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> the compounds from the smell of the chicken can be extracted and could work as a repellent Might actually work as long as only a statistically insignificant
by cronjobber 10y ago
> the compounds from the smell of the chicken can be extracted and could work as a repellent
Might actually work as long as only a statistically insignificant minority of ppl is using it. After that point, it's Darwin all over again.
- mrfusion 10y agoYou might be right. But if we got mosquito bites low enough for even a short time it might bring the maleria infection rate to below one and wipe it out.
- mrob 10y agoDEET has been in use as an insect repellent since 1946. Insensitive mutant insects are known but in most cases it's still effective. The more distinct mechanisms of action we have available the less likely insensitivity will become a problem, so it's worth identifying the active compound in chicken odor.
- taco_emoji 10y agoOnly if "not being repelled by chicken smells" conferred a large enough selective advantage over "being repelled by chicken smells". Mosquitoes have plenty of other animals to bite besides humans, so it's not immediately apparent that it would change selection pressures at all, much less to the degree needed to push the population genotype in one direction or the other.
- mrob 10y agoThe most dangerous malaria mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, does selectively target humans. See: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.0269-283x.2002.00345.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.0269-283x.2002....
- swsieber 10y agoWe just need to breed a bunch if genetically modified chickens that produce L-lactic then, and we'll be set (if we use chicken odor as a repellant).