Question Corner | Can mosquitoes taste human blood?

Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the Rockefeller University have for the first time found that female mosquitoes have individual neurons that sense human blood’s distinctive flavour. The sense of taste is specially tuned to detect a combination of at least four different substances in blood — glucose, sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate and adenosine triphosphate. The researchers found that female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes possess different neurons in the syringe-like stylet, which punctures the skin, to distinguish blood from nectar. But the other three ingredients — sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate and ATP — which are found only in blood and not in nectar activated a specific group of neurons.