Female mosquitoes follow a trail of carbon dioxide to their human prey, so researchers are exploring smelly chemicals to confuse them:
Scientists at the University of California, Riverside, tested smelly chemicals on three species of mosquito: Anopheles gambiae, which spreads malaria; Culex quinquefasciatus, which spreads filariasis and West Nile virus; and Aedes aegypti which spreads dengue and yellow fever.
The researchers say that these insects combined infect half a billion people each year, some in at risk countries will be infected multiple times in their lifetime, and cause millions of deaths.
The researchers identified three groups of chemicals, which disrupt a mosquito’s carbon dioxide receptors.
One mimicked carbon dioxide and could be used as bait in insect traps, another prevented the mosquito from detecting carbon dioxide and the last group tricked the mosquito’s brain into thinking it was surrounded by huge quantities of the gas — so it could not pick which way to go.