What are mosquitoes attracted to and how can you avoid being attractive to them? Why do skeeters come after you yet leave your Aunt Mildred alone? According to world renowned researchers, it may because your feet stink.
In a humorous twist in laboratory analysis, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania took human participants and sealed them in foil bags and made them exercise.
They then had these sweaty human burrito specimens connected to tubes that fed into the room next door alongside a tube with no humans attached.
The adjacent room was full of mosquitoes allowed to choose where they wanted to go.
Well guess what? They were all about the smelly, human stench and had no interest in the unattached tube whatsoever.
Now we find out that researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine determined that Malaria-carrying mosquitoes were specifically drawn to socks that had been removed from smelly feet.
What does that tell you? It makes the most sense now to ask what are mosquitoes attracted to and then work very hard NOT to have those scents.
Unfortunately, the Number One thing these parasitic creatures go for is Carbon Dioxide which is what we all exhale as we breathe.
Unless you come up with some mutant way to breathe without oxygen, you can't do much about that.
This is the underlying magnet to skeeters which accounts for why Aunt Mildred only gets one or two mosquito bites a year compared to your 16 in the last ten minutes.
So with all breathing mammals being equal in terms of Carbon Dioxide, we need to focus on other aromas.
Back to smelly feet - that happens to a certain group of people mostly because of bacteria that thrive in sweat and love dirty, older shoes where they can hang out and have parties at your nose's expense.
What to do about that odor? If you can keep the shoes clean and eliminate as much sweating inside the shoes as possible (I know, like asking water to run uphill...
), and make sure you wear the kind of socks that absorb the sweat.
These steps will minimize the smelly feet magnet for mosquitoes.
But one thing NOT to do is mask your stink with perfumes, powders, lotions or body sprays.
You can't trick a mosquito - they'll smell right through the frilly stuff to the real you and besides, some of those fragrances actually draw MORE mosquitoes your way.
So what are mosquitoes attracted to? These blood suckers love smelly humans and in particular, stinky feet.
Aunt Mildred may get on your nerves but at least you know she doesn't smell!
In a humorous twist in laboratory analysis, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania took human participants and sealed them in foil bags and made them exercise.
They then had these sweaty human burrito specimens connected to tubes that fed into the room next door alongside a tube with no humans attached.
The adjacent room was full of mosquitoes allowed to choose where they wanted to go.
Well guess what? They were all about the smelly, human stench and had no interest in the unattached tube whatsoever.
Now we find out that researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine determined that Malaria-carrying mosquitoes were specifically drawn to socks that had been removed from smelly feet.
What does that tell you? It makes the most sense now to ask what are mosquitoes attracted to and then work very hard NOT to have those scents.
Unfortunately, the Number One thing these parasitic creatures go for is Carbon Dioxide which is what we all exhale as we breathe.
Unless you come up with some mutant way to breathe without oxygen, you can't do much about that.
This is the underlying magnet to skeeters which accounts for why Aunt Mildred only gets one or two mosquito bites a year compared to your 16 in the last ten minutes.
So with all breathing mammals being equal in terms of Carbon Dioxide, we need to focus on other aromas.
Back to smelly feet - that happens to a certain group of people mostly because of bacteria that thrive in sweat and love dirty, older shoes where they can hang out and have parties at your nose's expense.
What to do about that odor? If you can keep the shoes clean and eliminate as much sweating inside the shoes as possible (I know, like asking water to run uphill...
), and make sure you wear the kind of socks that absorb the sweat.
These steps will minimize the smelly feet magnet for mosquitoes.
But one thing NOT to do is mask your stink with perfumes, powders, lotions or body sprays.
You can't trick a mosquito - they'll smell right through the frilly stuff to the real you and besides, some of those fragrances actually draw MORE mosquitoes your way.
So what are mosquitoes attracted to? These blood suckers love smelly humans and in particular, stinky feet.
Aunt Mildred may get on your nerves but at least you know she doesn't smell!