Do you drink beer? Do you attract mosquitoes?

Some people attract mosquitoes, while others come away relatively unscathed. Why is that? One explanation, according to scientists from the Netherlands, is beer. To find out why mosquitoes prefer some people over others, a research team led by Felix Hol of Radboud University Nijmegen transported thousands of female Anopheles mosquitoes to Lowlands, an annual music festival held in the Netherlands.

The researchers set up a lab in 2023 and approximately 500 volunteers participated. First, they filled out a questionnaire about their hygiene, diet, and festival behavior.

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Then, to see how attractive they were to mosquitoes, they placed their hand in a specially designed cage filled with the pesky insects. The cage had tiny holes so that the mosquitoes could smell the person's hand but not bite it. A video camera recorded how many insects landed on a volunteer's hand compared to a sugar bowl on the other side of the cage. By comparing the video and the questionnaire responses, the researchers saw some clear results emerge.

Participants who drank beer were 1,35 times more attractive to mosquitoes than those who did not drink.

The tiny vampires were also more likely to target people who had slept with someone the night before. The study also found that recently showering and wearing sunscreen made people less attractive to the hummingbird threat.

"We found that mosquitoes are attracted to those who avoid sunscreen, drink beer, and share their bed," the researchers wrote in a paper uploaded to the bioRxiv preprint server.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.21.671470

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