Hundreds of hungry mosquitoes, a student volunteer and a mesh suit helped us figure out how these deadly insects reach their targets

Analyzing 20 million recorded mosquito flight paths revealed the mathematical rules behind how these tiny predators move and zero in on their human targets.

By: David Hu, Georgia Institute of Technology, The Conversation

Outlets: The Conversation

Published: March 18, 2026

Words: 1,435

Last Updated: 4 months, 2 weeks ago

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By David Hu, Georgia Institute of Technology

“Four minutes is too long.”

That’s the note undergraduate Chris Zuo sent me along with photos of countless mosquito bites on his bare skin. This full-body massacre wasn’t the result of a camping trip gone awry. He’d spent that limited amount of time in a room with 100 hungry mosquitoes while wearing nothing but a mesh suit we thought would have protected him.

Thus began our three-year journey trying …

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