Sunday 23 June 2024

Arghhhh....Shoo!!!!

Something i have said a few times is that since i have given up smoking, i seem to get bit a lot more by midges and mosquitoes than i used to and generally put it down to the nasties in cigarette making my blood taste undesirable but a team of experts at the Biology Department at the University of Washington are saying that your smell and the colour of your clothes is the deciding factor in whether you are sporting an angry red lump on your person for the next week.  
In a video on the university’s website, Professor Riffell says that some individuals are bitten way more than others and that Mosquitoes are remarkably good at trying to locate a person to drink their blood as everything about them is geared towards finding us and biting us.
Riffell and his team discovered that female mosquitoes find humans by following a trail of scent cues such as the chemicals humans exude from their skin and sweat and the carbon dioxide gas humans exhale when they breathe and they are also drawn to certain colors, particularly loving red and black clothing.
Don't wear red and black, got it. So what colour should we wear to avoid the evil little buggers? They tend to dislike white and green apparently and as for your smell, avoid salty foods or foods with potassium, such as bananas increased your risk of mosquito bites as they increase the lactic acid in your body which is catnip to the bitey things.
As for my half arsed idea that smoking keeps mosquitoes and midges away, there is some science behind it as something they hate is not the smell of the cigarettes but the smoke exhaled which they really don't like although i doubt that many medical professionals would advocate it as a recommended method for repelling mosquitoes.
So don't eat bananas, wear white or green and stand within touching distance of a smoker whilst outside for a bite free summer. 

2 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

don't eat bananas... you mean

my mom said that in the 1940's (before homes in texas got air conditioners), and the homes were on beams instead of concrete slabs, people would toss a banana stalk under the house to keep mosquitos away. my grandparents and mom swear it worked. but, my wife swears citronella candles work and i find that to be false...

Falling on a bruise said...

Yep, fixed it.