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Comment by LinuxBender

4 years ago

About 20 feet in front of it. The gasses get pulled into the fan along with the mosquitoes. It works without carbonated drinks too, just slower. And that only helps if there is a swarm of them i.e. near a standing body of water. In standing water you can also use "mosquito donuts" that release a bacterium which is toxic to all species of mosquito larvae. A common brand is called "Mosquito Dunks"

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LinuxBender

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jschwartzi  4 years ago

Please only do this in artificial bodies of water. There’s an entire food chain of insects and birds and fish which rely on the larvae and adults.

  • SamBam  4 years ago

    I've been interested in this question for a while. The Bill Gates-funded science to try and eradicate all mosquitoes always appears founded on the premise that it would cause a ripple effect in the ecosystem. Anyone know if that's justified?

    • sprucely  4 years ago

      Where I live, we used to have tons of frogs. The city actually built a freeway bypass to prevent too many flat frogs. Didn't work. Anyway, the frogs quickly vanished around the same time we started spraying to reduce the spread of West Nile. Don't know if it was the food source or if the spray killed the tadpoles, but unintended consequences are a thing. A knock-on to that is we now have a growing roach problem.

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    • Cogito  4 years ago

      It's never "all mosquitos" it's "all of these 2-3 types (Anopheles) of mosquitoes that are vectors for human pathogens".

      The ecosystem impact is still super important to understand, but it's reasonable to think that other mosquitos, or similar insects, could fill the niche left behind.

      7 replies →

    • maxerickson  4 years ago

      The bacteria probably attack more than just the species that feed on humans, but putting that aside, there's only a handful of species that focus on humans, so disrupting those doesn't necessarily mean disrupting all mosquitoes.