Body-painting protects the skin from insect bites

A study by Swedish and Hungarian researchers shows that white stripes painted on the body protect the skin from insect bites. This is the first time that researchers have successfully demonstrated that body painting has this effect. Among indigenous peoples who wear body paints, brands provide some protection against insect-borne diseases.

Most Aboriginal communities who paint their bodies live in areas where blood flies, mosquitoes and tsetse flies abound. When these insects bite people, there is a risk of transfer of bacteria, parasites and other pathogens.

The study shows that body paint provides protection against insects. A brown plastic human model attracted ten times more horse-flies than a dark-painted white striped model. The researchers also found that a beige plastic model used as a control model attracted twice as much leech as the striped model.

According to Susanne Åkesson, a professor in the Department of Biology at Lund University, the tradition of body painting could be developed simultaneously on different continents. We do not know when the tradition started.

"Body painting started long before men started wearing clothes, and some archaeological finds include markings on cave walls where Neanderthals lived, suggesting that they were painted on the body with earth pigments such as ocher, "says Susanne Åkesson.

The research team previously observed that zebra stripes act as a protection against horseflies. It is also known that pale fur, on horses for example, can offer protection unlike dark fur. This discovery won the IgNobel Physics Prize in 2016. In the new study, the team advanced research and examined plastic models of the same size as humans.

For experiments conducted in Hungary, researchers painted three human models of plastic: a black, a light-striped black and a beige. They then covered the three models with a layer of insect glue. The dark model drew ten times more horseflies than the striped model and the beige model attracted twice as much as the striped model.

They also examined whether the attractiveness of horseflies was different between lying or standing models. The results show that only women were attracted to standing models, while men and women were attracted to supine models.

"These results are in line with previous experiments in which we have shown that men gravitate towards water to drink and land on surfaces reflecting a horizontal and linear polarized light, such as signals coming from a water surface, females that sting and suck blood from the host Animals respond to the same signals as males, but also to vertical light signals, such as standing models, "concludes Susanne Åkesson.