Hello and welcome back to the Curious Kid podcast, where we live in New Jersey, it's still pretty cold outside.

But within the next few weeks, it should warm up quite a bit.

My family loves to spend a lot of time outside, but there is one pest that comes out in the summer months that tries to ruin

our fun in the sun. Let's learn more. Mail bag. Oh my gosh, my name is Jack and I am five years old,

and I have a baby brother Owen, and I live in a small town called Terrelgan

in Victoria, Australia. It's right near that town, Colony. We were on our way to a place

called Healsville Sanctuary, when Mum came across your podcast, and we started listening to it

as a family. I love space and everything about it. A few questions we have are, why is the ocean

salty? Why do people have different blood? Why do mosquito bites hurt? From Jack and Owen.

That was a super email from Down Under. We already covered the ocean and blood in earlier episodes,

and we are going to learn all about mosquitoes

this week for Jake and Owen. We are going to learn a lot about mosquitoes, probably even more

than you cared to know, about the pesky insects. Let's start things off with the question of the week.

The question of the week is, what does the word mosquito mean? Hint, it comes from Spanish.

I hope it means really annoying because that's what mosquitoes are. I'm guessing that's probably

not the right answer, though. While you're thinking about the answer, let's learn what mosquitoes are,

although I'm guessing many of you have already had the pleasure of seeing or even

being bit by a mosquito.

Mosquitoes are flying insects that have been around for millions of years.

Some scientists estimate that they have been around for as long as 210 million years, which

means they date back to the dinosaurs of the Jurassic period.

And over the millions of years, mosquitoes have become very good at finding people and other animals to bite.

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