Home: Pest Control: Trap
Mosquito Eating Plants   (+3, -3)  [vote for, against]
The Venus-Mesquito-Trap

Cross breed Venus-Fly-Trap plants with a bat or some other biological creature that ingests mesquitoes and get a Venus-Mesquito-Trap plant. Set them out in the evening and enjoy a sultery evening without flying pests...
-- gorn_the_great, Jul 31 2001

(?) Mesquite http://aggie-hortic...ransas/Mesquite.htm
[jutta, Jul 31 2001]

(?) Mosquito http://eddie.cis.uo...s/pics/mosquito.jpg
[jutta, Jul 31 2001]

Venus Cat Trap http://www.halfbake.../Venus_20Cat_20Trap
For larger domestic pests. [8th of 7, Oct 17 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]

[sp: mosquito, sultry. (Fixed in idea name.)]

While we're using poorly understood genetical engineering as a convenient source of miracles, splice in some luminescent jellyfish and earth worms and get a nice chain of party lights in the bargain!
-- jutta, Jul 31 2001


Hmmm. Dragonflies are great eaters of mosquitoes, but pretty much daytime hunters. As jutta notes, crossing plants and animals is awfully fanciful stuff; maybe you'd have better luck selectively breeding to get nocturnal, lawn-based dragonflies.

Personal observation: even when mosquitoes swarm in the woods, the shores of some lakes here in the wilds of darkest Oregon are blessedly mosquito-free. I think it's because big, beautiful dragonflies are so common along the shorelines.
-- Dog Ed, Jul 31 2001


'Should we tell him it's a boy cow?' "He'll figure it out."
-- StarChaser, Aug 04 2001


Actually, fly eating plants will eat mosquitos if the mosquitos are fed to it. The problem is that such plants do not emit a scent to attract the annoying pests. Therefore, a better idea would be to develop a fly eating plant that gives off a scent that the little blood-suckers find attractive. I would bloody well think this would be much more easily done than crossing plants and animals.
-- El Pedanto, Aug 04 2001


Sundews (Drosera) or butterworts (Pinguicula) will catch mosquitos quite nicely. You just need enough of them growing nearby (in hanging baskets?) to lower the odds of a mosquito making it across the garden to your arm to acceptable levels.
-- Trouvere, Aug 13 2001


With [El Pedanto]'s suggestion, this actually becomes quite viable.
-- sadie, Oct 17 2002


//splice in some luminescent jellyfish and earth worms and get a nice chain of party lights in the bargain!//

Actually, with modern techniques this is not very difficult <g>. The green fluorescent protein from the jellyfish Aqueora victoria is widely used to make other cells and even organisms fluoresce.

Problem is, you need a blue light of the right wavelength to excite the fluorescence. They don't just glow in the dark.
-- madradish, Dec 27 2002



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