We are not all equal when it comes to mosquito bites. Some get devoured when others (seated next door!) don’t have a pimple at the end of the evening. Many theories circulate, there would be “mosquito skins”, this could be explained by the fact that some have sweeter blood… Myths or reality, we don’t really know. Anyway, researchers think they have found part of the answer: the color of your clothes more or less attracts mosquitoes. Their study appeared in Nature Cohcommunications.
Scientists have studied mosquitoes to understand how they visualize us and whether certain colors make them want to come and bite us more than others… They fixed their tests on female mosquitoes that need blood for their reproduction. They came from three species.
Red, cyan, orange: avoid!
They made a kind of tunnel with colored spots, imitating human skin and its nuances, and a whole bunch of colors. Mosquitoes were attracted by CO2, to give them the impression that there was a skin to bite. By looking at their trajectories, the researchers realized that the color of human skin combined with red, orange, cyan (the color blue) were visual stimuli that interested mosquitoes. Black, which is not part of the visible spectrum of colors, also seemed to attract them a little more.
While clothes in colors other than these can’t be mosquito repellent on their own (buy some mosquito repellent!), they do give some clues as to how you might avoid getting eaten alive this summer. . Avoid wearing checkered, red or black clothing. Avoid black, red, cyan and orange. However, white, green and purple are rather recommended to face summer nights in all serenity !
Source : The olfactory gating of visual preferences to human skin and visible spectra in mosquitoesNature communications, February 2022
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