How a Mosquito Operates (1912, also known as The Story of a Mosquito) is a silent animated film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. The second of McCay's animated films, it is about a giant mosquito who torments a sleeping man. The short is one of the earliest examples of animation, and is regarded for the high technical quality of its naturalistic animation, which is considered far ahead of that of its contemporaries. McCay followed up this film in 1914 with his most famous work of animation, Gertie the Dinosaur.
McCay had built a reputation for the technical dexterity of his cartooning, displayed most famously in his children's comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905–1911). Beginning in 1906, McCay displayed his abilities doing chalk talks before live audiences on the vaudeville circuit. After seeing flip books that his son Bob had brought home, McCay delved into the infant art of film animation. He finished his first film, Little Nemo, in 1911, and incorporated it into his vaudeville act. He followed the success of the first film with How a Mosquito Operates, in which a mosquito preys on a sleeping man; the mosquito's abdomen naturalistically inflates as it draws blood, until it explodes. The technical quality of the animation was not matched until Walt Disney's feature films appeared in the 1930s.
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