Watch how you can ward off mosquitoes without killing them

This little mosquito, which bears the title of the deadliest animal in the world, is far more deadly than sharks, wolves, bears, or any other fanged animal. The World Health Organization estimates that "millions" of people die each year from diseases transmitted by mosquitoes. Fortunately, scientists have developed a strategy to dramatically reduce the mosquito population, but this requires sending tens or even hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes to different parts of the world, often by mail.

You may assume that you will need a package large enough to ship these thousands of mosquitoes. But a new study showed that you could actually compress these parasites into a ridiculously tiny space and that they would stay alive. They will survive even better to the trip than the loosely packed mosquitoes.

Tiny? According to researchers in the new study published Wednesday in the Journal of Insect Science, the magic number is about 240 mosquitoes per cubic centimeter. This equates to about 1,200 mosquitoes in a single teaspoon and up to 2,500 in a 10-milliliter syringe. Another way to imagine it is 7,200 live mosquitoes packed in an ounce shot glass.

The team, led by researchers at the State University of New Mexico, performed this calculation after conducting a series of experiments in the lab and the real world, including sending insects by mail. postal. They hoped to find the best way to use these bloody leeches to save lives.

In the 1950s, scientists devised a clever way to eradicate dangerous insects without the use of pesticides, called the sterile insect technique. Basically, you raise a giant population of male insects in the lab and sterilize them without harming them. Then you loose them in the wild hoping they will breed with the females. Over time, when intact males are squeezed out and females lay eggs that never reach maturity, the entire population decreases.

The first insect with which it was tried was the worm fly. Since then, this technique has been used to eradicate populations of various fruit flies and moths. And nowadays, researchers, including the scientists behind this latest study, are eagerly beginning to test whether this can work for the deadliest animal, the mosquito.

But according to senior researcher Immo Hansen, the use of the mosquito technique is more of a logistical problem than was the case with the worm fly.

"Male mosquitoes are really lazy. They do not like much flying, "Hansen told Gizmodo. "During a lifetime, they will fly up to 100 meters, 200 meters, but no more."

Because of this laziness, eradication campaigns will have to bring the sterile mosquitoes as close to the action as possible. The use of aerial drones can help, but we still need to make sure that they are stored, packaged and released safely without killing or mutilating them accidentally.

Hansen and his team have conducted experiments in the laboratory, hoping to find the ideal shipping conditions for mosquitoes. They tested various temperatures to keep the insects idle. They also tested mosquito sealing in different sizes of syringes. Then they went one step further and sent thousands of insects from New Mexico to their colleagues at the University of California at Davis.

The mosquitoes were generally well in their cold storage state in a wide temperature range, although 57.2 degrees Fahrenheit (14 degrees Celsius) seemed to be ideal. And in the lab, at first, there did not seem to be a major difference in survival rate with respect to density. But things have changed in the live test.

"It turned out that highly compacted mosquitoes survived the trip better than those that were packaged," Hansen said. "We think this is due to the fact that the aircraft's vibrations have damaged the badly packaged mosquitoes."

The team then plans to test their theory that vibrations cause more deaths in loose groups. They also hope to conduct live tests of the mosquitoes shipped to ensure that close arrangements do not restrict the sexual prowess of the mosquitoes.

"We will be working with our physical science lab here in the state of New Mexico because they have vibration tables that they use to make the electronics vibration-resistant," he said. Hansen.

And if you're wondering, it's perfectly legal to send mosquitoes (and other insects) through the US postal service, as long as they follow their rules.

[Journal of Insect Science]