Tired of being bitten by mosquitoes at your backyard barbecue?
Try hanging your dirty socks out front.
That rancid smell signals “feast” to the infuriating little blood suckers.
And scientists may soon be wafting that stench over impoverished villages throughout Africa as a potent anti-malarial weapon, thanks to a Canadian foreign aid grant.
The socks, whose smell mosquitoes find irresistible, will be employed as bait in traps that can kill thousands of the malaria-bearing parasites a night, says the Tanzanian scientist who invented the device.
“We bait them indeed with dirty socks,” said Fredros Okumu, 29, a research scientist with the Ifakara Health Institute in southeasternTanzania.
“The sock is attractive to us, not just because it’s attractive to mosquitoes, but also because it’s readily available,” said Okumu, who is completing a PhD at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Okumu has also used simple cotton pads worn for a day in villagers’ shoes as an alternative to the actual footwear.
“If you’re using socks, you’re going to have to get a lot of socks to do this,” he said.
“It’s not going to be acceptable for people to take all their socks and put them in traps.”
Mosquitoes are particularly attracted to feet because they are a key source of the odour that allows them to distinguish us as humans, Okumu said.
Socks trap this odour, a volatile fatty acid smell created by the bacteria that teem on our skin throughout the day, he said.
Okumu’s trap will complement the mosquito net programs widespread across malarial regions of the continent.
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