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IPFS News Link • Health and Physical Fitness

Antenna-inspired device detects disease-carrying mosquitos

• New Atlas - Ben Coxworth

If you're trying to eradicate disease-carrying mosquitos, it's important to know when and where the biting females of the targeted species are present. An experimental new device could help, by mimicking the insects' hearing apparatus.

Although mosquitos don't have ears in the traditional sense, they do have antennae that are covered in feathery hairs. Those hairs vibrate when struck by sound waves, sending signals down approximately 15,000 nerve cells to the hearing center of the animals' brains.

When another individual is nearby, a mosquito will emit sound waves that even it itself can't hear … or at least, not initially. These waves get distorted by the rapidly beating wings of the other mosquito, and are reflected back to the originating insect. Using its feathery antenna, that mosquito is not only able to hear the echoes of its sound waves, but it's also able to determine the sex and species of the other mosquito, based on the distinct manner in which the waves are distorted.


www.universityofreason.com/a/29887/KWADzukm