Monday, June 11, 2012

They who one another keep alive

After commuting by bicycle I was quite tired. But then the daughters persuaded me to go for a walk - they have a lot of energy after recovering from the fever - and I took some photographs.

There were some mosquitoes, but not too many. I recently heard a Finnish entomologist who was rather enthusiastic about this summer. According to him, only a little bit of more rain is needed and then we will get a good or even an excellent mosquito summer. Currently the amount of mosquitoes is still modest. But apparently the biting behaviour of the mosquitoes that we now have is good or even excellent. Shudder...

I read the wikipedia article on mosquitoes and found this hint: "Such blood-sucking by females in support of their reproduction, is at the risk of their lives, so not surprisingly, they tend to be adept at dodging direct attack. However, if mosquitoes were to take alarm at every movement nearby, they would get little rest in breezy weather with leaves oscillating in the wind. Accordingly, they are adapted to ignore side-to-side movement, so a resting female permits a finger to approach slowly if the finger moves several centimetres from side to side about once a second. With practice one can use this stratagem to squash resting mosquitoes with high frequency."

(Posting title is from the song Sweetest love, I do not go by John Donne.)

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