As the summer approaches, so do those barbecue-ruining menaces, mosquitoes. While some people are naturally more attractive to the bloodsuckers for a variety of reasons, researchers from Virginia Tech now say certain soaps make people smell too yummy for the insects to pass up.
The scientists chose several different soap brands for their human test subjects and found many of those who washed with Dove or Simple Truth became mosquito magnets.
That said, brands that smelled like coconut — like the brand they tested, Native — generally kept the bugs at bay.
Even the folks in the study who used bug spray were still swarmed if they used those brands, say the scientists, whose findings were published in the journal iScience.
Researcher, study author and neuroethologist Clément Vinauger called the findings “remarkable,” though noted it might not be the soap’s scents, exactly, but how compounds in them react to the wearer’s body.
They will undertake further testing to see if time affects their findings — to see if the effects wear off throughout the day if someone showers in the morning versus someone who just used those soaps.
The scientists say once they zero in on what chemicals in the soaps are having those effects, the soaps could be tweaked to offer protection from the little biters, who are not only annoying but can carry diseases.