Mosquitoes don’t just tolerate DEET. They can learn to seek it out. That’s the unsettling takeaway from fresh research published today. The findings land at a moment when vector-borne diseases continue their spread and public health officials count on chemical barriers that suddenly look less absolute. Conditioned Cravings Clément Vinauger, an associate professor in the department of biochemistry at Virginia Tech, led the work with Claudio Lazzari at the University of Tours in France. Their team trained female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes using Pavlovian conditioning. The insects received a blood meal through a heated artificial feeder while exposed to the odor of DEET. After four repetitions, more than 60 percent of the mosquitoes extended their proboscis and attempted to feed when presented with the DEET smell alone. The same pattern held when sugar served as the reward instead of blood. ( Virginia Tech News , May 28, 2026) But the experiment didn’t stop at artificial setups.…