Valentine's Day Animal Fact

When most  humans hear a mosquito’s high-pitched whine they are immediatedly put on guard antipaciting the insect’s itchy bite. But to mosquitoes of the opposite sex, that foreshadowing is a powerful love song. Mosquitoes engages in a wing-beating courtship duet that depends on very specific frequencies.

When males and females come together, they match up their wingbeat frequencies — but not at the male’s rate of 600 beats per second, or the female’s 400. Rather, they make minor adjustments that produce a harmonic, or multiple, of their tones, which rings in at about 1200 beats per second. Just right for love, apparently.