Saturday, January 16, 2010

Does using sound as a mosquito repellent really work or is it just garbage?

There are audio clips which claim to repel them, but is there any evidence to back it?Does using sound as a mosquito repellent really work or is it just garbage?
None at all.





Some of these devices claim that they repel mosquitoes by simulating the sound of a male mosquito. I'm not sure why they think that would even work in theory - maybe they're just cynical and jaded bachelors or something.





Others claim to emulate the ultrasonic pitch of a dragonfly's wings, presuming that mosquitoes would naturally avoid one of their chief predators. The problem being, however, that dragonflies don't produce ultrasonic sound with their wings. Their large wings simply don't flap fast enough to create that high pitched whine we associate with little neopterous flies (like mosquitoes).





Add in to that the fact that mosquitoes are pretty much totally stone-cold deaf, and it's hard to see how the devices would even work in theory.





From anecdotal evidence, I've tried out several of them, and they have no discernible effect whatsoever.





Does using sound as a mosquito repellent really work or is it just garbage?
If you know anything at all about the scientific method, you would know that the so-called ';tests'; that include the electronic repellers are seriously and probably deliberately flawed. The fact is that I have several electronic repellers that most certainly *do* work in the real world.

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The fact is, few people are going to be sticking their arm into a small, enclosed box teeming with mosquitoes. In the real world, where the mosquitoes are free to escape from the noise, that's exactly what they do. The electronic repellers aren't quite as effective as chemicals, but they are safer.

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When I'm sitting outside on the deck in the evenin and the mosquitoes come flocking in, I break out my desktop repeller and set it to the dragonfly mode, (which is audible, contrary to your clearly ignorant statement) which seems to work best. The attacks suddenly stop. How do you explain that?

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It's absolute garbage, all the evidence conclusively shows that it doesn't work.





http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/AS鈥?/a>


http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/BODY_IN171


http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/notes/鈥?/a>

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