
Body-painting protects against bloodsucking insects - curtis
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190117122711.htm
======
clouddrover
> _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.

~~~
forkLding
I 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

~~~
carlob
I 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.

~~~
tim1994
Last year, the YouTube channel Veritasium did a video about it:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=38gVZgE39K8](https://youtube.com/watch?v=38gVZgE39K8)

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Nomentatus
Wasps (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.

~~~
Aardwolf
Except 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 :)

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keithnz
careful, the bat signal should only be used when Gotham is in danger!

~~~
rossdavidh
You know, if Batman were keeping tsetse flies and mosquitoes at bay, he would
save a lot more lives, really.

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weliketocode
It 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
Exactly. And what might also influence the results is the "scent" of solvents
and other chemicals, that might differ from color to color.

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rangibaby
There 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
Could this be a new hint to the reason for a zebra's stripes?

~~~
rangibaby
Yes, apparently:
[https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/120209-zebra-s...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/120209-zebra-
stripes-horseflies-bugs-akesson-science/)

------
mmjaa
What 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
I hadn't heard that about antibiotics. Got a link?

~~~
ecocentrik
There 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-...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/south-america-s-inca-
civilization-was-better-skull-surgery-civil-war-doctors)

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d33
And now, with make-ups meant to fool the AIs, the story kind of repeats...

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pmontra
> 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
> 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
If 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.

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sandworm101
Funny, 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
I 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...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/shark-
attack-wetsuit/397772/)

~~~
sandworm101
Same 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.

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mr-ron
I 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)

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PavlikPaja
Is this why zebras have stripes?

~~~
stubish
Against colour blind predators, zebra stripes are pretty good camouflage. I
suspect it is more to do with avoiding lions than mosquitoes.

~~~
your-nanny
we tend to underestimate the evolutionary impact of parasites and disease.
Mosquitos are a major vector; could very well be the mosquitos

~~~
londons_explore
I can't imagine it would take long for mosquitoes to evolve to specifically
gravitate towards stripes...

~~~
your-nanny
Well 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...

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gsaga
I remember my mother telling me that black clothes attract mosquitoes.

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leowoo91
So we can wear zebra t-shirts and have less bites, possibly?

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hema_n
I read somewhere about zebra stripes long ago.

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gumby
I 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
The 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.

