Today, Explained - How to beat mosquitoes

Episode Date: June 21, 2026

They’re the deadliest animal on the planet. Now even Google is getting into the extermination business. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru, edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Michelle Hirsch, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. A tiger mosquito is crushed in the hand of a man after being bitten. Photo by MATTHIEU DELATY/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail]. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for today's explain comes from Fetch. Fetch is pet insurance if you hadn't figured it out. Do you have a pet? According to a study from a pet insurance company from a few years ago, every six seconds a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000 and it almost never comes at a convenient time. So check out Fetch. You get paid up to 90% of vet bills. You can use Fetch for any vet in the U.S. and Canada. every vet is in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. Support for this show comes from fetch pet insurance. Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000.

And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where fetch pet insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to 90% of vet bills. You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada. All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save.

Mosquitoes are definitely one of the most frustrating parts of summer. I went camping for a weekend and came back with 200 mosquito bites. Mosquitoes love me. Whatever it is that they're into, I've got it, unfortunately. I want you to close your eyes and imagine a perfect summer girls' night out. It's dusk. You assemble your crew and you hit up the ultimate cookout.

You avoid the grill. You don't really want all that smoke in your face. But the food really starts calling your name. And what a spread. You gorge yourself on a delicious meal and then hate to diet and dash. But hey, you got what you need it and you are off to the. the next spot. That is the perfect Saturday night for a mosquito. These bloodthirsty insects are more than an annoyance that feast on your ankles. Mosquitoes

are the deadliest animal on the planet. I'm John Glyn Hill, and this week, Unexplained to me from Vox, we're trying to swat away our mosquito problem for good. Every summer, I'm reminded just how much mosquitoes love me. They also love Sonia Swiger. She's an etymologist at Texas A&M where she specializes in bugs that bite us. Well, you know, I don't know why they like me so much. I know why they like people in general.

One of the main reasons is because of the CO2 we put off. Ooh, what do we have here? Your body temperature, whether or not you're a living host that they can get blood from, that's important. Okay. They're alive. Check. They also do light colors. They have found that they do have a preference for more flowery colors, actually, right?

So more like the pinks and the blues and things like that. Ooh, I love butter yellow. They have found, which is this is a fun one, that if you consume alcohol, that actually makes you more attractive. Actually, it was a study done with beer. So as folks, you know, took in some more beer at their parties, they actually became more attractive. Okay.

low. This one's got something going on. They've also had some studies where the mosquitoes have become used to smells that they're associated with, such in urban areas. You know, there are certain smells that are always in that region. In the mosquitoes, which it was the 80s, Egypti mosquito, actually preferred people who came from that area as opposed to other people that they may be encountering. So it's kind of interesting to think that mosquitoes would have that much comment. sense, I guess, in a way, right? So much ability. Not that they have a preferred flavor of human being. Like, oh, my gosh. So what are mosquitoes doing exactly when they bite us? Like, what are the

mechanics and what are they trying to get? We refer to it as a blood meal, but it's not necessarily a meal. It's not a food source. So, but it's a necessity in order for them to produce eggs. So the female is going to, again, sense the host that she's looking for based on her, her factors that she's in tune to. And once she finds the ability to probe, she will eventually then you know, address it with her. Her proboscis is made up with different features. And then the internal part is what she actually will bite us with. So they'll actually unsheath that and start to force the inner part of their mouth parts into our skin. In the process of doing that, they're also going to spit saliva into us. Yes. And the reasons they do,

that have many purposes. One is because they don't want us to know that we're getting bit. So they're going to spit in us with the saliva. They're going to put in some materials that also anesthetize that biting. That will also slow the flow rate of the blood because that's, you know, they're trying to drink it. They don't want to come flying out on them as like a fire hose. They need to regulate that. Unfortunately, though, when they're doing that in the saliva, they're also spitting pathogens into us if they have them. Some of our larger mosquitoes are not as friendly when they bite us. They may actually hurt. They don't always choose to be polite about it.

So we're all aware of those ones, for sure. How soon after I get bitten does my skin start to swell up? Does that bump start? Well, that depends on a person. Some people react immediately. And then some people will react later. Like it could be an hour, half hour, the next day, 24 hours, or even a day or two. And then there's people who have no reaction whatsoever. So unfortunately, there's no set answer to that because everybody reacts differently. I think I'm personally, I'm more of a second level. I'll react usually within 30 minutes of a bite, but it's not common. I react instantly. But my mother, she's an instant reactor, right? So she, the minute she's bitten by something, she gets a welt, she gets a hive and she can, she knows it. So it does vary. And then it also changes because your amount of

exposure can change your reaction as well. I think probably in my 30s, I just stopped reacting to them. So when I get bitten now, they still bite me, but instead of getting a raised, itchy bump, I just get a tiny little spot that doesn't itch at all. So I guess I've built up a tolerance to mosquito venom over the years. Some people can get bit constantly and constantly react to it and they get more severe reactions to it.

And then some people can get bit frequently and eventually not notice. It will actually deplete those reactions. So, again, there's no set, this is how it's going to be. It really just depends on how you as a person will react to those bites. And those bites are not exclusive across the lines for all biting insects either. So there's variability in that as well. You said mosquitoes love you. So I have to know, as an etymologist, what do you use to keep?

keep them away. I just stick with deep because that's always worked for me. So, and generally, it's easier to access, too. If you do try some others, there are a few others out there. So like percarotin's another good one, as long as you don't have a reaction to it. Because again, some people do react to different chemicals. It's nothing against the chemical. It's just the way our bodies react. There's oil, a lemon eucalyptus, which is a natural product that's been approved and tested. But the caveat with that is it's not labeled for children. So we do have to be careful of that. Obviously, you want something that is as good as or as close to as good as D.

Because it has been found to technically be, I guess, the gold standard. They've not really found anything much more effective than that, but they can definitely get equivalent to it. I have tried all types of things. There were these, I remember one year. There were like these bracelets that it was like, they're going to keep mosquitoes away. And I was like, well, it doesn't hurt. Or, you know, Citronella can.

when you're out on someone's patio. Do those things do anything? Yeah, I know the bracelets were definitely not found to be as effective as they claimed. Plus, they did because they did have some type of a chemical in them. If they stayed on children too long, they actually could cause a chemical burn. So, you know, as a mom, I was like, no, no, we're not going to go that route. So I was like, let's not do that. The candles are limited.

When you're outside and you're one bucks gone, now there's an off that you don't go at all. It depends on the size of the space and how close you sit to the candle. So the candle in the citronella does have an effect, but how far does it expand is the question. How many do you really need to do the job you're asking it to do is kind of where you run into an issue there. So you may find better results by using something different. What do you do for post-bite remedies? I'm just deal with that kind of person, to be honest. So I'm a true entomologist. I don't kill much and I just deal with it. So, but, you know, there are good products nowadays that you can get for anti-itch. I would suggest that, you know, you hear all these different remedies putting ice on it. Sure, that just sues that initial bite. Maybe that calms the skin. That's really what you're trying to do. You're trying to calm your body. You're trying to calm your bodies. reaction to the bite itself and really just trying to trick the skin into realizing it's okay.

Mosquitas need to be managed. I didn't intend to be an entomologist to kill insects. That wasn't my intention. Actually, my research, I didn't kill any. But because of the betterment of society, sometimes we do have to interfere and we do need to play our role. There are certain individuals in those populations that are more heavily impacted and they're generally going to be the elderly or the young, right? And we want to protect every generation that we can. There's a real imperative to try to curb the mosquito problem. Up next, we're headed to the lab.

Support for today explained comes from Framer. If your team wants a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship, Framer is built for that. You design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts hosting and a CMS built in, so the work is production ready from day one. Agents work alongside you to draft pages and polish sections, and you review and publish what goes live. Framer is the pro site builder,

for creators, teams, and businesses that want a professional site and care enough to get every detail right. Agents solve the gap between AI-generated ideas and production-ready website work. The agent works in the same place where the real site is designed, managed, reviewed, and published. It stays on the canvas, stays editable, and can be published when the team is ready.

Agents and Framer work. alongside teams to streamline collaboration on the same canvas, build custom code components, create and manage CMS content, optimize SEO settings, and ship everything all in one place. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at Framer.com slash explained for 30% off a Framer pro annual plan. That's framer.com slash explain for 30% off.

Framer.com slash explained rules and restrictions may apply. Support for today, Explain comes from Fetch, Pet Insurance. Here's what surprises a lot of pet owners. Something like every six seconds a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. And when I say hit, it sometimes feels like you're getting hit because I can speak from personal experience that I've been hit with a vet bill over $1,000. And I don't even have a pet. According to consumer advocate.org, fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats. You get paid back up to 90% of vet bills for accidents, illness, diagnostics, and more.

All vets are in network so you can use fetch for any vet in the U.S. or Canada. Get your free custom quote in about two minutes at fetchpet.com slash save. That's fetchpet.com slash save. Fetch love longer. That's nice. This is explained it to me. I'm JQ. One way to protect yourself against mosquito bites is to get them at the source.

Make sure they can't lay their eggs in standing water. But the life cycle of a mosquito is short, just a month max, which means they're going to keep coming back. So researchers are trying all sorts of ways to neutralize the mosquito. My name's Eric Carrageta. I'm an assistant professor of mosquito microbreeding. interactions working out of the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory, and that's part of the University of Florida. I mean, there's actually some incredibly beautiful mosquitoes. So if you look for photos of pretty

mosquitoes, you'll see they're all different types. Some of them are iridescent. Some of them have sort of plumes on their legs, and they kind of look like dancers. But I guess my favorite, is probably the 80s of gypti because that's the first organism I ever studied. If we take a step back and think of mosquitoes as a whole, there's more than 3,700 described mosquito species. Wow. Okay. Did not realize there were that many. There's so many, and there's probably a lot that have not been described by science as well. But most of those, in fact, the vast majority of those species,

don't actually bite people, which means they aren't responsible for spreading disease. It took centuries for us to actually figure out that certain diseases were caused by mosquitoes and then not caused by mosquitoes directly, but caused by pathogens spread by mosquitoes. Beyond that, the world is a big place, and how do you find everywhere where those target mosquito species are actually breeding and laying their eggs and developing. It's really, really complicated.

The next issue is this problem of insecticide resistance. So for decades, we've performed chemical management of mosquito populations, but we're now seeing that that is less effective than it used to be because mosquitoes are becoming resistant to the more commonly used chemicals. We have been seeing

some increased accounts of insecticide resistance in the West Nile vectors across the country. They say as we spray more, the more mosquitoes are exposed to pesticides, and in turn, there's more resistance to those pesticides. And with a warming climate, winters may not stop the spread. So we now have populations of mosquitoes all over the world that are resistant to these chemicals and sometimes multiple chemicals. Eric actually thinks it may be possible for humans and mosquitoes to live in greater harmony, with a little help from genetic modification. Genetic control of mosquitoes is an old idea,

but one that's grown in interest in the research community over the last couple of decades. We can sort of simplify it down to two categories. The first is called population replacement, and the idea there is that you pick a target mosquito population and modify its genetics to immunize it against pathogens of interest. That approach, the replacement, it's really still in the laboratory testing phase. The second option is called population suppression, and there the goal is the same as using chemical insecticides. We want to reduce mosquito numbers so that there's fewer of them to bite us. Google just announced its own mosquito-fighting experiment. Google's health research project called Debug is asking for permission to release up to 32 million male mosquitoes in Florida,

and California over the next two years. The initiative is aimed at reducing disease-carrying mosquito populations by introducing sterile mosquitoes that can eliminate the spread of illnesses like dengue fever and Zika. They're basically trying to sterilize mosquitoes, right? Walk me through what's going on here. Sure. So to do that, we want to take a step back and introduce people to Wolbachia, the bacterium that's part of the Google strategy.

So, Wulbacia, it's a very common bacterial endosymbiont in insects. Google has taken Wulbacia from a donor mosquito, and then using very small needles, they perform this procedure called embryonic microinjection. So they have purified Wulbacia cells, they put it in the needle, they get freshly laid mosquito eggs from the target mosquito species, and they inject the Wulbacia. into those eggs.

The mosquitoes that are injected, develop, and if they survive, they might harbor a stable Wolbachia infection. Google's Wolbachia strategy is population suppression. So again, that means they're trying to reduce the number of mosquitoes

in a target population. So they release male mosquitoes, and they go out into nature, and they find and mate with wild, female mosquitoes. And basically it makes Wulbacian infected insects incompatible with uninfected insects.

So when these Wobachia carrying males mate with uninfected females, none of the progeny hatches. So we say their eggs are inviable. And because Google is releasing a lot of males into the area, they saturate the area with these males and on that scale, how it works is that basically there's fewer surviving larvae in the next generation, and if they keep releasing males over the next few weeks or two to three months,

hopefully there's really large suppression effects. So we're talking, removing 90 to 95 percent of the mosquito population in that area. Okay, that's the hope, but does the strategy, actually work? At the moment, this suppression approach with Wulbacia is quite widely utilized in the world. So there's been some very successful examples

of this type of program working to control other mosquito species in countries like China and Singapore. Authorities are expanding Project Wulbacia to reach some 800,000 households by 2026. So our stock colony produces about 24 million weeks a week, we release about 5 million males out into the field. In Singapore, they've just had a study published that really demonstrates they're cutting

the risk of dengue infection in the areas where they use Wulbacia-based suppression to control 80s Egypti mosquitoes. Wow. So how long will it take for Google to fix our mosquito problem over here in the U.S.? Well, at the moment, Google's not been approved to release these mosquitoes, and it might take potentially years to get that approval and to roll out the technology. What would the ideal relationship between human and mosquitoes look like, you think?

What's the goal? It's going to vary from place to place. Like, I can't come in and tell everyone in the world to do things the Eric way, even when it comes to mosquitoes. Local community groups and stakeholders need to decide what's right for them. So it might be that they are removing specific mosquito species from around where they live, if that's possible.

Or it might be that they are taking a replacement approach and immunizing those mosquito populations. So we really want to have lots of options available to people so that we can present solutions that are right for specific segments of every community. What if the science got so good that we could actually eradicate mosquitoes altogether? Just because we could, doesn't mean we should? That's next. Support for the show comes from tachiatry. If you've ever wanted to meet with a psychiatrist, two big factors can make it difficult. Insurance and long wait lists.

Tocayatry exists to make the process a lot easier. You can see a licensed psychiatrist online who takes your insurance in just a few days. Talkiatry is a 100% online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses, and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, insomnia, and more. Unlike therapy-only platforms, tachyotry is psychiatry. That means you meet a medical provider who can diagnose mental health conditions and prescribe medications when it's appropriate.

They have more than 800 N-network clinicians, and you can meet with the same provider every time, rather than constantly starting over. They'll take the time to understand what's going on, build a personalized treatment plan, and support you over time. You can go to tachiatry.com slash explain it to complete the short assessment

and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's tachiatry.com slash explain it to get matched in minutes. Support for today, explain, comes from Delete Me. Have you ever thought I should really be doing something to protect myself from stalker, scammers and hackers, but you're not sure what.

Here's what you can do. Go to deleteme.com slash today and enter code today. You'll get 20% off Delete Me. Delete Me removes your personal information that's being sold on hundreds of data broker sites. I could tell you more, or I could let our colleague, Claire White, tell you about her experiences.

Delete Me has done everything for me in the past year. It is the easiest tool to remain private, to remain secure, and I'm a huge fan. You can sign up for Delete Me for just $8 a month within annual plan, and the discounts get even better with a two-year plan or when you enroll with a partner or family. Take control of your data. Keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe now at a special discount for our listeners.

Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joinDeletMe.com. And use promo code today at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joinsleadme.com slash today and enter code today. That's joinsleet me.com slash today, code today. These blood-sucking parasite are eradicated off the face of the earth. I'm JQ. Back with Moore, Explain It to Me. Getting rid of mosquitoes once and for all might solve a lot of problems for us. But is it the right thing to do?

Greg Kavnick's answer surprised me. He's based at the Hastings Center for Bioethics. Well, I was on a National Academies of Sciences Committee a few years ago that was looking at a technology called Gene Drive that can be used to make changes in populations of wild animals, wild organisms. And we were looking at Anophiles Gambia, which is a complex of species.

Anophilies mosquitoes are the vector for malaria. And we just brought together a group of environmental ethicists and conservation biologists, ecologists, to think about this question. Would it be okay ever to wipe out a species? We brought together folks who are kind of like me, predisposed not to want to do that, predisposed to try to protect species,

leave the natural world alone. But we were persuaded that could be worth looking into it. You know, I have to admit, and I don't know, maybe this is bad person alert, but I would not be terribly upset if mosquitoes were gone tomorrow. I'm a person who gets bitten up so badly. And then on top of that, the disease of it all, are there people who think, okay, why not just get rid of them all? Like, what is stopping that idea from taking root and happening? For one thing, getting rid of all of them would be phenomenally difficult. The real goal for the people who are doing this work,

is to address the underlying public health problem. And with malaria, the mosquito is a vector. It's part of what transmits malaria. It's part of the life cycle of plasmodium, which is this single-celled microbe that is actually what gets into your bloodstream and then causes malaria. And you can get rid of malaria by getting rid of plasmodium.

You don't have to get rid of the mosquito. Oh. And we seem to have different, I think, intuitively, people have slightly different views about species at sort of different levels. I haven't seen anyone lament the possible loss of plasmodium, but there are people who think we shouldn't carry out of mosquitoes. Would it be okay just to eliminate certain species then? You know, there are some that don't carry disease as much. Maybe it's like, okay, let's target the ones that do.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. And that's essentially where we came down in an awfully Gambia. We thought, you know, this one is really pretty horrific. There are like 800 species of mosquito in Africa. Chances are you could get rid of Anatoly's Gambia across sub-Saharan Africa, and chances are there would be little to know environmental impact from losing it. And then there are other kinds of mosquitoes that are, have been spread around the world, they're not native. And so you're not necessarily changing a natural system if you get rid of them. Like the mosquitoes that are biting you at night, depending on where you're living, it's one of the Culex species, probably, and those are not native. So you're not even, if you get rid of it, you're not changing the original ordering of a natural system. I noticed that you said chances are that it would probably be fine. How do we know for sure? How do you weigh that level of uncertainty against the potential benefits to public health?

You don't know for sure, for sure. We could get to a point probably with a given species that we could be pretty confident that it would be fine. You couldn't be absolutely sure. And then the question is, well, do you need to know for sure? How do you feel about the level of uncertainty here? If, you know, you're faced with an emergency situation, you know, like you're, you're, you're in a burning building and you need to like jump to the ground. Do you know for sure that you can get to the ground without killing yourself?

Something like that. Well, you don't necessarily, but if the building is on fire, you'll go ahead and take the chance. Malaria is a little bit like that. If we didn't have malaria and then suddenly malaria were introduced, a disease was introduced, that was killing that many people, killing 600,000 people a year. It would feel like the house was on fire. And we would do some stuff to get rid of it. We'd take some chances to get rid of it.

When you get bitten up in the summer, I don't know, how do you think of it? Like, does doing this type of research and thinking about it change your relationship with all that buzzing in your ear? A little bit it does in some funny way. I like to go up to the Adirondacks and go canoe camping up there. And if we go at the wrong time, there will be probably a few species of mosquitoes. is biting us up, and there could be several species of fly biting us, and it can be really pretty tough to be up there. But I don't want, I would not want to get rid of all of the species of mosquito and biting blackfly up there. It's sort of part of the whole system up, and

I want to leave it alone. And now that we might be developing the capacity to begin to make changes like that, that recognition, well, I would really like to come up shy of doing that. It does capture the way I feel about the natural world. Wild species are for us a kind of marker of the value of the natural world, and it feels like a particularly awful thing to do to get rid of a species. And so the argument in favor of it, if you were ever to do it, would have to be really quite strong. And that's our show.

By the way, if you want to know more about what to do about bugs, our friends over at the podcast Unexplainable have an episode all about those beautiful, invasive lanternflies. We want your help with an upcoming episode all about living a long life. Longevity is a buzzword these days. We want to know, what are you doing to live longer? Or is making it to 100 just not a priority for you? give us a call at 1-800-618-8-8-55 or send an email to AskVox at Vox.com.

And consider becoming a Vox member. You get access to stuff like ad-free podcasts and exclusive newsletters. Head over to Vox.com slash members to learn more. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru. It was edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Patrick Boyd. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy. And I'm your host. John Flynn Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000. And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch Pet Insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to 90% of vet bills. You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada. All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. Support for this show comes from fetch pet insurance.

Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000. And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where fetch pet insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to 90% of vet bills. You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada.

All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save.