If there is any advice among the many you hear when going to country sideYou’ve probably heard him tell you that you shouldn’t wear certain colors of clothing, because they’ll make you a palatable feast. mosquito. Some of them are yellow, red and white.

However, what is the truth in these types of data? Do mosquitos really have a penchant for dinner linked to the colors of their victims’ clothes? Until recently there has been little scientific research on this topic.

In this regard, a team of scientists from the University of Washington published a study last February in which they analyzed the most closely related colors of mosquitoes.

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The thing that was previously known is that these insects feel a great attraction to heat and carbon dioxide: if they look for mammals’ heat and carbon dioxide, they release when breathing, and their food is easier to find, which is related to this. color heating.

It is known that dark colors, such as black, absorb more heat, and one observation was made that mosquitoes like dark colors. But the team of scientists went a little further: they took Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to see their favorite colors.

Mosquitoes have favorite colors

In this study, dots of different colors were placed in a room where they then placed mosquitoes, and in some cases they sprayed the target with carbon dioxide, but in other places they did not, and so they could see that they were more attracted to darker colors with higher ingredients, such as Red, orange or cyan, plus black.

Other colors, such as white, did not interest them, but all this was observed in the presence of carbon dioxide, because if the gas was not sprayed, the colors were different, at least for mosquitoes.

It makes sense that humans taste the bait of mosquitoes and are such a big food menu, because our skin’s color spectrum, no matter what color it is, is dominated by the red and orange wavelengths.

Mutant mosquitoes?

On the other hand, the study did the same with genetically modified mosquitoes, with mutations in photoreceptors that process wavelengths, as well as genes involved in processing carbon dioxide-related signals. The latter eliminated the preferences of mosquitoes.

This might be a good starting point for introducing mutations to make mosquitoes less intent on biting humans, which could prevent many of the diseases these animals carry. However, this requires further study at different levels.

For now, the best thing we can do against mosquitoes is to wear clothes that cover every inch of skin on our bodies, as well as avoid wetlands and areas where these insects are most concentrated, and of course avoid a certain color of clothing.

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