potatos on the street, before emerging refreshed and ravenous the following spring. Actually, thinking about it, maybe they burrow under our skin before we bring down the quilted pyjamas for a continuous source of food during hybernation.

I have a number of other theories but they need more work…

While we’re on the subject of mosquitos, I have another question, well, three actually:

In the middle of summer in Shanghai if you captured every mosquito in the city how big a box would you need to keep them in (assuming they were packed in like sardines)?

Then, if you mashed them all up a bit in a gigantic colander (with little holes) how much mosquito juice would you get (assuming they all had empty stomachs)?

And finally, would the chaps from Weird Meat be prepared to drink it?

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