The next time you spot a mosquito alighting on your arm for a sip, definitely take aim. Even if you miss, there’s a good chance the pest won’t target you next time.

It turns out that by slapping at a mosquito about to bite, the insect learns to associate that near-death encounter with your personal scent and avoid you in the future. The work, appearing this week in Current Biology, marks the first time anyone has shown that mosquitoes are capable of learning and remembering.

“They’re essentially Pavlov's mosquitoes,” says University of Washington neuroecologist Jeff Riffell, referring to the famous experiment that conditioned dogs to salivate on cue. Like those canines of science lore, Riffell used classical conditioning to