š± Mosquitoes love Kim Zarins. The insectsā preference for Zarins, an English professor at Sacramento State University, is so extreme that her 18-year-old son likes her to come outside with him because she serves as a decoy and āhe knows heāll be safe,ā Zarins says.
š± From up to 200 feet away, they follow the carbon dioxide plumes we exhale with each breath.
š± The work shows, for the first time, that mosquitoes can discriminate between multiple people in a large, spacious arena the size of an ice-skating rink.
š± āThis just drives home the point that even in complex situations with multiple sources of odor, mosquitoes do seem to prefer some people over others,ā Giraldo says.
š± The mosquitoes were especially beguiled by carboxylic acids, a class of fatty acids found in human sweat whose scent is sometimes compared to rancid butter or cheese.
š± To the researchersā surprise, in some cases, washing increased the number of mosquito landingsāindicating that soap amplified that personās attractiveness to mosquitoes.
š± Because humans are so important to the lifecycle of some mosquitoes (females need a blood meal before they can produce eggs), the wily insects have evolved redundancies in their people-detection mechanism. āThey canāt rely on just one signalāso they have a really robust system for detecting a range of odors, which is really hard to profile,ā De Obaldia says.
š± Some species of mosquitoes, for example, have begun to feed earlier in the day to thwart the use of bed nets.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/mosquito-magnet-smell-repell
