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?
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.
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.
I thought this was discovered, like, decades ago and was only one of several detection methods that they use in combination with each other
First I’ve heard anything about direct contrast of UV light to not. I’ve heard CO2 and NaCl before though.
*IR light, in the interest of avoiding confusion.
“I’m right heeere! Come and get me!”
For anyone coming along and not trusting the title, it is misleading.
Infrared is one of the things mosquitoes use to find a target.
They still use CO 2 detection as part of their methods, this is in addition to, not instead of.
All the species who’ve gone extinct and just one of them couldn’t have been mosquitoes?
If it bleeds, we can kill it.
I love that musical.
