Mosquitos are flying sects that are small, dark insects with long, slender legs.  They  feed by piecing the skin of humans and animals and extracting blood from their prey. There are close to 3,600 species that have been cataloged. Mosquito is a Spanish word for “little fly”. Mosquitos have a slender segmented body, one pair of wings, one pair of halteres or hardwings, three pairs of long hair-like legs and elongated mouthparts. They are long slender bodies in length which are typically 3-6mm long with dark gray to black coloring. The oldest known mosquito dates back to over 99 million years ago.

Mosquitos actually prefer their hosts to have Type O blood, be heavy breathers, with an abundance of skin bacteria, high body heat and or be pregnant. Mosquitos actually find some humans more attractive to bite than others since mosquitos are drawn to how humans perspiration smells.

In New Jersey and the surrounding North Eastern states, there are some mosquito species that are invasive and can carry diseases like the West Nile virus, Yellow Fever and even the Zika virus.  Service24 Pest Control is happy to report that there are no mosquitos in the United States that carry Malaria which is one of the world’s deadliest killers.