Scientists discovered that malaria\u002Dcarrying mosquitoes are drawn to specific chemicals found on people\u0027s skin.
Mosquitoes are humans’ most lethal predators, carrying diseases such as malaria, yellow fever and dengue fever that kill more than half a million people each year.
To find out how these mosquitoes stalk their sleeping victims, scientists built an outdoor testing arena that’s about the size of two tennis courts, or 2,000 times the size of a typical laboratory setup. They let the mosquitoes acclimate to their open-air laboratory. Then, the researchers did everything they could to conjure the right mood.
With an infrared camera, scientists watched which hot plates became mosquito discos. They found that heat and carbon dioxide weren’t enough to attract the insects without the added element of human body odor.Article content “It’s a different mosquito – it’s a much more important mosquito,” Vosshall said of Anopheles gambiae. “This mosquito kills orders of magnitude more people … it’s a real apex predator of humans.”
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