A man who studies ticks was bitten so many times that his body developed antibodies to tick saliva, which are now so powerful that they kill the ticks.

I recently managed to coax one into biting me to test my hypothesis. I felt it go into my skin and watched it suck for a bit, but it didn't get particularly engorged on it. No mark the next day. My son had a bitemark from a non-deliberate bite, though.

It seems to be a known phenomenon (though I have no idea why it happened to me): https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/questions/4310/is-it-poss...

It’s quite a luxury as someone who spends lots of time on trails. But I also feel somehow offended. What’s so bad about MY blood?

So its likely about how that smells

Or other trails toward you, while they probably would enjoy your blood in actuality even if they think they’re detecting something related to how the meal would taste or its nutrition levels by proxy

Let me know what you all know!

I thought the theory was that they follow the CO2 we exhale.

There is still some difference in who they choose to follow or act upon so I’m grasping for where that difference is. Could be something alongside the CO2

I guess I’m less into the semantic difference between “smell” and “detect” and more whether it’s the CO2 they’re following or something else we exhale regularly.

But, to be fair for me being fit and being in the regions where mosquitos exist en masse is a related phenomenon. Out of shape me spends less time on trails than fit me.

How would they know your blood type before biting you?

> I felt it go into my skin and watched it suck for a bit, but it didn't get particularly engorged on it. No mark the next day.

So it might follow that with one resistant (R) and one non-resistant person (NR) exposed to a few dozen mosquitoes, NR will end up with lots of visible bites while R will be relatively unscathed - even though the mosquitoes might have sampled them each equally.

I know too that some mammals (e.g. mice) will sample a small amount of food (e.g. rodent poison), and then return later to try more if the food hasn't had ill effects.

I'm not sure that mosquitoes have anything like a memory capacity for this, but maybe something similar mediated via pheromones could be happening. (And something like pheromones could also signal to other mosquitoes that there's good eatin' to be had).

Or you get assassinated by Big Mosquito Repellent. I wouldn't mess with those people. Stick to inventing a cheap carbon-negative replacement for gasoline. Far fewer people angry at you upsetting the apple cart.

Put another way, we've been going to war over oil for years. One more body on that pile isn't difficult to imagine.

off by about 3 or 4 orders of magnitude unfortunately

That seems less likely than "My body doesn't generate a histamine response which results in a raised bump at the bite location."

So in my case, I do have a response to at least some bites, but consistently fewer than anyone else I'm with.

You can quickly confirm whether it's no biting vs no reaction by the fact that you can see them flying around and landing on you. Or rather, around everyone else except you. They aren't invisible. Here in the tropics, other people will be covered in them.