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_20TrapFor 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 random, halfbakery