New research suggests mosquitoes will always be able to track down victims to bite as long as there are living, breathing beings on the Earth.
According to BBC News, authors of a study published in the journal Current Biology determined the bugs can pick up the scent of carbon dioxide in an animal or person's breath. The mosquitoes then spot their target and are drawn in by body heat.
"Very little was known about what a host looks like to the mosquito and how a mosquito decides where to land and begin to feed," study co-author Jeff Riffell, a biologist at the University of Washington, said in a press release. "What's great about this wind tunnel is that it provided a nice control of wind conditions and the environment these mosquitoes are flying around in.
"We can really test different cues and the mosquito's response to them."
For their study, the researchers conducted three experiments to test the various senses. The mosquitoes were presented with a black dot with and without a CO2 plume and the bugs only responded when they could smell carbon dioxide. Then they pick their target by detecting body heat.
"The unfortunate conclusion is that it's very difficult to escape mosquitoes," study first author Floris van Breugel, of the California Institute of Technology, told BBC News. "If you were able to capture all the CO2 that you were breathing out, then it'd be less likely that a mosquito would find you. But then if you were in a group of people, and somebody else wasn't taking those precautions, then a mosquito would follow their CO2 plume. And it may end up finding you before it finds your friend.
"So you'd want to be visually camouflaged [as well]. The more of those sensory cues that you disrupt, the less likely they are to find you and bite you."
