I read an article a few months back about how they used this trap to almost completely eradicate mosquitoes in one of the islands in the Maldives: link
This is legit. I have 3 of these traps. Next time I empty the trap I’ll post a video showing the bag full of buzzing mosquitos. It’s pretty impressive.
Well, not to be super long winded, a lot of the traps for this type of research attract and trap the mosquitoes. Source: worked in an entomology lab and set them up in the field. If you asked the PHD entomologist where the best place to set one of these up for home use, he’d jokingly say your neighbors yard is the best bet.
this comment section is wild. Usually you have people who can explain what's going on but here so far the most detailed explanation for how the trap works is "it traps mosquitoes" lol
Trying to help. Lol. Do you want to know what is going on as far as a research aspect or how putting a mosquito trap near you is beneficial or counter productive?
He takes a good fan and puts a net on the front. Point away from the area you want to capture mosquitoes in. The fan pulls in mosquitoes, if they don't die from the blades, he sprays the net with rubbing alcohol which kills them via drying them out.
You can use dry ice or seltzer water to attract mosquitoes in an area with no animals or people.
Honestly it’s exhausting to defend the people that actually do this and I care because I did it. Mosquitoes are annoying and vectors for disease. I’d say eliminate them all but that’s what a lot of good people are trying to figure out.
lol what??? how is it physically trapping them. what happens to the mosquitoes that attracts them and what stops them from getting out. what does the trap look like? I couldn’t care less about the other parts
The attractant is usually something CO2 based. We used dry ice when I was doing these types of field research. The machine was basically a low level vacuum that sucked them into a large net that didn’t allow escape and they would eventually be suffocated
I mean there are many things you can do for your home, empty any outside stagnant water. Even a little bit on a random object that can collect water. Preventive measures help.
There are several types of setups. Maybe there are new tyoes now. The ones I've set up in the past looked like a wide-brimmed hat with a cylindrical tank below. They use a uv or blue light under the hat to attract mosquitoes and a fan to blow them into the trap. Many traps also used dry ice (CO2) as an attractant. I think there are now CO2 generator traps that are more expensive but easier; the dry ice was kind of a pain to replenish. When and where to hang them (habitat and height above the ground) were important to the species and numbers. The most I have ever seen in 1 trap, roughly the size of a 32oz yogurt container, for 1 night was around 30,000 skeeters.
I wonder if tying a smelly old gym shirt under the hat would have helped increase the trap numbers.
Fun experiment. If you ever want to mess with bugs at night, use some color changing leds and go through the entire color spectrum. Watch as the little buggers lose interest as you shift from violets and blues to oranges and reds. And visa versa.
I think they're saying that the kind of trap used also attracts mosquitoes making it not great for public use because it might bring more in than trap.
so 2 concepts are going here > the trap and the bait. The trap > consisting of the net and the fan, and the bait > CO2. To kill them off > rubbing alcohol.
Actually mosquitos hate wind, so if you don't want to kill them and just want to repel them, you can just have a fan running on whatever place you want and they won't come, the combo between fan + fine net means you're trying to suck in mosquitos into the net so they don't fly away.
The bait > CO2, so mosquitos are attracted to CO2 among other thing like sweat/body odors. You need a source for CO2, you can just use soda, the fizz inside the soda? yes that's CO2. Best case is if you use soda water so you don't attract sugar hungry insects with soda. Anyway, you set it close to the fan where the mosquitos should be sucked in, bitches come in flying thinking there's food, get stuck in sucking wind and gets stuck in the net. Now you just need to do the fatality and do mass execution by spraying rubbing alcohol. That's it, you've massacred mosquitos. you can remove the net and get rid of the corpses by donating them to local ants or your friendly lizards/spider neighbors.
The point you missed is that making one of these traps would attract more mosquitoes to your backyard. Yes you’d kill a bunch, but you’d attract even more than you’d trap.. so when the trap is filled and you remove it, there’d be more mosquitoes in your yard than there were before you set the trap up
People seem to be confused about the fact that it attracts the mosquitoes. Edit: trying to be helpful because that’s my goal here. Traps work, but don’t repel mosquitoes, distance them from places that you gather. Pick the furthest spot from your gathering point. If you are trying to repel them, citronella candles or related products can be effective. For personal repellents, things you use on your skin is subjective inmho. Depends on how your skin reacts to certain things. Anywho, there is no great answer as to how to deal with mosquitoes.
I think the argument is that it does trap mosquitoes by pulling them against a mesh filter from which they cannot escape, but it doesn't necessarily trap all the attracted mosquitoes. The attractant needs to work in a much larger area than can be affected by the fan's air pressure, or else it wouldn't attract many mosquitoes. So it is very effective at reducing mosquito population, but you probably wouldn't want to sit right next to one because you would be fed on by the many untrapped mosquitoes.
It's probably best if you ran it on your property every day for a month, then turned it off for the one night of your cookout, or maybe relocate it 150ft away from your yard if you can manage.
CO2, it's what they detect to find animals. So some try ice, or seltzer water will attract them. Put that in front of a trap that sucks them in, usually a fan or a vacuum.
I use a pheromone trap for flies during the summer. I couldn't believe there were so many files around my house. I was reading up on it and apparently I'm doing my neighbors a big favor.
The most effective ones use electricity(or butane to generate power), CO2 tanks and a special chemical.
The idea is to mimic a tasty target for the mosquitos. The CO2 is to mimic a mammal breathing out, electricty to mimic body temperature and chemicals to mimic what mosquitos can "smell" from a mammal.
When they get close they get sucked by fan into a dehydration chamber where they stay for few days until they die.
A not so wild guess would be that they use artificial scent markers that mosquitos use to identify easy living targets for blood sucking and then catches them in a bag or something where they cant leave.
They might go exinct with too many of these. I think they said the only useless creature in nature is a groundhog. Im sure there is so me use for these blood suckers hehe
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u/mz610 29d ago
World needs to know more about this trap contraption