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How a Mosquito Operates is a silent animated film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. The six-minute short, about a giant mosquito who torments a sleeping man, is one of the earliest animated films and is noted for the high technical quality of its naturalistic animation, considered far ahead of its contemporaries. McCay had a reputation for the technical dexterity of his cartooning, displayed most famously in the children's comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905–1911). He delved into the infant art of film animation in 1911 with Little Nemo, and followed that film's success with How a Mosquito Operates. McCay gives the animation naturalistic timing, motion, and weight, and displays a more coherent story and developed character than in Nemo. How a Mosquito Operates was enthusiastically received when McCay first unveiled it as part of his "chalk talk" vaudeville act, and in a theatrical release that soon followed. In 1914 McCay further developed the character animation he introduced in Mosquito with his best-known animated work, Gertie the Dinosaur.