Over the last ten years, effective methods have been developed for the preservation of foodstuffs. The most important of these is packaging.

The variety of midge known as the Chironomidae (in the same order, Diptera, as mosquitoes) uses this method to preserve its eggs.

The eggs are laid in a pile of gelatin-like substance, either in the shape of a frame or a string. The gelatin mass protects the eggs from being blown away, from drying up, from sudden changes in temperature and from enemies. In addition, thanks to this substance the fly sticks the eggs to plants or stones and thus also prevents the eggs from getting lost in the water.

Life buoy eggs

Egg raft and hatching larvae.

The eggs of the Anopheles mosquitoes, which serve as vectors for malaria, have a special shape and structure to prevent their sinking and enable them to stay on the surface of the water. Little air chambers on the outside of the eggshell and floating edges surrounding the egg keep it above water. The floating edges increase the surface tension of the water and thanks to this tension the egg does not sink.

Surface tension creates a force, which small creatures in particular cannot pass through. However, this is not usually a bad thing as it enables insects to walk on the water with ease. Thanks to support structures found on the legs of some insects, such as little hairs or oily secretions covering the feet, they are able to move much more easily on the surface of water.

Eggs of the Anopheles. The little air sacs around the eggs and structures that increase the surface tension ensure that the eggs stay at the surface of the water. If, for once, these structures that keep the eggs afloat failed to form, all the eggs of the Anopheles would sink and die.

The air chambers and floating edges on the eggs of the Anopheles make great use of the physical law of surface tension. However, as has already been mentioned, neither the larvae inside the eggs nor the mother mosquito, who herself once hatched from one of these eggs, has any knowledge of the surface tension or the structures on the eggs that make use of it.

There is no possibility of such an attribute being acquired over time. If this structure had failed to appear on the egg just once, all the Anopheles eggs would have sunk to the bottom of the water and the mosquito would have died out.

But such a situation never happens. For the Anopheles mosquitoes, like all other creatures, come to life complete with whatever they need to continue their existence designed in the most appropriate way.

God has created the characteristics needed by each creature and has inspired perfectly in each of them the tasks they will carry out. God has power over all things. The duty that befalls man is to reflect on the perfection of His creation and to deliver himself to His eternal might. God tells us in a verse of the Qur'an that there is no other deity:

Say: "Who is the Lord of the heavens and the Earth?" Say: "God." Say: "So why have you taken protectors apart from Him who possess no power to help or harm even themselves?" Say: "Are the blind and seeing equal? Or are darkness and light the same? Or have they assigned partners to God who create as He creates, so that all creating seems the same to them?" Say: "God is the Creator of all things. He is the One, Who conquers all." (Qur'an, 13:16)