h a l f b a k e r yIt's as much a hovercraft as a pancake is a waffle.
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I'm not sure that the "HOME" category is right for this Idea, since I was thinking about campers. But I didn't see any other category where you might want to deal with invading mosquitoes.
Anyway, take a loose-mesh net, with holes maybe the size you find in chicken-wire fence material, and add a
lot of trained spiders. Each spider weaves a web over one of the holes, and they don't eat each other. Any mosquito coming by to get lunch instead becomes lunch.
:)
http://www.flickr.c.../72157601787635715/
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 24 2007]
http://en.wikipedia.../Hounds_of_Tindalos
[pertinax, Nov 29 2007]
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I'm assuming these are for the crisis in Africa? If so, Bun [+] |
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You can train spiders not to eat each other? |
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If you can solve these problems, I think you still might find that the spiders and their webs would cluster around corners, where available, and would tend to leave gaps in the middle of the mesh. |
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[pertinax], I think the small dense cobwebs that are typically found in ceiling corners are about the right size for the holes in the mesh I described. |
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This Idea is blatantly half-baked, of course, because of its requirement for trained spiders. I suppose if we could train them to not eat each other, we could train them to fill those mesh-holes properly. I should mention I'm specifying those ceiling-corner spiders because of the density of their webs, which will catch mosquitoes. Many other spiders make less-dense webs, because their preferred prey is rather larger than mosquitoes. |
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Supposing you could control the behaviour of these spiders in the required ways, I see another problem here; you would need to guarantee a substantial supply of mozzies to sustain a large enough population of spiders to sustain the required volume of web. |
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How about insulating the entire bed, and
hooking yourself up to a Van der Grraaff
generator when you go to sleep? Any
mosquitoes would, as soon as they landed
on you, acquire the same charge and
would be repelled. As a plus, your hair
would become less tousled during sleep. |
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Very much like the idea of a net catching the mosquitoes instead of just keeping them out, trained spiders or not. It's a much more efficient system as it removes the threat as well as protecting from it [+]. |
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Don't train them. Use spiders that already display these traits. |
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Don't they have insecticide-impregnated
mosquito nets? |
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Spiders being creepy, I would much rather use [Vernon]'s patented bug-training black box technology to scramble a squadron of dragonflies to intercept the mozzies. I think dragonflies could be bred in the same bodies of standing water that the mosquitoes like, and, IIRC, would eliminate some of the mosquito population while still at the larval stage. |
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Place the individual squares of your mesh in the corners of the room. Assemble squares when spiders have completed the cobweb manufacturing process. I challenge you to produce a linear programming graph depicting at what point it becomes more viable to train the spiders to spin on the entire mesh, rather than the manufacturing and assembly process detailed herewithin. Quite possibly there are some geodesic variations that will enable more than four corners to be spun at any one time in any one room (assuming that cobwebs are spun only in the elevated corners). |
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When I trained my spiders to wear bells, (to alert mankind that they were in the room), I used just a spot of blood for a reinforcer and they were more than happy to do anything I asked. So +++ for the idea, but the sub-title frightens me a bit... |
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Given the predilection of spiders for corners, I think this solution is being applied to the wrong problem; it would be much more useful to train enormous spiders to protect you against Hounds of Tindalos (link). |
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