"Biology professors like to ask what animal kills the most people. Their poor students humiliate themselves by calling out grizzly bear, tiger, cobra, even hippo. The right answer, of course, is the female mosquito—no fur, no fangs, just a hypodermic needle on the wing. She's less than a quarter-inch long, has six legs, and is the most efficient transmitter of disease in the animal kingdom. She uses scent to find us, attracted by the lactic acid and other ingredients in perspiration. She also senses the carbon dioxide in our exhalations and follows the slipstream back to our faces. The more you sweat and pant as you shoo her away, the more attractive you become.
She's not revolting to look at, but elegant, small, sleek, long-legged, and fragile. We might be willing to give her a milliliter of blood, even with the itchy welt, if we didn't worry about what she might give back. The worst of the many pathogens a mosquito may carry is malaria, which kills more than 1 million people a year, two-thirds of those in sub-Saharan Africa and most being children under 5."
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