Re: Tick season
Im game to give it a shot...Mosquitos will fly past 3 other people to land on me...Ive got scabs all up my legs from the little $(@#&$.. heyttown at yahoo.com
It's odd {well maybe not} how they will do that, I've spent 8-9 years studying them since I met the "locals" in Western Africa, where mosquito's aren't just a nuisance as they are for the most part to us, they are life threatening. Each year in Africa around 1 Million people die from Malaria alone, 10 times that get real sick but survive, many of them suffering for the rest of their lives. To add to the misery that I have seen 30% of the children in Africa die from Malaria before they reach 5 years of age, it's a desperate situation.
Anyway, finding this out and wanting to protect myself from Malaria, not to mention River Blindness {from the bite of tsetse flies}, it gave me some incentive to do something about it. I guess I should clarify that comment about them biting us, they don't actually bite, they drill a hole into us.
Thank gawd for Google and for the Native knowledge that I picked up on, what you might call the barefoot/generational "wisdom" that has been passed down for hundreds of years, if not longer, but has almost been lost in the last 50 years.
Here's some of what I've learned about mosquito's and what we are up against when they are on the prowl.
First of all a mosquito can smell us from at least 100ft away, they don't have noses as such, they have 72 sensors on their antenna, each sensor capable of identifying a single molecular odor particle.
To put their ability to sniff us out into perspective, a dogs sense of smell is around 1,000 times more acute than the average human, a mosquito's sense of smell is 1,000 times more acute than a dog, the end run of that is...
A mosquito's sense of smell is 1 million times more acute than a humans !!!
They pick up on the CO2 {carbon dioxide} that we exhale and the unique body odors that each of us have. They have preferences in their choice of food the same way that we do, on mans meat is another mans poisson the same with mosquito's, that's why if there's a choice on their menu the mosquito's will, on occasion, leave some folks alone.
Once we pop up on their radar they will follow the scent until they are around 20ft away from us. At this point our body heat becomes the main signal for them, so they switch from their sniffing radar and lock onto us with their infra red sensing eyes, clever little beggars aren't they.
From 20ft out they head right for us, locking in on a hot spot, uncovered skin usually and then when they get even closer they can even pick out a vein or an artery due to the heat of the blood.
Once they get to within a couple of inches they will hover for a moment, partly to look for the best spot to land, but more importantly to make sure that we are what they are looking for. Mosquito's are very selective in the species that they bite, some prefer goats, or dogs or birds, some {of the over 3,500 species} prefer humans, thankfully only about 10% of mosquito species prefer us, and thankfully again, not all the 350 or so that prefer us live on the same continent.
Now that we know what we are up against we can try to do something about it. The first thing to do is try to "cloak" ourselves, we can try to do that by masking/overcoming the smell of the CO2 and the body odors that we emit, so that we don't get noticed as much, that helps, but the secret is, knowing what masks us most effectively, rather than what will make us even more attractive to them {certain perfumes}.
Masking alone will keep us safe from the attention of most of the long range mosquito's, but it don't help if we walk out of the house and there's half a dozen of them hanging upside down on the gutter. If we are within 20ft of them we are glowing in the dark so to speak, so they will jump off and head right for us.
Not must you can do at that point, they are on their way in, but...
We have one last line of defense, as they hover making sure that we are what they are looking for, we need to confuse them by emitting an odor that makes them think twice as to what we are. Remember they have a sense of smell 1 Million times more acute than we have, so if we have something on our skin that they don't like the smell of, chances are they will leave us alone and go bite someone else.
The tough part is figuring out what puts them off their "food" just as they are about to eat, but oddly enough folks knew how to do that way back in the times of Ancient Egypt.
Deet doesn't do any of the above, it doesn't mask our odor, it messes up the sensors on the mosquito's antenna, so not knowing what the hell we are most of them won't bite you if you're wearing Deet, that's why/how Deet works.
But, no matter what you wear 3-5% of mosquito's will still bite you, the reason for that isn't known yet, but the thinking is...
Like people, or dogs we don't all have the same sense of smell, women near always have a better sense of smell than men, and you don't go hunting hogs with a poodle, you take the dog {species} that has the best sense of smell.
Same with mosquito's, some have a very acute sense of smell some are flying around seemingly with a head cold all the time they are the ones that just don't give a damn what you wear, they are hungry, they can see blood, and they are having some of it...
I guess you can see this has become a pet topic for me, it's a challenge to be up against something that weighs less than 1 Millionth of what we weigh, yet has the ability to kill us.
They really are interesting little beggars...
PS... if you think mosquito's have a good sense of smell, blackflies and noseeums are 3-5 times more acute than a mosquito, but..
That's good for us though, because when we wear a repellent it will "seem" to last longer as far as blackflies and noseeums are concerned.
A repellent that is effective for lets say 3 hours against mosquito's should be effective for up to 6 hours against blackflies and noseeums...
