Mosquitoes dodge efforts to swat them by surfing a wave of air

Even beneath the duvet of darkness, mosquitoes are surprisingly tough to swat, and we could also be nearer to understanding why. They sense and exploit the airflow created by a swatter shifting at velocity and shortly reorientate themselves to allow them to trip the air stress waves to security.

Little is understood about how flying bugs anticipate and keep away from looming threats at the hours of darkness, so Antoine Cribellier and colleagues at Wageningen College within the Netherlands put Anopheles coluzzii mosquitoes to the check. …