Mosquitoes lay their eggs in the summer months or in autumn. The temperature of the place they find to lay their eggs is an important factor in the development of the larvae. Development is speeded up when a certain temperature is reached (minimum 10°C [50°F], maximum 30°C [86°F]), and if these limits are exceeded, development slows down or the larvae die.

Although the larvae are vulnerable, the eggs are quite resilient to drought and cold. If the right conditions are not available, the eggs can wait for rain and rising temperatures without cracking.

You have just read this sentence and if you are an observant person, you must have noticed the mention of the fact that "the eggs can wait without cracking." Although their time has come to hatch, the eggs can wait without cracking…

If the right conditions are not available, the eggs' development is halted. This is not a kind of death, but just a precaution taken until conditions improve. This delayed action, which is usually seen at the egg stage, is referred to as "diapause."

At times when there is not enough moisture and heat for the eggs to grow, they stop developing and can keep for years without spoiling. There is a kind of heat-moisture safety fuse in the eggs. When the conditions are wrong, the fuse blows and the egg's development programme is put on hold.

Actually it is not quite right to call this "stopping the programme," because waiting for the right conditions is part of the programme. (This little creature said to contain a programme is approximately 1 mm [0.04 inch] in length-about the size of the point of a pencil.)

Whatever source you look at on this subject, the result is the same; it is agreed that the embryos act in accordance with a programme. This is a development programme, which takes place in the abdomen of the mother or in the egg, and in one respect resembles a computer programme. All the details of the programme are written into DNA molecules contained in the cell nucleus.

The differences between a mosquito and a human or an elephant and a parrot arise from this different programming in the cells. At first glance there seems to be little difference between a newly fertilised animal cell and a newly fertilised human cell. But each cell divides strictly according to the programme written into it. Living species emerge as a result of these cell divisions. In the mosquito too the commands of this programme are obeyed and if necessary the development of the eggs is halted.

The genetic details of all living creatures are coded in the DNA of their cells. Also in the case of humans, all details relating to the colour of the eyes and hair, height, structure of the internal organs and skin colour are coded in the DNA. This is only one example of the evidence of God’s perfect creation.

At this point something should be explained: How has this embryonic programme been created? Who makes the programme and tells the embryo how to act?

Each one of the cells making up the embryo complies with the programme and acts jointly to stop the development.

If there is a programme, there must be a programming intelligence that wrote it. It is inconceivable to claim that even the simplest computer programme wrote itself, that is to say, as a result of information coming together by chance. In that case, of course, it is far more unreasonable to claim that an embryonic programme as yet unsolved by the human mind could have been produced as a result of coincidence.

There is only one explanation for this extraordinary event. It is because all the cells act on the inspiration of God that they can make such conscious moves.

Let us now leave the subject of the halting of the mosquito egg's development and return to the subject of waiting for a suitable environment.

This feature is of vital importance from the perspective of continuation of the species. For example, one variety of desert mosquito lays thick-skinned eggs that can crack after a period of one or two years. These eggs survive for years without spoiling and then split open for the larvae inside to continue their development as though nothing unusual has happened.

Due to this resilience, mosquitoes can be found in almost every part of the world. Mosquitoes can live in places where the arctic temperature falls to -60°C (-76°F), in the humid, hot and airless atmosphere of mines, or in deserts where, apart from two or three wells, there is no other water supply for miles.

In the north of Iceland at the Arctic Circle there is a lake called "Mosquito Lake" (Lake Myvatn). Frozen larvae found in iced-over lakes hatch from the eggs when the ice melts as if they have not been frozen in ice for months on end. Their development takes off from where it left off and they develop into mature mosquitoes.