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Scientists Discover Mosquitoes Are Using Infrared to Track Humans Down (www.sciencealert.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Maybe i missed some words in the article, but I don't see it say when they figured this out. Because it's been at least a decade since I learned about it in school or from a science magazine at school.

Have people been going around not knowing about this until now?

Or is it that only now can they say with certainty this is true?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I don't remember when I learned about it or how verifiable the source was, but I knew it too for at least a decade. I am a radiant, heavy-breathing, sweaty target. I have outclassed everyone I've ever met on the mosquito attraction scale. I've used loose longer clothes but thought it was just stopping their bites from reaching my skin. I didn't think about how it could also be diffusing my thermal appearance since I'd still get bitten on exposed areas like face and hands.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

The paper was published last month https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07848-5

But I suspect this was not a new discovery as much as a new expansion of the information.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It was always my understanding that they detected carbon dioxide we exhaled. This is the first I've heard about infrared.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

When I worked for the county doing mosquito control about 15 years ago, I was told they did both.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

yeah I thought we (humanity) already knew this and for some time now.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I think humanity has always assumed this. Hurray for scientific conformation.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

Have people been going around not knowing about this until now?

I did not

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Maybe they watched Predator, I saw something similar happen there

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

"If it bleeds, I can use its proteins to reproduce!"

Just doesn't have the same ring to it.