It sounds like a prank, and especially since its just 2nd of April, this claim is ‘highly suspicious’ however scientists say that music by dubstep star ‘Skrillex’ can keep mosquitoes from biting.
The research paper was published in the journal Acta Tropica last week, and the story has been picked up by the BBC News, Huff Post, and The Telegraph.
Assuming that it is not an April fool’s prank and that the song does work when we play it; here’s what the study says:
The said team of international scientists that specialises in mosquitoes and the diseases they carry, including the Zika virus and dengue fever are doing further experiments to validate their current findings.
They subjected adults of the species ‘Aedes aegypti’, ‘the yellow fever mosquito’, to electronic music to see whether it could work as a repellent, BBC reports.
The team conducted the study by subjecting adult mosquitoes to a specifically selected song and then testing its rates of movement, blood feeding, and copulation.
Scientists chose “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites,” a track by Skrillex from his Grammy-award winning album of the same name. The selection of this song was based on its mix of very high and very low frequencies.
According to the findings, adult mosquitoes “entertained” by the music “copulated far less often” than those that were not.
Females exposed to the track also attacked hosts less frequently than those in Skrillex free environment, and “the occurrence of blood feeding activity was lower when music was being played.”
“The observation that such music can delay host attack, reduce blood feeding, and disrupt copulation provides new avenues for the development of music-based personal protective and controling measures against Aedes-borne diseases,” the scientists said.
Get the track and be Skrillex shielded.
