Mosquito

Mosquitoes, the Culicidae, are a family of small flies comprising some 3,600 species. They have a slender, segmented body, one pair of wings, three pairs of long hairlike legs, and an elongated proboscis adapted for piercing and sucking. All mosquitoes drink nectar from flowers, and females of many species have also adapted to drink blood, a habit evolutionary biologists describe as micropredation and medical parasitologists study for its role in transmitting protozoan, bacterial and viral pathogens between hosts. The group diversified during the Cretaceous period.