Mosquitoes escape looming threats by actively steering into the bow-wave induced by the attacker

To detect and escape a threat, night flying insects must rely on other
senses than vision alone. Here we study how anthropophilic malaria
mosquitoes can escape a swatting hand in the dark using high-speed
videography and numerical simulations. We show that these night flying
mosquitoes escape looming objects by using the object-induced airflow in
two ways. They first actively steer into the bow-wave  produced
by the attacker, and then passively travel with this bow-wave away from
the attacker; these two aspects explain two-thirds and one-third of their
escape accelerations, respectively. Thus, flying mosquitoes being attacked
in the dark rely both on airflow-sensing to trigger their escape, and on
attacker-induced airflow to maximize their escape performance. Similar
escape strategies are probably common among small lightweight insects.