A book full of fascinating facts about mosquitoes shows the powerful ways they shaped our history – and the huge toll they've taken on human life

The mosquito can drink up to 5 milligrams of human blood in a single meal pernsanitfoto/Getty

The Mosquito: A human history of our deadliest predator Timothy C. Winegard Allen Lane

HOW many summers have been made excruciating by the whine of mosquitoes? Sleepless nights, frantic scratching and painful swellings – no wonder mosquito hieroglyphs were included in Egyptian curses, and Assyrians and Babylonians had devil gods associated with buzzing insects.

But this is as nothing compared with the death and destruction wrought by humanity’s greatest predator, an insect that can drink three times its body weight of blood in one meal …