Did we accidentally design our cities for mosquitoes?

So let's just start with the life cycle of a mosquito and why water comes first.

This is also a common misconception of understanding how the mosquitoes, you know, before they're flying around biting us, what does it actually look like?

Yes, exactly.

So most people, you know, know the biting adult mosquito because that's what we're in contact with.

But they actually start their life in water.

So when they hatch out of their eggs, they have a couple of larvae life stages.

That's what we call them.

And they just sort of live in water depending on the species of water they like to live in.

And then they develop and turn into something that we call a pupil stage that they just turn into a little bowl and sort of wait to hatch.

come out as an adult.

So it's quite an intense developmental stage because they sort of dissolve within that pupil casing and then come out as an adult, which is quite crazy to think about.

And then they live as an adult, find something to blood feed on, develop their eggs, lay their eggs, and then everything starts again.

And it's funny because lots of people don't actually know that mosquitoes live in water.

And I have had people think that they had tadpoles in their pond, but it was actually mosquito larvae.

So it's always good to keep a keen eye on the water that you have around the house.

But I guess we get into that a bit later in the podcast too.

We will get into that.

Okay.

So specific water types that they need.

You mentioned the still water.

What's better for them? What are they looking for? What makes them be successful?

So I will probably say a lot that depends for questions that I'm asked today, because that's sort of a thing that I try to get people to understand.

Again, like when I said there's so many different mosquito species, they also all have different lifestyles.

So some mosquitoes live in the containers that we leave around our house.

They just need, you know, a teaspoonful of water and they're fine to breed in them and to develop and come out and bite us.