171–180 of 195 posts
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It is a shame that one of safest and most effective pesticides used to control mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects, DDT, is no longer permitted in most countries.
Citations? I'm absolutely not an expert but I was under the general impression that DDT is no longer permitted because it's not safe.
I learned about this a couple of years ago visiting a friend of mine who lives in the Tigre Delta. It's sort of like a suburban version of Venice, except with a jungle, and lots and lots of enormous black mosquitoes. After a while sitting in her living room talking to her, I wondered aloud why we weren't getting bitten by mosquitoes, and she pointed out the electric fan overhead and explained it discouraged the mosqu…
I hope you're joking about fan death
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Actually, there would be little to no downside to eradicating mosquitoes: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html
I know, but does that really feel right? Sort of the height of arrogance to me. "Let's take something super prevalent and remove it entirely and I'm sure we'll have a zero sum gain" Maybe it's true though.
Humans aren't magically bad, and what we do isn't automatically terrible for everything. It's possible for us to understand what we're doing.
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it has to be said - if non-sterile mosquitos are having a hard time surviving because sterile mosquitos drank up all the blood - we're probably going to suffer more than they will
Only female mosquitos drink blood.
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I started doing it only because I've already gotten bitten by two ticks this year and have found another half dozen on me. I'm only outside a few hours a week collecting mushrooms though, I'm not lying with it pressed against my skin for ten hours straight in a hunting blind or doing anything that would cause me to sweat excessively. But yeah, at least in the Northeast it's gotten to the point where going out into th…
The tick problem in the Northeast USA seems to vary wildly every year. I've lived here my whole life (31 years, in the southern New Hampshire area) and I've seen tick populations fluctuate drastically from one year to the next. A few years ago it was particularly bad: I went camping on my dad's land in northern New Hampshire one weekend and we had literally a dozen ticks crawling up our legs within five minutes of ar…
Spend a summer up in the Yukon or Alaska if you want to see solid walls of ravenous mosquitoes. I get bitten while riding my bike, bitten while my arm is out of the car window driving at 30km/h, and bitten through jeans. 100% DEET (you can get it in Alaska) does the trick for about 30 minutes before you have to re-apply - and it's nasty stuff. This past weekend I was camping at a music festival and slapped my arm cas…
Have you tried it though? Seems like you're dismissing it out of hand.
edit: and having read the rest of the comments it seems like fans are widely used in India in Vietnam to combat mosquitoes.
Personally I'd love to have an auto-aiming laser that detects and fries any nearby mosquito. The poor critters wouldn't stand a chance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser Oddly enough, Intellectual Ventures invented this.
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They're great fun. I live in Austin, TX and we have several in the house. They obliterate mosquitoes with a satisfying "POP" noise. The mosquitoes literally explode into tiny pieces when you hit them with the bat. It's awesome (especially when you are like me--I can get 20+ bites on a single night while wearing insect repellent, where everyone else around me is fine, and I use the bats as revenge. :)
I view these with suspicion. Do I really want tiny pieces of mosquitoes flying everywhere? It's pretty high on the satisfaction scale though....
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Sterilize & release programs for feral cats work; the sterilized cats compete for the same resources as unsterilized ones, but are more effective and longer-lived because they don't have to support reproduction. This not only means that the sterilized cats won't reproduce, but the unsterilized ones will have a harder time, and reproduce less. It works better than trapping & killing.
It seems likely that capturing cats, sterilizing them, and releasing them would have a larger impact than simply releasing a large number of sterile cats. It's also much easier to do in appreciable numbers, relative to the wild population, and it doesn't actually lead to extinction, just some additional population control. I don't think it is a good fit for mosquitos. I once heard a modified version of the plan, wher…