Are you one of those poor, unfortunate souls who seem to attract mosquitoes? Worse yet do you seem to be the only one that ever gets bit in your family or group after a barbecue or camping trip? While you miserably sit trying to resist the urge to scratch your limbs do your acquaintances say,” Well, the mosquitoes must love you because you’re so sweet!”

Mosquitoes probably don’t pick their victims because of the way a person’s skin or blood tastes. How could they know a certain person tastes better than another? The “You taste sweet” theory is further debunked when you start to think about how many mosquitoes there are in the world compared to you. How do they all know you are tasty? Unless you were featured on an episode of “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives for Insects” the bug population doesn’t know by word of mouth that you are the best place to get a meal.

That doesn’t mean they strike randomly though and new research from the University of Notre Dame’s Eck Institute for Global Health says it has more to do with the way people smell. The article, written by Wiliam G. Gilroy, didn’t mention what specific smells or top/middle/base notes humans might be giving off that mosquitoes are drawn to but you smell and the mosquitoes like it.

Zainulabeuddin Syed, a mosquito biologist at the Eck Institute, has spent his time studying how different insects smell. He hopes to prevent diseases like malaria by understanding why mosquitoes bite. In Africa a person dies every 30 seconds from malaria most of these deaths are children.

Mosquitoes apparently have an “extraordinary sense of smell.”  The females are the ones that bite and they use their sense of smell to find blood meals (humans and animals to bite) so they can lay eggs and to find sugar provided by plants to keep up their strength. Mosquitoes, like bees, prefer their food sweet - just not in human form.

Another part of the research is studying which plant scents mosquitoes are attracted to for feeding. If they can make food less desirable through repellents that alter the smell of the plant they can control the mosquito population.

DEET is considered the most effective mosquito repellant on the market because it doesn’t mask tantalizing smells to mosquitoes but repels them entirely- a fun fact Syed and the research team found when studying the chemical.

DEET (chemical name, N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) is found in several over the counter spray repellants to deter mosquitoes and ticks. The EPA fact sheet for DEET says it was developed by the U.S. Army in 1946 and was registered for use by the public about ten years later.

If the spray fails and you still have a few itchy bites try these home remedies for relief: Windex spray (ammonia), rub a lemon or lime, a paste made of crushed aspirins, or stay indoors until the bugs go away.