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Body-painting protects against bloodsucking insects
- maa5444 8y agothis does not mean you have tomorrow ... to get a tattoo to feel more protected .... #fox
- d33 8y agoAnd now, with make-ups meant to fool the AIs, the story kind of repeats...
- mmjaa 8y agoWhat amazes me about this is that the body-painting was considered by Europeans to be evidence of the 'primitive nature of lesser cultures', yet it turns out it was actually kind of advanced technology. I hope to witness more instances where the old imperial, intolerant ways of looking at the cultures we've degraded over the last few centuries get turned upside down. There are so many things we could have learned about the world from the 60,000+ year old culture of the original inhabitants of Australia, which might've pushed us further. I put this 'stripes as insect repellant' in the same list as 'they had a Hippocratic oath before us', and 'they understood antibiotics and antiseptics while we were still arguing over miasma theory and bloodletting'. Turns out, their technology was more advanced than our hubris allowed us to admit.
- skybrian 8y agoI hadn't heard that about antibiotics. Got a link?
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoNot 100% sure if this is what GP is referring to, but: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/best-medicine https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/best-medicine (podcast episode)
- ecocentrik 8y agoThere was this story in Science last year about a 90% success rate in cranial surgery by Pre-Columbian Inca physicians. Their sample sizes are low but an observed scaling up of success rates over a 400 year period speaks to institutional mastery beyond what western medicine was able to accomplish until after the discovery of antibiotics. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/south-america-s-inca-civilization-was-better-skull-surgery-civil-war-doctors http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/south-america-s-inca-...
- mmjaa 8y agoLook up the use of emu bush by the Northern Territory tribes, for example ...
- gumby 8y ago> I hope to witness more instances where the old imperial, intolerant ways of looking at the cultures we've degraded over the last few centuries get turned upside down. Another example is the "utter idiocy" of Berbers wearing black clothing in the desert heat. (https://www.nature.com/articles/283373a0 https://www.nature.com/articles/283373a0). Actually it's neutral (a far as temperature goes) but has other advantages including making you harder to see and, of course, social/decorative/signalling value. This was actually the first scientific paper I deliberately went to find and read after reading about it in some other journal. I was 16. Luckily it was something approachable and so encouraged me to spend more time doing it.
- Nomentatus 8y agoWasps (and to a lesser extent flies) also remember how they came into a room, and can get back out quickly: imitate a bat with a hand (flickering fingers back and forth) and they usually zoom right back outside the way they came in. In evolutionary terms, they've entered a cave, and caves have bats: so they have an exit strategy ready to hand.
- FatDrunknStupid 8y agoA clap will often get them to go as well. Probably similar mechanics. Actually had a pet wasp who liked that though.
- Aardwolf 8y agoExcept if the room has a tilted open window. It comes in through the window, but never discovers how to escape anymore from it since it keeps trying to fly towards the outside light through the glass rather than going up a bit and flying through the actual open gap. At least that's my experience, and of course that's quite annoying behavior when you'd rather have it go outside the house! But maybe I should try this "bat signal" next time :)
- keithnz 8y agocareful, the bat signal should only be used when Gotham is in danger!
- rossdavidh 8y agoYou know, if Batman were keeping tsetse flies and mosquitoes at bay, he would save a lot more lives, really.
- Nomentatus 8y agoAnother instance of Wittgenstein's bottle, or a typical aboriginal fish trap.
- hombre_fatal 8y agoSeems like you’re giving yourself an awful lot of credit for moving your hands, something that most insects avoid regardless of what you are trying to charade. Though shooing mosquitos by making dove hands based on a pet theory you had while watching BBC’s bat special is how I imagine most of you. Along with the cave-like room.
- pmontra 8y ago> A brown plastic model of a human attracted ten times as many horseflies as a dark model painted with white stripes. The researchers also found that a beige-coloured plastic figure used as a control model attracted twice as many bloodsuckers as the striped model. This seems to confirm that light clothes are better than dark ones at protecting against bites. 5x more effective. The stripes add another 2x but wearing mostly black clothes in hot areas has some disadvantages. Maybe I'll stick with my beige cloths.
- chrisseaton 8y ago> wearing mostly black clothes in hot areas has some disadvantages What are the disadvantages? An advantage is that black clothes are better at radiating your body heat and protecting against sun burn - that's why people often wear black in hot countries. https://www.nature.com/articles/283373a0 https://www.nature.com/articles/283373a0
- tapland 8y agoIf standing out in the sun, it would be more beneficial to wear white, while black tight clothes in the shade? I've seen many bedhouin men wearing white.
- FatDrunknStupid 8y agoThis is a no shit Sherlock story.
- gumby 8y agoI am certain there are a set of FAANG and political jokes lurking in this headline. I hope this meta comment will slake any desire to post them on HN.
- pugworthy 8y agoThe idea of a subreddit just for posting things that you want to post but shouldn't would have some merit. Sort of a safety valve of sorts.
- clouddrover 8y ago> For the experiments, which were conducted in Hungary, the researchers painted three plastic models of humans: one dark, one dark with pale stripes and one beige. Did they also test with actual humans? A living body might be more attractive to the insects, maybe reducing any advantage from the stripes.
- weliketocode 8y agoNo, it doesn't appear so.
- cybersol 8y agoSo much this. They definitely sense CO2 and thermal/IR.
- forkLding 8y agoI think the issue is that they wanted to first identify and test the idea first. If you add in humans, you have to find volunteers and then waivers because no one is really willing to hang around in the nude and get bit by horseflies for a day. As well for humans, you will have to consider demographical data and other data like gender, height, weight, body fat, in general how healthy the human is etc. which lead to even more questions. Using just the models can mitigate these concerns
- ars 8y agoWhy do you have to be nude, or hang around? Just go about your day normally and count bites at the end.
- koolba 8y agoSeems like people covered head to toe with body paint would have a different “normal day” then the control group.
- carlob 8y agoI remember reading about some experiment involving mosquitoes and body odor, IIRC they were done behind a mosquito net. I seem to remember the takeaway was: wash your feet well.
- leowoo91 8y agoSo we can wear zebra t-shirts and have less bites, possibly?
- weliketocode 8y agoIt certainly seems like the heat, sweat, and scent of a living human might affect the results. But, what do I know? Motionless plastic figures might be treated exactly the same as well.
- okl 8y agoExactly. And what might also influence the results is the "scent" of solvents and other chemicals, that might differ from color to color.
- mr-ron 8y agoI remember reading about this a long time ago. At a glance, the earliest research around here goes to 2012. Related to Zebras and Horse Flies. Summary: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/215/5/iii http://jeb.biologists.org/content/215/5/iii research: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/215/5/736?iss=5 http://jeb.biologists.org/content/215/5/736?iss=5
- sandworm101 8y agoFunny, I remember some similar tests by scuba divers in the 90s. They dressed in black and white striped suits thinking they would look like sea snakes and everything would stay away. Didn't go so well. Lots of stuff was very interested in them. Don't do this underwater.
- lemonberry 8y agoI couldn't find any references to what you mentioned ( very quick search ), but this turned up about using stripes to camouflage surfers against sharks. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/shark-attack-wetsuit/397772/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/shark...
- sandworm101 8y agoSame stripes, different concept. That is to prevent big sharks from thinking you are a seal. Deep colder water. The trials i read about went wrong because some smaller sharks (reef sharks) might in fact eat sea snakes.
- PavlikPaja 8y agoIs this why zebras have stripes?
- stubish 8y agoAgainst colour blind predators, zebra stripes are pretty good camouflage. I suspect it is more to do with avoiding lions than mosquitoes.
- your-nanny 8y agowe tend to underestimate the evolutionary impact of parasites and disease. Mosquitos are a major vector; could very well be the mosquitos
- londons_explore 8y agoI can't imagine it would take long for mosquitoes to evolve to specifically gravitate towards stripes...
- your-nanny 8y agoWell it's hard to know what fitness terrain lay between the present phenotype and that one, so it's necessarily obvious bthat such an adaptation would occur. Nor is it obvious that stripe attraction is more adaptive. Could be hidden costs I'm not cognizant of. In any case, we were speaking of the zevras adaptation, not the mosquito's. If true that mosquitos are not attracted to striped things, it doesn't matter why zebras have stripes. What matters is the cost to mosquitoes presently incurred by missing out on all that zebra. Indeed, one wonders why mosquitos haven't adapted to the zebras stripes already...
- PavlikPaja 8y agoIt may be hard for their tiny brains to distinguish stripes from other things that are not animals.
- darpa_escapee 8y ago
- rangibaby 8y agoThere is a swimming spot I love that has a large population of horse flies. They will not land on stripes or go into the shade. They will land on flower prints (I found that one out the painful way)
- mcv 8y agoCould this be a new hint to the reason for a zebra's stripes?
- rangibaby 8y agoYes, apparently: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/120209-zebra-stripes-horseflies-bugs-akesson-science/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/120209-zebra-s...
- stronglikedan 8y ago> or go into the shade. Maybe they don't want to get bit by mosquitoes? I'm half joking of course, but when I'm out kayaking, it seems that, in my observation, most insects, including mosquitoes, prefer the shade, so I tend to stay out of it.
- gsaga 8y agoI remember my mother telling me that black clothes attract mosquitoes.
- hema_n 8y agoI read somewhere about zebra stripes long ago.