Nothing feels more like summer than a neighborhood barbecue. But the annoyance of summer gatherings remains: the buzzing (嗡嗡声) of mosquitoes around our ears.
"The buzzing in your ear is mostly just a side effect of the mosquito's wings beating." said Michael Riehle. a professor at the University of Arizona. "The sound doesn't have a long range, so you notice it most when they are flying around your ears."
"From a distance, mosquitoes track carbon dioxide that we give out," Riehle told Live Science. "They fly back and forth to follow that concentration level back to the source (源头)."
But in fact, that buzzing you hear is likely from a female mosquito. That's because male and female mosquitoes lead very different lives. The males typically hang out and feed on the sweetest part of flowers; they couldn't care less about the humans wandering about. The females, however» need to find a blood meal in order to have enough energy to produce eggs.
As she approaches, the female mosquito zeros in on body heat and the carbon dioxide to land on the victim. The female mosquito uses taste sensors on her feet to determine whether the human, or any blood-bearing animal, is adequate to tap for her next meal.
But while we feel mosquitoes buzzing around our ears, Riehle noted that most mosquitoes are not attracted to our heads. Rather, these bloodsuckers may be more likely to seek out our feet, which have bacteria that give off attractive smell to mosquitoes. However, most people probably don't notice a mosquito buzzing around their ankles, he said.
Another study found that female mosquitoes were more attracted to men who had less diverse bacteria on their skin than to men with more diverse skin bacteria ； these bloodsuckers also perfer those who wear dark colors, such as black.
