Alaska Science Forum

This article is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Larry Gedney is a seismologist at the Institute.

It won't be long now until we find ourselves in mortal combat with our constant springtime foe, the mosquito.

The big, slow-moving early adults are relatively easy prey for an experienced mosquito- swatter, but they get smaller, faster, and meaner as summer comes on and the mosquito kids leave home.

For years, I have tried to perfect the one-handed, mid-air grab, but succeed only occasionally. Now I find out that I may have been doing it all wrong.

According to George Gray, professor emeritus at University College in London, swatting should be a two-handed operation. Gray, in an article in Nature magazine, was experimenting with flies and not mosquitoes, but there may be some similarities.

Gray explains that if you approach a fly with hands to either side, moving back and forth slowly, this flusters the creature because it doesn't have the brainpower to keep track of both hands. A fly can avoid only one threat at a time, and when it sees two, its central nervous system overloads, and it can't decide which direction leads to safety, so it becomes immobilized.

I intend to see if this works on mosquitoes this spring, but suspect that I will be going back to the one-handed, mid-air grab technique. Mosquitoes rely little on eyesight to find their target, and depend primarily on tracking heat, moisture and carbon dioxide given off by warm-blooded animals.