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Comment by clouddrover | Hacker News Reader

> For the experiments, which were conducted in Hungary, the researchers painted three plastic models of humans: one dark, one dark with pale stripes and one beige.

Did they also test with actual humans? A living body might be more attractive to the insects, maybe reducing any advantage from the stripes.

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I think the issue is that they wanted to first identify and test the idea first. If you add in humans, you have to find volunteers and then waivers because no one is really willing to hang around in the nude and get bit by horseflies for a day.

As well for humans, you will have to consider demographical data and other data like gender, height, weight, body fat, in general how healthy the human is etc. which lead to even more questions.

Using just the models can mitigate these concerns

I remember reading about some experiment involving mosquitoes and body odor, IIRC they were done behind a mosquito net. I seem to remember the takeaway was: wash your feet well.

Last year, the YouTube channel Veritasium did a video about it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=38gVZgE39K8

> As well for humans, you will have to consider demographical data and other data like gender, height, weight, body fat, in general how healthy the human is etc. which lead to even more questions.

You could control that out to an extent by painting half of each volunteer, and then comparing the number of bites on each side.

Of course you'd want to randomise which side was painted, in case the insects prefer to bite one rather than the other.

It’s unlikely the effect would work at all like that. Insects are certainly able to estimate the full figure, and with the hard break in stripes down the center the results would probably be tainted

> If you add in humans, you have to find volunteers and then waivers because no one is > really willing to hang around in the nude and get bit by horseflies for a day.

You'd be surprised. Naturist love hanging around nude in places where insect bites are a serious possibility.

Not because of the insect bites of course. They just literally come with the territory. But if there was ever a demographic where this research would be very relevant, it's probably naturists.

Why do you have to be nude, or hang around? Just go about your day normally and count bites at the end.

Seems like people covered head to toe with body paint would have a different “normal day” then the control group.

It appears that they covered it with glue, so that they could count the insects at the end of the day. While this does definitely raise some questions, it also made the initial test probably quick and easy; no human test subjects needing to sign a waiver that they were willing to hang out covered in glue all day. Kind of like testing things on lab rats first.

Definitely would need to be tested in some other way, though. Lots of things that work on lab rats don't work on humans.

Yes, a living body will be more attractive to the insects, which is exactly why they will have used plastic ones. If you used real people, you don't know if the attractiveness changes is due to the body paint or differences in the human to the control sample.

No, it doesn't appear so.

So much this. They definitely sense CO2 and thermal/IR.

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