Comment by OutOfHere
8 hours ago
I hope these mosquitoes were not released in the wild.
The simple answer would be to add a natural strongly repellent gentle oil to the DEET spray.
8 hours ago
I hope these mosquitoes were not released in the wild.
The simple answer would be to add a natural strongly repellent gentle oil to the DEET spray.
Maybe an effective answer would be to combine DEET with an insecticide.
Mosquitoes attracted to DEET will die because of the insecticide. Usually, for personal protection, we tend to prefer repellents, as we don't want to get bitten, killing the mosquito after the fact is not very useful. But here, the idea is to put some evolutionary pressure against mosquitoes not repelled by DEET.
There are also repellants other than DEET. Icaridin being the best alternative. It is almost as effective as DEET without many of its drawbacks. Some essential oils too, as you said, but I don't think any of them have the effectiveness of icaridin or DEET.
A couple years back, I spray some DEET on my shoes, 5 seconds later, a tiger mosquito tried to bite me on that spot (and yes on the shoe itself, just insane to see it trying ).
They already loved that shit.
There are no natural oils that have been proven to stay effective, or are effective as DEET.
Go ahead, hose yourself down with Lemon oil, citronella, oil, or lemon eucalyptus oil. They simply do not work.
Spray made from lemon eucalyptus works[1]. Not as well as DEET, but it works.
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/health/insect-repellent/oil-...
I don’t understand why sharing an objective study with good news would be downvoted, someone please explain?
I’m not saying you have to use it; it’s good news for people who have concerns about other chemicals. It works—less effectively, but it works.
“Repellants containing (..) oil of lemon eucalyptus have also been found to be effective.”[1]
[1] Iowa Department of Health, “Controlling Spread of West Nile Virus“ https://hhs.iowa.gov/health-prevention/providers-professiona...
I have seen the same behavior on this site. Insightful information gets downvoted to -2, and useless comments that merely "feel good" get upvoted to +8.
I think the theory is that each post identifies with a certain topic, e.g. DEET, which identifies with a cultish subset of users surrounding that topic. There is no broad academic curiosity among the cult's members, and they suppress all competing topics as to them they represent other cults.
And remove the DEET from it, apparently… at least until it loses its appetitive charge.
Until, of course, they learn to like the replacement oil. At which point, break back out the DEET!
Yeah, I would not be surprised if this learned behavior is passed on epigenetically. This is almost like gain of function research potentially.
At that point just skip the deet.