Editing Mosquito (section)

=== Origin myths ===

The peoples of [[Siberia]] have [[origin myth]]s surrounding the mosquito. One [[Ostiak]] myth tells of a man-eating giant, ''Punegusse'', who is killed by a hero but will not stay dead. The hero eventually burns the giant, but the ashes of the fire become mosquitoes that continue to plague mankind. Other myths from the [[Yakuts]], Goldes ([[Nanai people]]), and [[Samoyedic peoples|Samoyed]] have the insect arising from the ashes or fragments of some giant creature or demon. Similar tales found in Native North American myth, with the mosquito arising from the ashes of a man-eater, suggest a common origin. The [[Tatars]] of the [[Altai Mountains|Altai]] had a variant of the same myth, involving the fragments of the dead giant, ''Andalma-Muus'', becoming mosquitoes and other insects.<ref>{{citation |volume=4 |year=1927 |first=Uno |last=Holmberg |author-link=Uno Holmberg |title=Finno-Ugric and Siberian |url=https://archive.org/details/mythologyofallra41gray |work=The Mythology of All Races |at=IX. "The Origin of the Mosquito", p.386 |publisher=Marshall Jones Company }}</ref>

[[Lafcadio Hearn]] tells that in Japan, mosquitoes are seen as reincarnations of the dead, condemned by the errors of their former lives to the condition of ''Jiki-ketsu-gaki'', or "blood-drinking [[Hungry ghost#In Japan|pretas]]".<ref>{{cite book |last=Hearn |first=Lafcadio |author-link=Lafcadio Hearn |chapter=Mosquitoes |title=Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things |title-link=Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things |publisher=[[Dover Publications]] |orig-year=1968 |year=2020 |isbn=978-1420967517 |pages=72–74}}</ref>