50 free Mosquito trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Mosquitoes kill more people than any other animal, yet most of the 3,600 species never touch blood, and even in the biting species the males live on nectar. This quiz covers the insect itself: what the name means, how the female saws into skin with a thousandth of the force of a needle, why she rests for days after a meal, what attracts her to some people more than others, and how fast a male beats his wings. It also finds the giant 'elephant mosquito' whose larvae eat other mosquitoes. The second half is about the diseases and the fight against them: Laveran and Ronald Ross working out malaria, Walter Reed proving Carlos Finlay's yellow-fever hypothesis, quinine from cinchona bark and artemisinin from sweet wormwood, insecticide-treated nets, DDT, mosquitofish and sterile males, and the spread of the Asian tiger mosquito and Zika. A few questions cover mosquitoes in culture, from a 1912 animated film to a plywood warplane and the amber of Jurassic Park. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on mosquitoes, the main genera and the diseases they carry, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Insects and Malaria-adjacent Science quizzes for more.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'mosquito' comes from Spanish and Portuguese and literally means what?
Little fly
It combines mosca (fly) with the diminutive -ito; the family name Culicidae comes from Latin culex, a gnat or midge.
Q 02Roughly how many mosquito species are there?
3,600
They are split into two subfamilies: Anophelinae, which carry malaria, and the much larger Culicinae, which carry viruses such as dengue.
Q 03How many pairs of wings does a mosquito have?
One
Like all true flies, the second pair is reduced to tiny balancing organs called halteres.
Q 04What do ALL mosquitoes, male and female, drink?
Flower nectar
Blood is a female-only extra in many species, taken mainly for the protein needed to make eggs.
Q 05How many people do mosquito-borne diseases kill each year, according to Wikipedia?
Around a million
Nearly 700 million people catch a mosquito-borne illness annually, which is why the insect is called the deadliest animal on Earth.
Q 06What are the four stages of the mosquito life cycle?
Egg, larva, pupa, adult
The first three stages are aquatic; the pupa, nicknamed the tumbler, hangs from the surface by breathing trumpets.
Q 07Anopheles mosquitoes can fly continuously for up to four hours and cover how far in a night?
12 km
They cruise at only 1 to 2 km/h, slower than a walking human.
Q 08Male mosquitoes beat their wings roughly how many times per second?
450 to 600
The wing muscles do not attach to the wings directly; they vibrate the thorax, which flicks the wings.
Q 09In hot weather, how quickly can a mosquito develop from egg to adult?
As few as five days
In cooler conditions the same journey can take a month, and some species overwinter as adults in diapause.
Q 10How many times does a female mosquito mate in her lifetime?
Once
She is drawn into a dusk swarm of males by their pheromones, then spends the rest of her weeks feeding and laying.
Q 11After a full blood meal, how long does a female typically rest before laying eggs?
Two or three days
A female can lay 100 to 200 eggs over her lifetime, repeating the feed-rest-lay cycle each time.
Q 12Which mosquito genus lays its eggs in floating rafts?
Culex
Anopheles females dap single cigar-shaped eggs with floats onto the surface, while Aedes drop theirs on damp mud to hatch when flooded.
Q 13A mosquito larva breathes air through what?
A siphon on its abdomen
That is why larvae hang just under the surface and dive when disturbed; the pupa switches to a pair of respiratory trumpets.
Q 21An Arctic mosquito swarm can take how much blood per day from each animal in a caribou herd?
Up to 300 ml
Arctic species may be active only a few weeks a year, but they emerge in staggering numbers over the melt pools.
Q 22In 2025, mosquitoes were found for the first time in which previously mosquito-free country?
Iceland
Specimens of Culiseta annulata turned up in Kjósarhreppur, another marker of insects moving north with the climate.
Q 23Which fossil from 125-million-year-old Lebanese amber was proposed in 2023 as the oldest mosquito?
Libanoculex intermedius
Its identity is disputed; some researchers think it is a phantom midge, leaving Burmese amber specimens of 99 million years as the safe record.
Q 14Which three genera never take blood at all, reproducing on plant food alone?
Malaya, Topomyia and Toxorhynchites
They are a tiny minority; disease vectors like Anopheles and Aedes cannot lay eggs without a blood meal.
Q 15Which two chemicals in exhaled breath do female mosquitoes home in on?
Carbon dioxide and 1-octen-3-ol
1-octen-3-ol is 'mushroom alcohol'; of 72 odour receptor types on the antennae, at least 27 are tuned to chemicals in sweat.
Q 16People with which blood group are preferred by mosquitoes?
O
They also favour lots of skin bacteria, high body heat and pregnant women, and attractiveness has a heritable component.
Q 17People highly attractive to mosquitoes produce more of what on their skin?
Carboxylic acids
Skin bacteria turn sweat and sebum into these volatile compounds, which is why odour profiles vary so much between people.
Q 18Mosquitoes are visually drawn to which colours, corresponding to longer wavelengths?
Red and orange
They are also strongly attracted to dark, high-contrast objects against lighter backgrounds.
Q 19How many piercing stylets are bundled inside a female mosquito's proboscis?
Six
Two mandibles, two maxillae, the hypopharynx and the labrum; the sawing tips need a thousandth of the force of a needle, so the bite is painless.
Q 20Which continent has no mosquitoes?
Antarctica
Sudden mid-winter thaws in polar regions trick pupae into emerging, then refreeze before they can breed.
Q 24Which colonial secretary ordered biting-insect collections from British colonies in 1898, boosting mosquito taxonomy?
Joseph Chamberlain
The specimens fed Frederick Theobald's five-volume monograph on the Culicidae published from 1901.
Q 25Which repellent chemical does Wikipedia's mosquito article name as repelling some mosquitoes?
DEET
The CDC also recommends picaridin, eucalyptus oil (PMD) and IR3535; ultrasonic gadgets have never been shown to work.
Q 26Winsor McCay's 1912 animated film about a giant insect tormenting a sleeping man is called what?
How a Mosquito Operates
One of the earliest animated films, it is also known as The Story of a Mosquito; McCay went on to make Gertie the Dinosaur.
Q 27Why was the de Havilland Mosquito, a fast WWII aircraft, nicknamed the Wooden Wonder?
Its airframe was mostly wood
In 1941 it was among the fastest operational aircraft in the world, and it flew as bomber, fighter, photo-reconnaissance plane and pathfinder.
Q 28The Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras is named after what?
The Miskito people
British interests dominated the region for centuries as the Mosquito Kingdom before Nicaragua absorbed it in 1894.
Q 29In Jurassic Park, dinosaur DNA is recovered from blood inside insects preserved in what?
Amber
Real amber-trapped mosquitoes exist, but DNA degrades far too fast to survive tens of millions of years.
Q 30The genus name Anopheles comes from a Greek word meaning what?
Useless
Anopheles gambiae is the best-known carrier of Plasmodium falciparum; no other mosquito genus transmits human malaria.