How mosquitoes use your body chemistry to pick you for their next meal

At close range, mosquitoes use visual cues and body warmth to seek their prey. So scientists built a huge new arena to get to the root of mosquitoes’ human-seeking instincts in the wild. What’s next for mosquito researchers? But the search for an explanation for why mosquitoes prefer some humans to others will probably defy a simple answer. Using certain kinds of soap, even ones that leave behind a smell dominated by a chemical known to repel mosquitoes, paradoxically increase people’s attractiveness to mosquitoes.