Dr. Frank Bures A weekend camper was telling me how another camper was bitten by so many mosquitoes that their arm swelled to twice it normal size, but the narrator only got a few bites. Then they remarked that probably being type O blood type was the reason.
This was sort of news to me. I decided to do what I always told our kids with a question, “Look it up”. There are several variables that are discussed concerning why some folks are stronger mosquito magnets than others.
It turns out blood type seems to be one but not the only one. The author of the book “The Mosquito: A Human History of our Deadliest Predator”, Timothy Winegard, is quoted saying, “Roughly 85% of what makes you more or less desirable (to mosquitoes) is hard-wired into your DNA. His book is fascinating.
Female mosquitoes, not males, bite humans and other warm blooded animals because they need blood to nourish their eggs. Just being “good moms”. Thanks, Mom.
The idea of human blood type influencing delectability goes back a few decades. One 2004 study in the Journal of Medical Entomology (study of bugs) found skeeters preferred people with type O blood significantly more often than those with other blood types, and nearly twice as often as those with type A (blood, not personality). In a 2019 study that was reported in the American Journal of Entomology, researchers offered mosquitos insect feeders that contained all four blood types.
They found the insects chose the type O feeder more than an.
