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47 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 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'mosquito' comes from Spanish and Portuguese and literally means what?
Little fly
'Little fly': it combines Spanish 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
About 3,600 mosquito species are known, split into two subfamilies: Anophelinae, which includes the malaria carriers, and the much larger Culicinae, which carry viruses such as dengue.
Q 03How many pairs of wings does a mosquito have?
One
One pair: like all true flies, a mosquito has just two wings, and the second pair is reduced to tiny balancing organs called halteres.
Q 04What do ALL mosquitoes, male and female, drink?
Flower nectar
Flower nectar is the universal mosquito drink; blood is a female-only extra in many species, taken mainly for the protein needed to make eggs.
Q 05Roughly how many people die from mosquito-borne diseases each year?
Around a million
Around a million: malaria alone kills roughly 600,000 people a year, and nearly 700 million people catch a mosquito-borne illness annually, which is why the mosquito is called the deadliest animal.
Q 06What are the four stages of the mosquito life cycle?
Egg, larva, pupa, adult
Egg, larva, pupa, adult: the first three stages are spent in water, and the pupa 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
Up to 12 km in a night: Anopheles cruise at just 1 to 2 km/h, slower than a walking human, but can stay airborne for up to four hours at a time.
Q 08Male mosquitoes beat their wings roughly how many times per second?
450 to 600
450 to 600 times a second for males, higher than females; the flight muscles vibrate the thorax rather than pulling on the wings directly.
Q 09In hot weather, how quickly can a mosquito develop from egg to adult?
As few as five days
As few as five days in warm water; 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
Once: most females mate a single time, storing the sperm in a spermatheca to fertilise every clutch they lay for the rest of their lives.
Q 11After a full blood meal, how long does a female mosquito typically rest while her eggs develop before laying them?
Two or three days
Two or three days of rest lets her digest the meal and develop her eggs, which she then lays in a batch of roughly 50 to 200 before seeking another blood meal.
Q 12Which mosquito genus lays its eggs in floating rafts?
Culex
Culex females glue 100 to 300 eggs together into a floating raft; Anopheles lay single eggs with side floats, while Aedes drop theirs on damp mud to hatch when flooded.
Q 13A mosquito larva breathes air through what?
A siphon on its abdomen
Q 21Which fossil from 125-million-year-old Lebanese amber was proposed in 2023 as the oldest mosquito?
Libanoculex intermedius
Libanoculex intermedius, described in 2023; its identity is disputed, with some researchers calling it a phantom midge, which would leave 99-million-year-old Burmese amber specimens as the safe record.
Q 22Which colonial secretary ordered biting-insect collections from British colonies in 1898, boosting mosquito taxonomy?
Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary from 1895 to 1903; the specimens fed Frederick Theobald's five-volume monograph on the Culicidae, published from 1901.
Q 23Which chemical is the common active ingredient in mosquito repellents applied to the skin?
That is why larvae hang just under the surface and dive when disturbed; the pupa switches to a pair of respiratory trumpets.
Q 14Which two chemicals in exhaled breath do female mosquitoes home in on?
Carbon dioxide and 1-octen-3-ol
Carbon dioxide and 1-octen-3-ol, the 'mushroom alcohol' in exhaled breath; of 72 odour receptor types on the antennae, at least 27 are tuned to chemicals in sweat.
Q 15People highly attractive to mosquitoes produce more of what on their skin?
Carboxylic acids
Carboxylic acids: a 2022 study found people who are 'mosquito magnets' produce far more of them, as skin bacteria break down sebum into these volatile compounds.
Q 16Which colours are mosquitoes visually drawn to after they detect carbon dioxide?
Red and orange
Red and orange: a 2022 study found mosquitoes fly toward red, orange and black after sensing CO2, while ignoring green, blue and white.
Q 17How many piercing stylets are bundled inside a female mosquito's proboscis?
Six
Six: two mandibles, two maxillae, the hypopharynx and the labrum; the serrated maxillae saw in with so little force that the bite is usually painless.
Q 18Which continent has no mosquitoes?
Antarctica
Sudden mid-winter thaws in polar regions trick pupae into emerging, then refreeze before they can breed.
Q 19An Arctic mosquito swarm can take how much blood per day from each animal in a caribou herd?
Up to 300 ml
Up to 300 ml a day: Arctic species are active only a few weeks a year, but they emerge in staggering numbers over the melt pools and can drive caribou herds onto windier high ground.
Q 20In 2025, mosquitoes were found for the first time in which previously mosquito-free country?
Iceland
Iceland: three Culiseta annulata specimens were caught near Kjósarhreppur in October 2025, the first mosquitoes ever recorded there, as insects move north with the warming climate.
DEET
DEET repels some mosquitoes and other insects. The CDC also recommends picaridin, eucalyptus oil (PMD) and IR3535; ultrasonic gadgets have never been shown to work.
Q 24Winsor McCay's 1912 animated film about a giant insect tormenting a sleeping man is called what?
How a Mosquito Operates
How a Mosquito Operates (1912), also known as The Story of a Mosquito, is one of the earliest animated films; McCay followed it with Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914.
Q 25Why was the de Havilland Mosquito, a fast WWII aircraft, nicknamed the Wooden Wonder?
Its airframe was mostly wood
Its airframe was mostly wood, a balsa core sandwiched between birch plywood skins; in 1941 it was among the fastest operational aircraft in the world, flying as bomber, fighter and reconnaissance plane.
Q 26The Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras is named after what?
The Miskito people
The Miskito people, an Indigenous group of the region; Britain backed their Mosquito Kingdom for centuries before Nicaragua absorbed the coast in 1894.
Q 27In Jurassic Park, dinosaur DNA is recovered from blood inside prehistoric mosquitoes preserved in what?
Amber
Amber-trapped mosquitoes really exist, but DNA degrades far too fast to survive tens of millions of years.
Q 28The genus name Anopheles comes from a Greek word meaning what?
Useless
'Useless' (Greek anōphelēs, 'unprofitable'), a name coined in 1818; no other mosquito genus transmits human malaria, and Anopheles gambiae is the best-known carrier of Plasmodium falciparum.
Q 29Aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito, has a thorax marking shaped like which musical instrument?
A lyre
A lyre: the white scales on its thorax form a lyre shape; it also has banded legs and, despite the name, is native to Africa, carried to the Americas by the slave trade.
Q 30The Asian tiger mosquito is unusual among mosquitoes because it feeds mainly when?
In the daytime
In the daytime: Aedes albopictus bites mostly in the morning and late afternoon rather than at dusk; native to Southeast Asia, it has spread across Europe and the Americas since the 1980s.