Mosquitoes Love the Way You Smell!

The billions of microscopic critters that cloak your skin are a bit like fashionable threads—the ones you're wearing today may be out by next season.
~Ben Harder

A recent study found that mosquitoes are drawn by the scent of bacteria on our skin. Bacterial microbes on human skin have a plethora of variations. This explains why some people seem like mosquito bait, while others shrug carelessly and smugly say, "Really? They aren't bothering me."

There are a couple of hundred microbes present on human skin at any given time. Over 1K unique nonhuman DNA have been identified on a random sampling of volunteers skin. There is a large amount of variation in each individuals sample - not eveyone has the same set of microbes, and the types on each individual can vary from samples taken at different times.

Every person seems to carry a signature microbe habitat.  Although some of the microbe colonies may be long term (perhaps permanant), others seem to come and go. Soap or laundry detergent can effect the type of microbes present, as can fabric of the clothes we wear. And the microbes, it seems, affect body odor.


Mosquitoes prefer to bite those with the odor of abundant bacterial communities, but with less diversity. There is also the possibility that some microbe colonies produce an odor that repels mosquitoes. Further research into the microbes on human skin must be conducted to answer that question.

The full study is available here.

Note: I would like to know more about the microbe colonies on skin, why they are there, what purpose they may be performing, etc, before the latest mosquito repellant containing the right microbes and eliminating the wrong ones hits the shelves.

Something else I learned: Pillows are gross.