Dastardly Mosquitoes Have A Scary Sixth Sense
Mosquitoes use ‘heat vision’ to hunt us down
For over a century, scientists have been scratching their heads trying to figure out how mosquitoes always seem to find us. We’ve known for a while that they can sniff out the carbon dioxide we exhale, sense our body odors, and even use their eyesight to locate us. But now, researchers from the University of California-Santa Barbara have made a cool new discovery:
Mosquitoes can detect infrared radiation from our warm bodies!
Yep, it turns out that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes (the ones responsible for diseases like dengue, Zika, and yellow fever) can “see” the heat we give off from nearly three feet away.
This finding shakes up what we thought we knew about mosquitoes. Sure, we were aware that they rely on carbon dioxide and body odor, but we assumed their heat detection worked only at close range. The new research proves that heat plays a big role in helping mosquitoes zero in on us from a surprising distance.
“What struck me most about this work was just how strong of a cue IR ended up being,” says co-lead author Nicolas DeBeaubien, a former graduate student and postdoctoral researcher at UCSB, in a statement. “Once we got all the parameters just right, the results were undeniably clear.”
In their experiments, scientists gave mosquitoes a choice: one area at room temperature and another warmed to match human body heat (about 93°F). The mosquitoes consistently flocked to the warmer zone, even when it was over two feet away. That’s way farther than we thought they could detect heat.
The magic happens thanks to special heat-sensing neurons at the tips of the mosquitoes’ antennae. These neurons, containing a protein called TRPA1, act like tiny thermometers. When they sense infrared radiation, they heat up and signal to the mosquito that a tasty, warm-blooded target is nearby. Two light-sensitive proteins, opsins, also help the mosquitoes detect even subtle changes in temperature.
This discovery could help us develop better ways to keep mosquitoes at bay by messing with their heat-sensing abilities. Plus, it’s a reminder of how clever nature can be. Mosquitoes have evolved into super hunters, fine-tuned to track warm-blooded animals (like us) with incredible precision.
