Why Do Some People Always Get Bitten by Mosquitoes, While Others Don't?
Some people can sit outside all summer long and not suffer from mosquito bites. Others turn into an itchy mess despite bathing in DEET and never leaving the purple glow of the bug zapper. What gives? It's mostly about the invisible chemical landscape of the air around us. Mosquitoes take advantage of this landscape by using specialized behaviors and sensory organs to find victims by following the subtle chemical traces their bodies leave behind. In particular, mosquitoes rely on carbon dioxide to find their hosts. When we exhale, the carbon dioxide from our lungs doesn't immediately blend with the air. It temporarily stays in plumes that mosquitoes follow like breadcrumbs. "Mosquitoes start orienting themselves to those pulses of carbon dioxide and keep flying upwind as they sense higher concentrations than the normal ambient air contains," said Joop van Loon, an entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Using carbon dioxide, mosquitoes can lock ...