Itching for Science

I think I might have just crossed the line into insanity!  Yesterday, Ethan and I were reading from the Christian Liberty Nature Reader Book #4, the chapter on the house mosquito, and were encouraged to observe some on our own.  

Bring some wiggletails inside in a covered glass of pond or rain water.  Observe them each day to note changes in their appearance and actions.  Disturb the water to see what happens.  Put a few of them in the aquarium with the goldfish.  Watch to see what happens.

Great idea huh?  Ick.  Deliberately raise mosquitoes?  Ick!!  Keep them in my house?  Ick, ick!

Yes, I know I say ick, but for those that know me, you know if it is the name of learning about God's creation up-close, for my kids and related to homeschool, it is right up our alley!  So, after reading I grabbed a mason jar, scooped up some of our pond water outside and something that looked like it could possibly be a cluster of mosquito eggs, and covered the jar with plastic wrap.  We sat around the jar, observing the crazy moving creatures, and then forgot about it.  A few hours later we had a flying mosquito.  It had a needle looking mouth part, like all the mosquitoes we have seen before, so no earth shaking discoveries.

This afternoon, however, we discovered something new and interesting.  

1. The blob of eggs we collected, was no longer visible... did it break apart and did they hatch?  Or was it just dirt?  Hmmm?

2. There were now 3 flying mosquitoes in the jar, and one of them looked different and didn't have a sharp needle-like mouth part.  Cool!  Now, we can tell what mosquito is a female and what one is a male! 

Something I'm sure you are interested in knowing, right? 

From our reading we discovered that the female mosquito is the only one that actually bites.  The males actually do not suck your blood, they suck nectar from flowers.  Interesting, right?  We thought so.  So this is the beginning of our observation and investigation with mosquitoes.  Tomorrow maybe we will see a different change in the curled up things (we are unsure if they are larva or something completely different).  There are currently 7 of those and one seems to be uncurling.  We will see what happens tomorrow!

If you aren't creeped out enough, here are some photos showing our discoveries. 

Female (top) and male (center) with larvae (under the water line)

Male Mosquito

Female Mosquito (top) with Male Mosquito (bottom left)