Mosquitoes, which appear especially with the arrival of summer, turn into a nightmare for all of us with the warming of the weather, causing us to think twice about whether to open the window at night in the summer heat. However, according to a new study, how many mosquitoes you become a target may be up to you.
Mosquitoes choose their human victims based on the colors they wear, according to a new study published in Nature Communications. This means that in the same way that bees and insects are more attracted to more vibrantly colored flowers, the clothes we wear can make us more frequent targets of mosquitoes.
Some colors attract more mosquitoes
According to the study published on Friday, mosquitoes, which are the nightmares of the summer months, are more likely to turn to certain colors after smelling a human and scanning the environment; Some colors are not very preferred.
“Imagine being on a sidewalk and smelling pie dough and cinnamon,” said Jeffrey Riffell, senior author of the study, a biologist at the University of Washington. This is a sign that there is an oven nearby,” he explains, and states that after mosquitoes smell human smells in a similar way, they start scanning the surrounding visual elements to look for the source of the smell.
Fragrance and colors work together
By examining the response of mosquitoes to various shades of color in the environment, which is exposed to the carbon dioxide we breathe in with each breath we breathe, the research team first placed the female Aedes aegypti species, known for transmitting dengue, yellow fever, chikungunta and Zika viruses, in small rooms. The team, who initially observed how mosquitoes reacted to colored stimuli when there was no odor, could not achieve such a result, and this time they repeated the same process by adding carbon dioxide to the environment.
After the addition of carbon dioxide, the team observed that mosquitoes showed great interest in red, orange, black and cyan; observed that mosquitoes showed no interest in green, purple, blue and white. Testing this by placing a gloved hand in a cage and a green gloved hand in a cage, the team observed that the mosquitoes never really approached the green gloved hand.
The wavelengths of colors that attract mosquitoes are similar to the wavelengths emitted by human skin.
On the other hand, the way mosquitoes perceive colors may be a little different than we think. Just as we humans cannot perceive carbon dioxide the way they do, the way insects see colors may differ from that of humans. But the results of the study show that colors that we should all avoid if we don’t want to become the target of mosquitoes have one objective thing in common: longer wavelengths in the visible spectrum.
This means bad news for us; because human skin, whatever color it is, emits long wavelengths similar to shades of red and orange. In other words, the color and shades of red that mosquitoes target themselves are not only found in the clothes we wear, but also in the skin of all of us.
On the other hand, the researchers state that female mosquitoes may be ‘color blind’ to carbon dioxide if such a feature is in their genetics. In short, this means that no matter what color of clothing you wear, what you wear does not make much sense for a mutant female mosquito that cannot see the long wavelengths that attract the attention of an ordinary mosquito.
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