This is the adult of Culex pipiens, the world’s most common mosquito. Culex pipiens feeds itself by drinking floral nectar or the juices of rotting berries and other fruit. After mating, however, a female must obtain a rich dose of protein to finish the development of her eggs.
After withdrawing, she flies off tipsily, carrying blood amounting to two or three times her body weight. Then she finds a safe resting place. In a process taking at least 45 minutes, she releases the water content of the blood by passing it in pink droplets through her anus. After thus dumping needless weight, the mosquito flies away with proteinaceous solids in her gut that will nourish her eggs, which she lays in large numbers in rafts on the surface of water. The whole life-cycle of the female Culex mosquito, from hatching out of an egg to laying her own eggs, takes no more than three weeks.
Huh.
Who’d a thought my ex-wife had a job as a model.
The last picture is right before you crush the damn thing
The FIRST picture is right before I crush the damn thing.
Check whethers it’s a female anopheles mosquito otherwise you will endup in malaria!
I like these macro shots. It’s my first time to see a picture of a mosquito sucking blood.