“Mosquito picando” by trebol_a is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Nothing feels more like summer than a neighborhood barbecue, especially following the dreary winter months. But the nemesis of summer gatherings remains: the droning whine of mosquitoes around our ears.
So, why do these bloodsucking insects hover around our ears in the first place? And why do they produce that annoying buzz?
“The buzzing in your ear is mostly just a side effect of the mosquito’s wings beating,” said Michael Riehle, a professor of entomology at the University of Arizona. “[The sound] doesn’t have a long range, so you notice it most when they are flying around your ears.”
Ladies that lunch
That buzzing you hear is likely from a female mosquito. That’s because male and female mosquitoes lead very different lives. The males typically hang out and sip on the nectar of flowers; they couldn’t care less about the humans lumbering about. The females, however, need to find a blood meal after mating in order to have enough energy to produce eggs. In fact, female mosquitoes are equipped with unique tools to home in on their next victim.
“From a distance, [female mosquitoes] cue in on carbon dioxide that we exhale in conical plumes from our bodies,” Riehle told Live Science. “The carbon dioxide stimulates the female mosquito to start host-seeking, flying back and forth to follow that concentration gradient back to the source.”
In other words, mosquitoes buzz around our heads because that’s where we expel the most carbon dioxide.
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