The viruses that cause dangerous dengue and Zika fevers are spread through mosquito bites. And, as it turned out…
According to biologists from the Chinese UniversityTsinghua, some viruses can change the smell of a person. This feature was used when dogs were trained to recognize if a person is infected with the coronavirus by smell.
This time the researchers studied flaviviruses,causative agents of dengue and Zika fevers. They designed a system of three cages, in one of which insects were placed, then they could fly to any of the other two cages. One of them received air that had passed through an enclosure with mice infected with Zika fever, and ordinary air entered the other.
As a result, 70% of mosquitoes chose to fly into the cage with the smell of the virus. The same was true for dengue fever. In the experiment with humans, the results were repeated.