Tiny Vampires and Their Questionable Taste - by Tre

As we have continued on our travels, we have spent a lot of time in tropical areas and discovered an unfortunate fact. Well, unfortunate for some.

The mosquitos in the French Polynesian islands are of a particularly vicious variety: they crawl through the smallest holes in our bug nets, they swarm you whenever you step into the forest, and as an added bonus the bites swell too, getting far more inflamed than the Alaskan mosquito bites that we are used to.

Despite all of this, I remain relatively unmarred. You should see my dad and sister—they look like chicken pox victims. But my mom and I only have a few bites here and there, similar to a typical Alaskan summer. This leads us to a pretty commonly asked question (or at least in our family). Are some people tastier to mosquitos than others?

The answer isn't as simple as it might sound. Research has shown that many factors can influence mosquito attraction, the carbon dioxide in your breath, and even the color of clothes that you are wearing (It has been shown that red, orange, and black are the most attractive to mosquitos).

However, according to pfizer.com, two factors influence mosquito preference the most: genes and our natural body odor. 

To locate their prey, female mosquitos (which are the only ones that bite) track the carbon dioxide that we breathe out, as well as our natural odor. People who have a higher metabolic rate exhale more carbon dioxide, meaning that mosquitos might be more attracted to you while you're on a run, pregnant, or drinking a lot. Some body odors may be more attractive to mosquitos as well.

Genetics influence mosquito's preferential target in a different way. A 2015 study published in the journal PLOS One found that DNA may account for almost 67% of mosquito attraction. The study took two groups of female twins. One of the groups was made up of fraternal twins, while the others were identical. They found that the identical twins, which shared the exact genes, had more similar levels of mosquito attraction than the other group. Building off a previous study that showed that identical twins shared more similar body odors than fraternal twins, the researchers concluded that DNA plays a role in mosquito attraction.

Overall, there are a lot of factors that could influence mosquito attraction. My dad and sister may have higher metabolic rates than my mom and I. Or, perhaps, there may be a specific pheromone in our genes that is especially attractive to mosquitos that came from my dad's side. He could have passed it on to my sister and not to me. It's hard to say, because there are just so many factors that influence how tasty we are to mosquitos.

Well, now we are moving on from French Polynesia, flying to New Zealand. Hopefully we're escaping the mosquitos, or perhaps they will be there waiting for us.