My dad likes to tell a story of a beach vacation my family went on when I was about five years old. We lived in North Carolina and had gotten up super early to drive to the coast, which was about four hours away. As the story goes, my exhausted father looked over at me at some point and thought “Wow, she’s started to…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued a really, really specific travel advisory, telling pregnant women to stay away from Miami’s Wynwood Art District, where 14 cases of Zika have been reported. Pregnant women who visited the neighborhood since mid-June are also being advised to get tested for the…
Currently, there is no treatment for Zika, the virus that has become an epidemic throughout Latin America and infected over 100 Americans. But that could change soon.
Both American Samoa and Hawaii have taken official measures to curb potential Zika virus outbreaks, which are among the first meaningful efforts at combatting the mosquito-borne virus in the United States.
A group of scientists wanted to find the most effective mosquito repellents. So they tested 10 different substances, including campout standbys like DEET, as well as a random choice: Victoria’s Secret perfume Bombshell. Turns out the perfume is almost as good as DEET.
If you've always wondered exactly what it looks like, inside of your flesh, when a mosquito sticks its stabby, contaminated tube-mouth in there and sucks your blood, YOU'RE WELCOME. Here's a video of it. Video of the mosquito probing around for a blood vessel (inside "a flap of mouse skin") is above, and video of the…
Dude! What a shitty garbage year this has been. I mean, pretty much every year in the history of years has been a shitty garbage year — "happiness" is really just a euphemism for "successful garbage mitigation" — but 2012 has been particularly gross in a lot of ways. Half the country thinks rape is hilarious.…
Huang Yu-yen of Taiwan won $3,000 for catching about four million mosquitoes in a month in a contest held by an insect trap manufacturing company. Her catch weighed 3lbs 5oz and may earn her a Guinness World Record.
The NY Times tackles the question and finds: not really. While there's some evidence that mosquitoes are attracted to estrogen, there's more evidence that they just go for surface area, giving men the, um, edge. They also dig sweat. [NYT]
A new study found that mosquitoes are really into beer. The malaria-carriers seek out victims who have been drinking, which lead the authors of the study to conclude that "beer consumption is a risk factor for malaria." [BoingBoing]
