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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

How can mosquitoes find you? All you have to do is exhale

Free-flying mosquitoes gravitate toward pads that emit carbon dioxide, which is found in human breath.
A person sits on a bed behind a mosquito net.

Mosquitoes home in on carbon dioxide in exhaled breath, but a mosquito net can provide some protection. Credit: Giles Clarke/UNOCHA/Getty

Certain people really are ‘mosquito magnets’, probably because of the way they smell, according to research that used an outdoor testing arena about the size of a basketball court1.

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Nature 618, 11 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01654-1

References

  1. Giraldo, D. et al. Curr. Biol. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.04.050 (2023).

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