A hungry mosquito twists and turns

A mosquito recognizes a suitable landing spot by the smell, heat and moisture of the skin.

First, however, you have to find a person. Humans do this by staring at human-looking objects and sniffing the carbon dioxide that our exhalation spreads into the air.

Americans the researchers let one hundred hungry females fly around the room in three different situations.

They either saw the humanoid figure, only smelled the carbon dioxide emitted from it, or both saw and smelled at the same time.

It turned out that if a mosquito just sees an object, it hooks to sniff. If it can’t see but can smell, it flies back and forth near the target. If it can both see and smell, it will start circling the object.

Result can help make mosquito traps more effective. The researchers conducted their experiments with the yellow fever mosquito, which is one of the world’s approximately one hundred mosquito species that prefer human blood.

Published in Science in Nature 4/2026