A researcher at Georgia Tech let mosquitoes bite him to understand what attracts them

Caption

Georgia Tech researcher Chris Zuo wears a dark mesh suit and stands still while high-speed cameras record movement to study how mosquitos land and bite.

Credit: Georgia Tech

Chris Zuo figured he'd get bitten a few times by mosquitoes as he studied their flight patterns. The former graduate research assistant at Georgia Institute of Technology knew the mosquitoes did not carry disease so he agreed to experiment.

"Originally, we wanted to design a mosquito trap," Zuo said, explaining that he was invited to the project because he had mechanical engineering experience.

They knew from previous research that mosquitoes respond to breath and visual cues, and Zuo made the mistake of playing the bait while tracking their movements. 

He wore a dark mesh suit and stood still while high-speed cameras recorded movement — even when a mosquito landed.

"If the mosquito is biting me, I can't really react and swat at it, or else it kind of ruins the data," he said. "So, my first reaction was, 'Yeah, this sucks. I think I need to redesign the experiment.'"

They conducted A/B comparisons in which Zuo wore outfits with different colors and patterns.

"Human odor cues the volatile organic compounds that humans release, as well as CO2 (carbon dioxide) and heat, but the only difference is one half of my body is black and the other is white," he said.

Another test kept everything from the shoulders down dressed in white with his head black.

The experiments confirmed that lighter colors don't attract as many mosquitoes as darker colors, but Zuo's work also found that mosquitoes don’t swarm. They go after the same stimuli. 

"Just like a bar with live music and it's, like, a cool place to be," he said. "You'll see a lot of people go there, but it's not necessarily because one person's following the next person. It's just because there's a ton of cool things there and they all want to be there."

Recent heavy rain and high humidity are causing mosquito populations to surge, and mosquito control is especially important in Georgia to prevent spread of encephalitis and West Nile viruses, according to the health department.