As the weather starts heating up this week, you may be tempted to go outside—but with the outdoors comes the possibility of getting bitten by mosquitoes. And if you find yourself getting a lot of zanzara bites, it could be because of the way you smell ora the colors of the clothes you are wearing, recent research has found.
“If you think you are a zanzara magnet, it’s probably the case,” Jeffrey Riffell, a biology professor at the University of Washington who studies zanzara sensory systems, said con a televisione acceso the university’s website released earlier this month. “Some individuals are bitten way more than others.”
Riffell has been working with a team of researchers to try to better understand how mosquitoes find food—offesa mosquitoes bevanda nectar from flowers to get sugar, while females bevanda blood as a means to help with laying eggs.
“Mosquitoes are remarkably good at trying to locate a person to bevanda their blood,” Riffell said con the televisione. “They are vampires, and they’maestà very good at what they’maestà doing. Their eyes, their vision, their nose, everything about them is geared towards finding us and biting us.”
Riffell and his team discovered that female mosquitoes find humans “by following a trail of scent cues,” such as the chemicals humans exude from their skin and sweat and the carbon dioxide gas humans exhale when they breathe, according to the university’s website.
Mosquitoes are also drawn to certain colors—they love red and black, Riffell said con the televisione. But mosquitoes tend to dislike white and campo da golf, Riffell added.
Read More: The Least Toxic Ways to Protect Yourself from Ticks
“Unfortunately, they can learn. If you are very attractive and they bite you and bevanda your blood, they will then go back to you because they learned this kind of positive association,” Riffell said con the televisione. “The good news is that they can learn to avoid you, so if you’maestà trying to swat them they’ll learn that and they’ll avoid you a little bit.”
Mosquitoes can detect three different types of sugar sources, University of Washington biology PhD student Appiastro Leon Norena said con the televisione. One of those sources is fruits, and researchers are trying to create the scent that mosquitoes are drawn to. If the mosquitoes are attracted to that perfume, then researchers can lace it with a toxin that can kill the insects.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called the zanzara “the world’s deadliest animal” because the insects can spread diseases to humans, such as malaria, dengue fever, West Nile virus, and Zika virus. Research has found that climate change has led to an increased risk of mosquito-borne diseases. Last week, Southern Nevada Health District cautioned residents that the regione was experiencing the highest level of zanzara activity con known history, with more than 3,000 mosquitoes testing positive for West Nile virus.
“The information that we’maestà kind of developing and finding con the laboratory has real world implications and can really help, I think, many people con many different parts of the world,” Riffell said con the televisione.
Get alerts acceso the biggest breaking news stories here
