A joint scientific study conducted by researchers from Africa, Ethiopia and Sweden revealed that mosquitoes do not bite humans randomly, but rather show clear preferences that make some individuals more attractive to them than others
According to the researchers, these people are not always a target for mosquitoes, but only in certain circumstances, as these insects are mainly attracted to human scent, body heat, and carbon dioxide emitted with exhalation.
Swedish scientist Rickard Ignell explained that mosquitoes sense these signals through tiny receptors and then choose their victims based on them. He added that the first signal detected is carbon dioxide, meaning that even a person's breath can attract mosquitoes. He further explained that the combination of body odor and carbon dioxide can attract mosquitoes from a distance of up to 10 meters.
The researchers pointed to a number of unproven scientific hypotheses, including the hypothesis that mosquitoes are attracted to a certain blood type, stressing that these hypotheses are not related to skin, eye, or hair color.
It's worth noting that each person secretes between 300 and 1,000 different aromatic compounds. To identify the compounds most attractive to mosquitoes, scientists conducted an experiment on 42 women using Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known for transmitting dengue fever and yellow fever. The results showed that mosquitoes can distinguish between 27 aromatic compounds out of approximately 1,000, and these are the ones that attract them.
