News Anthropology

Mosquitoes began biting humans more than a million years ago

A DNA analysis traced the history of mosquitoes’ initial human bites

A colour enhanced scanning electron micrograph of an Anopheles mosquito

A close look at mosquito DNA reveals when the insects switched from biting nonhuman primates to our early human ancestors.

Peter Finch/Stone/Getty Images

By Tom Metcalfe

Mosquitoes have been biting people for more than a million years and probably much longer.

An analysis of 38 modern mosquitoes’ DNA suggests an ancestral mosquito species developed a preference for feeding on early humans between 2.9