IT’S the bacteria in human sweat that attract bloodsucking mosquitoes,
researchers have discovered.
Perspiration is already known to attract mosquitoes
(Â鶹´«Ã½, 25 September 1999, p 25)
but entomologist Willem Takken from Wageningen
Agricultural University in the Netherlands and his colleagues found that old
sweat was much more potent.
They took sweat from the foreheads of volunteers and tried using it as “bait”
for Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes in special traps. Fresh sweat proved
attractive to the insects, but sweat that had been kept for three days was even
more enticing. Sterilised sweat had the least appeal. The researchers conclude
that…
