A journal Current Biology has unveiled as to how mosquitoes track down something to bite. They follow a sequence, which includes smell, sight and the last step is heat. The researchers have even recorded the movement of mosquitoes in a wind tunnel.

The research is built up on the evidence that smell is very important for mosquitoes in order to know about their meal. The researchers said that mosquitoes are very good in sniffing carbon dioxide, which is present in the breath of the animals whom they feed on.

In fact, mosquitoes can come to know about stale, exhaled air from around 50 m away. Study’s first author Floris van Breugel, from the California Institute of Technology, said, “We were able to put together a working theory for how all these senses work together in the mosquito, to find a human”.

The researchers firstly separated the different stimuli, including smell, vision and heat, which were represented as a plume of carbon dioxide, a black spot on the wind tunnel’s floor and a heated glass plate.

Dr van Breugel said that they wanted to see the reaction of the mosquitoes. To cite an example, when insects were shown a black spot in an empty wind tunnel then they would react and left it alone. But if CO2 plume was also there then they would smell it and move on for the visual stimulus.

Study’s senior author Dr Michael Dickinson said that after sniffing CO2 plume, they only pay attention to visual cue. It indicates that they do not waste time in investigating wrong targets.