When I was growing up, I always had a certain affinity for mosquitos. Not so much that I liked them, or kept them as pets, but given me and a group of people I was their goto buffet. You always hear theories of "they like blondes" or "you ate a banana for lunch", but be it my infrared emissions or the content of iron and potassium in my blood, I just relegated myself to a summer full of itching and scratching.
And then a new study came out recently discussing a possible theory that mosquitos (henceforth mozzies, since my Australian friends taught me it and I like the sound better) are actually attracted to microbes on the skin. I was going to write this up as my thought today, but in doing my research came across an even more interesting theory. So to summarize this study and then get onto the good stuff...
48 men were given strict diets, no showers or alcohol for 2 days. Their scents were captured on a glue sheet and then subjected to the mozzies. 9 of the men had an attraction rate over 2.5 times over the other subjects. This group was found to have a much lower microbial diversity (on the order of 3 times) than the less-attractive group.
But wait, no alcohol for 2 days, what gives? Apparently mozzies are attracted to beer drinkers. In a separate study, researchers separated two groups of participants into two tents. One group drank water, one group drank beer (i.e. the lucky group). They then took fans and wafted the odor from the two tents down glue covered tubes into a third tent filled with the mozzies that carry malaria. The study found that 65% of the insects chose the air from the beer drinkers tent.
Henry Youngman once said "When I read about the evil's of drinking, I gave up reading". I think I want to stick with getting bit before they take away my rum.