If you are one of the 10 percent of mosquito magnet people who, on the idyllic family picnic, gets attacked while your annoying sister is completely ignored, you might be wondering why you are seemingly always under siege. Unfortunately, it's more likely to be your genetics than anything you can change.There is an enormous amount of ongoing research being conducted into mosquitoes at many levels including target preferences, breeding interventions, killing airborne mossies, and disease prevention, vaccinations and management. The thing is that mosquitoes actually kill more people than any other animal on earth.First, in case it makes you feel any better, it is the female mosquito that bites you and she is only doing so because she needs your blood to feed her family - to develop her fertile eggs. Males feed on nectar and don't bite you and neither do females without an emerging family to feed.Mosquitoes have terribly sophisticated honing devices and can spot a juicy target like you from as far away as 50 metres. Mostly they are spotting for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The bigger you are and the more CO2 you exhale, the more chance you have of being bitten. This is why children are not usually bitten as often as adults and pregnant women are more likely to be bitten as are people who are exercising.Female mosquitoes are also attracted to steroids, cholesterol, lactic and uric acids. While this is starting to sound like you need to be a drug taking weight lifter to get bitten, the facts are that we all process these products in our body; it's just that some of us are more efficient at processing than others. Mosquito attractants usually are not quite as efficient for various reasons and the byproducts of their body's activity remains on the skin's surface and attracts mosquitoes. Natural mosquito repellents work to mask whatever odour you may be giving off, thereby giving you a kind of invisibility cloak to the mosquito. Sources: WebMD | Image: Shutterstock