Every Mosquito Bite You've Had Came From a Mom

Why do some people get more mosquito bites than others? You're not imagining it: scientists have tested it. And every bite you've ever had came from a mom-to-be, because only female mosquitoes bite. They need blood to make their eggs. Join Pip on a mosquito treasure hunt and follow the clues a mosquito uses to find you: the carbon dioxide in your breath, your warmth, your shape and, last of all, your skin smell. In one lab study, the most attractive person's skin scent drew more than 100 times more mosquitoes than the least attractive people's. We'll explain what that test did and didn't show, and why some people really are mosquito magnets. Chapters 00:00 Every Bite Comes From a Mom 01:01 One Breath Gives Pip Away 01:47 Clue Three: Your Skin Smell 02:43 The 100x Mosquito Magnet 03:47 Tiny Bacteria on Your Skin 04:57 A Note for Grown-Ups Sources: • Differential mosquito attraction to humans is associated with skin-derived carboxylic acid levels (Cell 2022) — https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0... • Differential mosquito attraction to humans... (author manuscript, Rockefeller University) — https://www.rockefeller.edu/research/... • Differential mosquito attraction to humans... (bioRxiv preprint) — https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.11... • Skin compounds associated with attractiveness to mosquitoes (NIH Research Matters) — https://nih.gov/news-events/nih-resea... • Vosshall's Research Reveals Some People Really Are Mosquito Magnets (NIH Record) — https://nihrecord.nih.gov/2022/12/09/... • Mosquito magnet? There's a chemical reason for that (C&EN) — https://cen.acs.org/biological-chemis... • Some People Really Are Mosquito Magnets, and They're Stuck That Way (Scientific American) — https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar... • Why are mosquitoes attracted to you? (Euronews/AP) — https://www.euronews.com/2022/10/20/w... • Are you a mosquito magnet? (Phys.org/AP) — https://phys.org/news/2022-10-mosquit... • Thermal infrared directs host-seeking behaviour in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes (Nature 2024) — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158... • The sensory arsenal mosquitoes use to find us (Trends in Parasitology review) — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... • Mosquitoes Use Vision to Associate Odor Plumes with Thermal Targets (Current Biology 2015) — https://www.cell.com/current-biology/... Made by the Pocket Cosmos team with AI-assisted narration and animation. 🪐 More Pip science every day: ▶ TikTok:   / pocketcosmotv   📸 Instagram:   / pocketcosmostv   🔔 Subscribe:    / @pocketcosmostv