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'World's largest mosquito' caught in China


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An insect expert claimed to have caught the world's largest mosquito with an astonishing 11.15cm (4.4in) wing span - about 10 times longer than that of an average mosquito.

The massive insect was caught on Qingcheng Mountain in south-west China's Sichuan Province. 

The mosquito was discovered by Chinese entomologist Zhao Li during a field inspection in August, 2017.  

Mr Zhao told MailOnline the insect belonged to a species called holorusia mikado, which is the world's largest mosquito species originating in Japan. 

Although the insect is also known as crane fly in the West, which is thought to be different from a mosquito. Mr Zhao insisted that the insect he found was a mosquito.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5647221/Worlds-largest-mosquito-caught-bigger-hand.html

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  • The title was changed to 'World's largest mosquito' caught in China
 

Holorusia is a crane fly (family Tipulidae), not a mosquito (family Culicidae). Zhao's concept of what a mosquito is is wrong.

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So here is an excerpt from the article to give an idea on where Mr. Zhao's argument stems from:

"Mr Zhao, who is a senior biological engineer and senior wild animal protection engineer, said crane fly is the name given to the entire insect family of Tipulidae, which in Chinese translates into 'big mosquito'.

Mr Zhao said from the biological point of view, a mosquito is any insect belonging to the Nematocera insect group. There are seven groups of mosquito, including Tipuloidea (which includes crane flies) and Chironomidae.

The expert also said that a cultural gap might have caused a confusion.

'There are a wide definition and a narrow definition of the mosquito family.  Under the narrow definition, only a mosquito that bites is a mosquito."

This seems like a bit of a 'lost in translation' issue or perhaps just an unwillingness to conform to biological standards? Calling crane flies and other insects 'Mosquitoes' purely because of his given reasoning seems a bit farfetched if you ask me.

:mellow:

Edit: No idea what went wrong with the formatting of my post. Just ignore the font-size changes please :).

Edited by Unfortunately
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Still not as big as what we have here in northern canada eh...big?   mosquitos here are so big they'll stand flat footed and b***** a moose no problem ... pardon the expression

Ive had to work in clouds of the smaller ones and its pure hell

signs like this are quite common

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The unofficial state bird of Alaska is the mosquito. :lol:

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What the heck is the purpose of the mosquito? 

If I ever actually meet God, that's gonna be one of my questions.

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12 hours ago, Carnoferox said:

Holorusia is a crane fly (family Tipulidae), not a mosquito (family Culicidae). Zhao's concept of what a mosquito is is wrong.

Yep, that was my first thought as well.

But it seems it's a cultural misunderstanding...it's a crane fly but they call it a mosquito in Chinese?

 

9 hours ago, Michelle said:

The unofficial state bird of Alaska is the mosquito. :lol:

What is it with cold wet places getting so many mosquitos? Siberia has, apparently, also a lot of them.

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Tell'ya what... That thing come on my hide I will slap it back to China.

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16 hours ago, Carnoferox said:

Holorusia is a crane fly (family Tipulidae), not a mosquito (family Culicidae). Zhao's concept of what a mosquito is is wrong.

Yeah, he keeps digging himself in deeper. Checking the nomenclature against wiki shows he's wrong, particularly since the  Nematocera contains several non-mosquito-like groups.Calling them all mosquitoes is more than a bit disingenuous. Just looking at the head you can see it's a cranefly.

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7 minutes ago, Oniomancer said:

Yeah, he keeps digging himself in deeper. Checking the nomenclature against wiki shows he's wrong, particularly since the  Nematocera contains several non-mosquito-like groups.Calling them all mosquitoes is more than a bit disingenuous. Just looking at the head you can see it's a cranefly.

Some of it seems to be due to the language barrier, but it is also because he is using informal terms as opposed to the correct phylogenetic nomenclature. An entomologist like him should know better.

Edited by Carnoferox
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Crane flies ("harkrankar" in Swedish) are common where I live in Sweden. However, I and my parents have always called them "long-legged mosquitoes" ("långbenta myggor" in Swedish), or simply "longlegs" ("långbentingar" in Swedish), and I still call them that by old habit, even though I now know that they are called something else ... and yes, they are quite big. They do actually resemble spiders with long legs so you might confuse them with spiders.

Edited by fred_mc
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Whatever happened to crane flies ? We used to have them all the time (UK Midlands).... .they'd get into the house... all over the place. 

But I havn't seen them for YEARS ? 

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11 hours ago, RoofGardener said:

Whatever happened to crane flies ? We used to have them all the time (UK Midlands).... .they'd get into the house... all over the place. 

But I havn't seen them for YEARS ? 

You know, now you mention it, you are right.  I am also in U.K. Midlands and I haven’t seen one of these 'daddy longlegs' as I call them, around for yonks.

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On 25/04/2018 at 4:43 AM, ChaosRose said:

What the heck is the purpose of the mosquito? 

If I ever actually meet God, that's gonna be one of my questions.

Also mention the Scottish Midge to God also please..... Oh and Politicians.. 

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1 minute ago, Susanc241 said:

You know, now you mention it, you are right.  I am also in U.K. Midlands and I haven’t seen one of these 'daddy longlegs' as I call them, around for yonks.

We still have them, just has many has ever...I am UK based, a mile from Howarth... Bronte Country..I am forever catching and releasing them from the house, they freak my daughter out. 

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2 minutes ago, Iilaa'mpuul'xem said:

We still have them, just has many has ever...I am UK based, a mile from Howarth... Bronte Country..I am forever catching and releasing them from the house, they freak my daughter out. 

Please keep them up there (beautiful place by the way, used to live in Yorkshire and visited many times) as they freak me out also.  Spiders are bad enough with their long spindly legs (it’s the legs that get to me) and a FLYING bunch of spindly legs is just eeeeek, :o.

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On April 26, 2018 at 5:00 AM, Mr.United_Nations said:

Saw a baby crane fly few days ago

Doesn't work that way, a baby would be a maggot that lives in leaf litter. You just saw a small species of adult Crane Fly. We have the large and the small where I live, I think the larva can be an agricultural pest that damages roots of plants, but the adults are harmless. My father used to try and tell us they were giant mosquitos when we were kids. 

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So we don't have to worry about a SyFy movie  GIANTMOSQUITNADO? Then GIANTMOSQUITNADO II - The Blood Suckers are back!

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On 2018-04-25 at 9:41 PM, fred_mc said:

Crane flies ("harkrankar" in Swedish) are common where I live in Sweden. However, I and my parents have always called them "long-legged mosquitoes" ("långbenta myggor" in Swedish), or simply "longlegs" ("långbentingar" in Swedish), and I still call them that by old habit, even though I now know that they are called something else ... and yes, they are quite big. They do actually resemble spiders with long legs so you might confuse them with spiders.

Jag har faktiskt aldrig hört någon kalla dom långbenta myggor eller långbentingar.
Men däremot att folk kallar dom "pappa långben" fastän det egentligen är smeknamnet för lockespindeln.

I have actually never heard anyone call them "long-legged mosquitoes" or "longlegs"
However some call them daddy longlegs even though that is the nickname for the harvestman.

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Mosquitoes are my only real qualm with living in FL. So annoying when you're trying to sleep and you can hear the high pitch noise they make while flying. 

Odd how some people attract them more than others. 

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14 hours ago, Herr Falukorv said:

Jag har faktiskt aldrig hört någon kalla dom långbenta myggor eller långbentingar.
Men däremot att folk kallar dom "pappa långben" fastän det egentligen är smeknamnet för lockespindeln.

I have actually never heard anyone call them "long-legged mosquitoes" or "longlegs"
However some call them daddy longlegs even though that is the nickname for the harvestman.

Ok. Interesting. Maybe there are regional differences in what they are called. I'm not familiar with the name "pappa långben".

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3 hours ago, fred_mc said:

Ok. Interesting. Maybe there are regional differences in what they are called. I'm not familiar with the name "pappa långben".

Ok here in Göteborg most people call them "Pappa långben"

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