--- title: The Scents and Colors Mosquitoes Are Drawn to description: Research has found that mosquitoes are drawn to certain smells and colors. canonical: https://time.com/6989548/mosquitoes-attracted-to-scents-colors-research/ author: Chantelle Lee article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-06-17T21:20:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T17:47:49.435Z article:section: Health og:title: The Scents and Colors Mosquitoes Are Drawn to og:description: Research has found that mosquitoes are drawn to certain smells and colors. og:url: https://time.com/6989548/mosquitoes-attracted-to-scents-colors-research/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte7e7a4459b325e6b/698a57ecdb2987e69726bc40/Mosquito-Scents-Colors.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: FRANCE-ENVIRONMENT-NATURE-MOSQUITO og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Scents and Colors Mosquitoes Are Drawn to twitter:description: Research has found that mosquitoes are drawn to certain smells and colors. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte7e7a4459b325e6b/698a57ecdb2987e69726bc40/Mosquito-Scents-Colors.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Scents and Colors Mosquitoes Are Drawn to > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [Chantelle Lee](https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/) ## Chantelle Lee Reporter Jun 17, 2024 9:20 PM UTC  A tiger mosquito bites a person in the French riviera city of Nice, on Aug. 10, 2023. A tiger mosquito bites a person in the French riviera city of Nice, on Aug. 10, 2023. Valery Hache—AFP/Getty Images by [Chantelle Lee](https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/) ## Chantelle Lee Reporter Jun 17, 2024 9:20 PM UTC As the weather starts [heating up](https://time.com/6299072/what-to-know-about-heat-domes-and-how-long-they-last/) this week, you may be tempted to go outside—but with the outdoors comes the possibility of getting bitten by mosquitoes. And if you find yourself getting a lot of mosquito bites, it could be because of the way you smell or the colors of the clothes you are wearing, recent research has found. “If you think you are a mosquito magnet, it’s probably the case,” Jeffrey Riffell, a biology professor at the University of Washington who studies mosquito sensory systems, said in a video on the [university’s website](https://www.washington.edu/news/2024/06/03/mosquito-video/) released earlier this month. “Some individuals are bitten way more than others.” Riffell has been working with a team of researchers to try to better understand how mosquitoes find food—male mosquitoes drink nectar from flowers to get sugar, while females drink blood as a means to help with laying eggs. “Mosquitoes are remarkably good at trying to locate a person to drink their blood,” Riffell said in the video. “They are vampires, and they’re very good at what they’re doing. Their eyes, their vision, their nose, 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, according to the university’s website. Mosquitoes are also drawn to certain colors—they love red and black, Riffell said in the video. But mosquitoes tend to dislike white and green, Riffell added. **Read More:** [_The Least Toxic Ways to Protect Yourself from Ticks_](https://time.com/6286483/least-toxic-tick-repellents/) “Unfortunately, they can learn. If you are very attractive and they bite you and drink your blood, they will then go back to you because they learned this kind of positive association,” Riffell said in the video. “The good news is that they can learn to avoid you, so if you're trying to swat them they’ll learn that and they’ll avoid you a little bit.” Mosquitoes can detect three different types of sugar sources, University of Washington biology PhD student Melissa Leon Norena said in the video. One of those sources is fruits, and researchers are trying to create the scent that mosquitoes are drawn to. If the mosquitoes are attracted to that perfume, then researchers can lace it with a toxin that can kill the insects. The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention](https://www.cdc.gov/global-health/impact/fighting-the-worlds-deadliest-animal.html) has called the mosquito “the world’s deadliest animal” because the insects can [spread diseases](https://time.com/4177122/mosquitoes-diseases-zika-virus/) to humans, such as [malaria](https://time.com/tag/malaria/), [dengue fever](https://time.com/tag/dengue-fever/), [West Nile virus](https://time.com/3973465/theres-a-new-way-to-predict-west-nile-virus-outbreaks/), and [Zika virus](https://time.com/tag/Zika/). Research has found that [climate change](https://time.com/tag/climate-change/) has led to an [increased risk of mosquito-borne diseases](https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/08/mosquito-diseases-move). Last week, Southern Nevada Health District cautioned residents that the area was experiencing the [highest level of mosquito activity](https://time.com/6987295/mosquitoes-west-nile-virus-nevada-las-vegas-record/) in known history, with more than 3,000 mosquitoes testing positive for West Nile virus. “The information that we’re kind of developing and finding in the laboratory has real world implications and can really help, I think, many people in many different parts of the world,” Riffell said in the video. 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