Scientists Discover Mosquitoes Are Using Infrared to Track Humans Down
Scientists Discover Mosquitoes Are Using Infrared to Track Humans Down
There's something about us that mosquitoes just love.
For anyone coming along and not trusting the title, it is misleading.
Infrared is one of the things mosquitoes use to find a target.
They still use CO 2 detection as part of their methods, this is in addition to, not instead of.
Edit: the relevant section of text
*Each cue on its own – CO2 , odor, or infrared – failed to pique the mosquitoes' interest. But the insect's apparent thirst for blood increased twofold when a setup with just CO2 and odor had the infrared factor added.
"Any single cue alone doesn't stimulate host-seeking activity. It's only in the context of other cues, such as elevated CO2 and human odor that IR makes a difference," says UCSB neurobiologist Craig Montell.
The team also confirmed the mosquitoes' infrared sensors lie in their antennae, where they have a temperature-sensitive protein, TRPA1. When the team removed the gene for this protein, mosquitos were unable to detect infrared.*
In other words, they still use the previously known ways to find a meal, and this is how they work up close. That's over simplified, but it's the important part because it gives info on how to reduce being "bitten". Loose clothing that covers the extremities diffuses the heat, making us "look" like we aren't the right kind of target wherever the IR is spread out wrong to their antennae.
The article is actually a really good one, but the title is crap
Edit 2: the paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07848-5
Maybe i missed some words in the article, but I don't see it say when they figured this out. Because it's been at least a decade since I learned about it in school or from a science magazine at school.
Have people been going around not knowing about this until now?
Or is it that only now can they say with certainty this is true?
Have people been going around not knowing about this until now?
I did not
It was always my understanding that they detected carbon dioxide we exhaled. This is the first I've heard about infrared.
When I worked for the county doing mosquito control about 15 years ago, I was told they did both.
The paper was published last month https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07848-5
But I suspect this was not a new discovery as much as a new expansion of the information.
Maybe they watched Predator, I saw something similar happen there
"If it bleeds, I can use its proteins to reproduce!"
Just doesn't have the same ring to it.
I don't remember when I learned about it or how verifiable the source was, but I knew it too for at least a decade. I am a radiant, heavy-breathing, sweaty target. I have outclassed everyone I've ever met on the mosquito attraction scale. I've used loose longer clothes but thought it was just stopping their bites from reaching my skin. I didn't think about how it could also be diffusing my thermal appearance since I'd still get bitten on exposed areas like face and hands.
yeah I thought we (humanity) already knew this and for some time now.
I think humanity has always assumed this. Hurray for scientific conformation.
I thought this was discovered, like, decades ago and was only one of several detection methods that they use in combination with each other
First I've heard anything about direct contrast of UV light to not. I've heard CO2 and NaCl before though.
*IR light, in the interest of avoiding confusion.
I work in mosquito control, it's been generally fairly well known as far as I know. Light traps use black light bulbs as one of the methods to attract mosquitos because the lack of visible light cuts down on the number of bycatch like moths but the bulb still generates heat to attract the mosquitos, usually paired with dry ice for CO2.
All the species who've gone extinct and just one of them couldn't have been mosquitoes?
If it bleeds, we can kill it.
I love that musical.
“I’m right heeere! Come and get me!”
