Cattail mosquito
The cattail mosquito is a mosquito with stripy legs and speckled wings. Its babies live underwater in swamps and have a clever trick: they breathe by poking a tiny tube into the roots of cattail plants. The females drink blood and can fly long distances.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The mother lays about 100 eggs stuck together in a little floating raft.
Because its babies hide underwater and breathe from plants, they are safe from many hunters.
Its legs have rings of dark and light scales, like a striped sock.
It can live up to five or six months if it sleeps through the cold season.
Most asked questions about Cattail mosquito
?Where do cattail mosquitoes breed?
In swamps and marshes with cattails, where the larvae breathe from the plant roots.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Coquillettidia perturbans
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Culicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Culicidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Coquillettidia perturbans (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by David McCorquodale. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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