A recent study reveals that mosquitoes are attracted to humans based on the soap they use due to its fragrance.
Scientists also discovered that certain smells of soap help repel the pesky insect too.
Mosquitoes Sniff Your Soap's Smell Too
This close-up shows the head and the trunk (proboscis) of a mosquito in Montlouis-sur-Loire, central France, on October 21, 2022.
When outdoors, mosquito bites can be frustratingly annoying, leading some to use repellents to keep them away. However, a new study shows that the smell of your soap might attract them more.
According to The Strait Times, researchers have discovered a remarkable connection between human soap choices and mosquito behavior. A recent study shows that you might attract or repel mosquitoes depending on the soap you wash your body with.
The study's findings show that mosquitoes are not only attracted to the natural body odor of humans. Besides our innate scent, the pesky mosquitoes also sniff out fragrances in the soaps we use.
Previous studies have heavily focused on identifying the impact of our body scent on mosquito attraction.
But this time, our personal hygiene products also play a role in attracting or repelling pesky insects. So if you are serious about getting rid of mosquitoes, think twice before buying your soap.
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Which Soap Smell Repel Mosquitoes
View a transgenic Aedes aegypti OX513A mosquito, created by Oxitec, in Piracicaba, Sao Paulo, Brazil on October 26, 2016.
As per The Atlantic, mosquitoes naturally sniff out the smell of blood and plants. However, humans these days are somewhat confusing for them as they smell like the latter, too, largely due to the hygienic products they use, which mostly leave a citrus or floral smell.
The study's author, Clément Vinauger, a Virginia Tech biochemist and geneticist, told Gizmodo that the scent of soaps nowadays is "typically associated with the pleasant scent of flowers and plants." Although these fragrances make us smell good, mosquitoes are using these fragrances to get sugar.
And as such, Vinauger thought that these fragrances on our body soap might innocently attract the pesky insect. So she proceeded with the study, which looked into various soap brands, including Dove, Simple Truth, and Dial.
After looking into these soaps, the experiment shows that fruity and citrusy-smelling hygiene bars attract mosquitoes.
On the other hand, the coconut-scented Native brand soap repelled mosquitoes. So if you want to keep the pesky insect away, you should opt for a coconut-smelling hygiene bar rather than the citrusy and fruity ones, according to a recent study.
Straits Times notes in the same report that some experts emphasized that the research could help develop effective mosquito repellants. The researchers published a recent study, which looked into the connection between mosquitoes and soap's smell, in the journal iScience.
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