Last night, between 9:00pm and goodness knows how late, I killed no fewer than EIGHT mosquitoes in my house! Here’s one of them:

Every year it’s the same – rainy season hits and the mosquito count quintuples, almost overnight (here’s last year’s post on the subject). This is largely because there is a lot of standing water, in which the wee beasties breed. I’m far from an expert on the subject, but here’s my understanding of the two main types of mosquito we have here:

Firstly, the smaller, brownish ones with bent rear legs (like the one above), called anopheles. Click here for a great site about the anopheles mosquito. This is the one that can give you malaria, but it’s only the females which do so. They tend to bite during the night hours and sometimes you don’t even notice you’ve been bitten (crafty blighters!)

Secondly, there are the larger, blackish mozzies with striped legs, which bite more during the day, but do not give you malaria. Instead, they can pass on dengue fever or yellow fever instead and their bites can be itchy. Nice! Just as well I am armed with my mosquito electrocuting racket at times such as these!

If anyone reading this knows more about mosquitoes than me (not difficult) then leave a comment to enrich our knowledge on the matter! If not, then you can also click here for information on bites you can get in Africa (aka fast food for insects).

Finally, don’t forget the Creepy Crawlies album in the Photo Gallery.