What makes their high pitched song? Quite simply their wing beats. The faster they beat their wings, the faster they shake the air and the higher pitched the sound.
Nicely we can use this to work out their wing beat speed my listening to their sounds.
For example Aedes aegypti is a pretty, but mean mosquito (it can transmit yellow fever, dengue and other nasties) can flap its wings at a staggering 600 beats per minute (well the males can, the females flap 400 times a second - the boys whine higher). | |
| But the record for wing flappery goes to the humble (but still bitey midge). There are many species of these guys, but at the end of the 1940s a Polish researcher recorded the sounds of one tiny one (a type called forcipomyia) and worked out it flaps its wings at a staggering 1046 beats every second! To give you a clue how fast - humming birds are the fastest bird flappers and their fastest can only flap at about 78 beats per second. |