While mosquitoes respond to our breath, sweat and body heat, they also have things they don’t like, like some smells. A new study, recently published in the journal Nature Communications, also found that once mosquitoes have found a target through carbon dioxide, they avoid certain colors in their subsequent actions.
Scientists have known the complicated ways that humans attract mosquitoes. First, mosquitoes will sense the exhaled carbon dioxide at a distance of 10 meters. After carbon dioxide, they will start to sense the smell of humans. Start to detect body temperature to locate.
But in the process, the color can be used to interfere with the mosquito’s path. Researchers at the University of Washington tracked the behavior of female Egyptian tabbys in response to different types of visual and carbon dioxide cues by placing mosquitoes in small test chambers and exposing them to different objects, such as colored dots or a human hand.
When observing the behavior of mosquitoes, they first smell the carbon dioxide in their breath to detect whether people are nearby, and then they scan for certain colors and visual patterns that may indicate food. Mosquitoes almost ignored the color when the test chamber was free of odors like carbon dioxide, but as soon as the researchers sprayed the chamber with carbon dioxide, they flew to red, orange, black or turquoise dots. Green, light blue or purple, white points are ignored.
Mosquitoes don’t like light and heat because they can easily die from dehydration, so light colors may instinctively represent danger, mosquitoes will stay away from light colors that reflect heat, light blue reflects more heat and light, white can also be avoided Mosquitoes, even when the test chamber was sprayed with carbon dioxide, the mosquitoes avoided white objects in favor of their preferred colour. Purple is also ignored by mosquitoes, scientists speculate, because mosquitoes prefer long wavelengths, and violet has the shortest wavelength of all colors.
Mosquitoes also don’t like green. During the study, a researcher put his hands directly outside the test chamber, and the mosquitoes were attracted to them. However, when the same researcher put his hand into the test chamber wearing green gloves, the mosquitoes were attracted to it. Ignore it and fly directly past. Even when carbon dioxide is sprayed to attract them, the mosquitoes still ignore it, it seems that mosquitoes really don’t like green.
Usually dark colors attract mosquitoes, such as dark blue and black, because darker shades absorb and retain heat, making it easier for mosquitoes to detect the human body, and wearing this color makes people sweat more, lactic acid is an important component of human sweat It is also one of the ways for mosquitoes to track humans. Mosquitoes also like red because they are more likely to detect red wavelengths and thus attract them, and the same goes for orange.
The attraction of mosquitoes to people is a combination of factors ranging from chemical cues including the smell of sweat and carbon dioxide, and heat to visual cues. Basically, you cannot avoid mosquitoes just by changing your clothes, but if you have to enter an area with a lot of mosquitoes, experts suggest that you can choose to wear light-colored clothes to minimize the chance of mosquitoes staying on your body.
(First image source: Flickr/Tom CC By 2.0)
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