Mosquitoes “like” some people more, but not because of their blood type. Science has the answer
It turns out that mosquitoes actually have certain preferences when it comes to choosing their victims. Scientists have learned more about their preferences again.
Medical entomologist Frédéric Simard argues that mosquitoes’ preferences for specific people are not a myth. Indeed, they choose specific victims and avoid some. They are guided by a whole range of stimuli, starting with smell, the heat given off by the body and the carbon dioxide we exhale.
Mosquitoes sting some more often than others. Why?
However, Swedish scientist Rickard Ignell in an interview with AFP noted that we have known about the importance of carbon dioxide for mosquitoes for over 100 years. Malicious insects can smell this gas from a long distance. After coming within about 10 meters, they also register our individual scent. The closer they get, the more important our body temperature and skin moisture are to them.
Interestingly, blood type does not matter much to them. Frederic Simard argues that this common view has no scientific basis. As he said, research on this topic was conducted on too small a group of people to provide clear conclusions. The color of the skin, eyes and hair is also irrelevant.
What is important is the smell of the human body, specifically the mixture of chemical compounds produced by our microbiota. People emit from 300 to even 1,000 different odor compounds. Scientists are still investigating mosquitoes’ preferences for how we smell.
In the latest study, a group led by Rickard Ignell released Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and checked how they reacted to 42 women who volunteered for the experiment. It was then confirmed that these insects respond to specific mixtures of odorous compounds (27 out of approximately 1,000 possible).
Mosquitoes like beer drinkers
Mosquitoes particularly often attacked women in the second trimester of pregnancy and those who secreted large amounts of a compound produced during the breakdown of sebum, i.e. skin sebum. We are talking about mushroom alcohol or “1-octen-3-ol”. A small increase in the amount of this compound significantly increased the interest of mosquitoes.
Another study tested whether mosquitoes were actually attracted to beer. In an experiment in Burkina Faso, participants drank beer and a few days later water. It turned out that mosquitoes definitely prefer people who drank beer. Similar observations were made after a study in the Netherlands, where people drinking beer in the last 24 hours were 1.35 times more attractive to mosquitoes than other participants in the experiment.
