Disney's mosquito control program | Hacker News Reader

Disney's mosquito control program

mousetrack.co.uk

186 pointsdom96110 comments

This subject has come up before. Why Disney World doesn't have mosquitoes(https://www.greenmatters.com/p/why-no-mosquitoes-disney-worl...) 262 points|jbonniwell|12 months ago|125 comments

The Fascinating Reason Why There Are No Mosquitoes at Disney World(https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/548281/reason-why-there-...) 25 points|elorant|2 years ago|3 comments

Why There Are No Mosquitoes at Disney World(http://mentalfloss.com/article/548281/reason-why-there-are-n...) 3 points|amelius|3 years ago|0 comments

You Never See Mosquitoes at Disney World(https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-never-see-mosquitoes-dis...) 2 points|redm|1 year ago|0 comments

Why Are There No Mosquitoes at Disney World? (2018)(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_30jPKzWdN0)

instead of linking four articles why not give the answer?

trained rodents

nanotechnology

lasers

herds of chameleons

I think the comment is a bit hostile, and there's merit in linking to past conversations, that said I for one would love for the first comment to be a TL:DR; comment!

The chickens are for monitoring viruses being transmitted by the mosquitoes, there aren’t enough of them around there to realistically make a dent in the population.

And no standing water.

with this finger waiving your answer isnt even correct. eliminating standing water looks to be the number 1 thing they do per the article.

could be. i didn't spend much effort since this a complete waste of time anyway.

And yet making pithy comments isn't?

“Disney freezes the trapped mosquitos for later analysis” is not a sentence I thought I’d ever read

There are also no mosquitos in San Francisco

I also went on a 3 hour hike in the Oakland redwoods this weekend and did not encounter a single mosquito. Pretty amazing

I remember when they started putting something in the storm drains and after a few years they were mostly gone. You can see the layers of colorful dots on top of the drains

https://www.mosquitosf.com

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/making-the-rounds-wit...

acchow has been extremely fortunate because I've encountered them in the Mission, Russian Hill, Tenderloin, and not surprisingly Mountain Lake Park. Some of the storm drains aren't draining properly. Yes, we've used those expanding screens, but I think the mosquitoes are blood-thirsty enough to crawl through any cracks and most Victorian window frames are no longer square.

You can call 311 to ask them to check the drains again, or buy some dunks yourself.

There certainly are, but they aren’t common. If you go for an evening hike July to October on Mount Davidson, you’ll know.

We find mosquitos inside in the mission, so yes and no.

I used to have plenty of mosquitos in Soma. I’m pretty sure they were from standing water in my apartment neighbor’s balcony plants. I always entertained the idea of attempting to spray or throw some sort of chemical into the pots I could easily reach.

You were thinking of throwing poison into your neighbors pots because your assumed they could be breeding mosquitoes?

Every year when they detect west nile in my neighborhood, they start driving trucks around once a week spraying concentrated poison directly into the air.

They don't even put up signs to tell us what day to close our windows, or that they are doing it at all.

... and that is bad. Not a status quo we should all settle for.

Your being downvoted, but i agree. Chemically treating someone's plants without telling them is not ok.

Doubly so if they are intending to use it for food purposes.

Good thing he didn’t do it and it was only a thoughtcrime

God forbid we think UnApprovedThoughts™

Well, yeah, it was more of those “why I ought to…” thoughts when I was frustrated by the mosquitos. I would have asked my neighbors if it got bad enough that I really wanted to go through with it, because that’s just basic courtesy. But also if we’re really going to put up our “property rights” battle lines, I kinda think the tiny insects routinely bringing strangers’ blood into my home from my neighbor’s property and attempting to stick their used needles into my skin would justify a judicious response.

But you don't have much evidence that the pots are the problem, your idea to poison their plants is a far more egregious property crime, and there are so many ideas that you could do first. I get that you're saying you wouldn't actually do it but christ that's such an extreme desire to casually float.

> I kinda think the tiny insects routinely bringing strangers’ blood into my home from my neighbor’s property and attempting to stick their used needles into my skin

Mosquitoes don't inject other people's blood into you and the used needle analogy is not apt at all.

Some people are magnets for mosquitos and can somehow managed to get bitten and harassed in places I never ever see mosquitos.

I used to think this was a tall tale. In my culture, they call it "sweet blood" when mosquitos go after certain people. But it is for real! https://www.23andme.com/topics/traits/mosquito-bite-frequenc...

This was me when I was a young. My record was 31 mosquito bites in a day. Nobody else in the room was bothered. Now as an adult, my unwanted superpower has disappeared.

mosquitoes are attracted by smell of sweat. sweaty people get bitten more often

I recall plenty of mosquitos on my porch in the haight area back in my day

Its also a bit of a relative thing.

People who haven't lived in a mosquito infested area (e.g. Northern Canada or Alaska) have no concept of what "a lot of mosquitos" mean, and will talk about seeing a lot of mosquitos, which other people would consider an undetectable amount.

We rented a houseboat on a lake for a week in northern Canada when I was 6 or 7, and I'm still haunted by the number of mosquitoes to this day. We cut the trip short to about 2 days and immediately went home and I think only visited Canada once after that, despite being a couple hours from the border.

The mosquitoes are annoying, but just be happy it wasn't horsefly season.

The worst I've ever seen was when i was a kid we went camping near Rabbitkettle Hot Springs in Nunavut. I swear, every time you clapped your hand, you would kill 7 mosquitos

As a canadian, let me assure you, we do have some nice less mosquito filled places :)

I used to live in the Chicago suburbs. When we got bored as kids, we'd kill mosquitoes and feed them to the fish in my dad's aquarium. They were well fed.

I've lived near San Francisco for 30 years now. I have had zero mosquito bites.

I've been visited by black widow spiders, rattlesnakes, bobcats, wild pigs and the occasional fox or badger. But no mosquitoes.

There are definitely mosquitoes in San Francisco. They sneak into my place if I leave the door open for too long and then wake me at 2am as well as doing other things mosquitoes do.

I don't remember ever seeing one or being bitten by one the entire time I lived in the bay area. I also think there were less bugs in general compared to the east coast. Except for spiders. Maybe the spiders keep them in check.

No mosquitos is new. I grew up in the east bay, with a view of the GG bridge.

When I was young 25-35 years ago, I would get eaten alive at night.

I did get one bite earlier this year in downtown Oakland. It was the first in a while.

I can confirm this. I'm curious though, why? Why are there no mosquitos in northern California?

Apparently fish are used quite often for this purpose:

> The name "Mosquitofish" was given because the fish eats mosquito larvae, and has been used more than any other fishes for the biological control of mosquitoes.

> Mosquitofish were introduced directly into ecosystems in many parts of the world as a biocontrol to lower mosquito populations which in turn negatively affected many other species in each distinct bioregion.[5] Mosquitofish in Australia are classified as a noxious pest and may have exacerbated the mosquito problem in many areas by outcompeting native invertebrate predators of mosquito larvae. Several counties in California distribute mosquitofish at no charge to residents with human-made fish ponds and pools as part of their mosquito abatement programs.[6][7][8] The fish are made available to residents only and are intended to be used solely on their own property, not introduced into natural habitat. On 24 February 2014, Chennai Corporation in India introduced western mosquitofish in 660 ponds to control the mosquito population in freshwater bodies.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquitofish

We keep mosquitofish. We bought them to release into our pond for this purpose, but realized they would harass our goldfish and that the goldfish probably would do a good enough job at this themselves. So we used them as dither fish for a nervous flowerhorn cichlid, and after he passed they now have the run of a 140 gallon tank to themselves. They spend all their time chasing each other / going after anything that moves so it's no wonder they have such an outsize environmental impact[1]. Ours have lots of hiding places and a huge tank for just a handful of them

Apparently they give live birth, but we've yet to witness it, likely because any babies are immediately eaten -- or because the females are unlikely to give birth in the presence of males (supposedly -- I haven't confirmed this anywhere, just seen it mentioned on various fishkeeping forums).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquitofish#Environmental_imp...

>Apparently they give live birth

Yes, I paid $10 for just 5 of these. Came back a week later to more than 50 swimming in the tank!

Never heard of "dither fish" before -- learned a new thing today, thanks! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither_fish

Huh. Emotional support fish. Cool.

My assumption before reading: barrels and barrels of pesticides.

Article: barrels of pesticides, yes, but also well-designed landscape architecture.

I'm curious what's the bigger factor. Also, does layering the approaches have a bigger effect than you'd expect if you summed the effects individually, or a smaller one?

It may be barrels of pesticides, but at least it seems they opt for natural pesticide (liquid garlic/peppermint) instead of any toxic (to humans) substances.

Might've been less nice pesticies in the past, but I guess awareness of possible lawsuits from employees has forced their hand.

Do you have a source for that conjecture? Was there a specific new outlet that raised the issue previously?

That made me look a bit more into it. As far as I can tell, garlic (in non-detectable to human concentrations) is used, but there are also references to non-specific pesticides and growth regulators, which they'd naturally emphasize over scary sounding chemicals.

It seems to be a genuinely impressive and comprehensive (and, from experience, effective) program, but it still likely uses some "toxic" pesticides. I figure if mosquitoes could be controlled by water mixed with garlic, we could be making incredible and scalable progress against e.g. malaria in Africa using that approach.

Other methods Disney uses include releasing predators of mosquitoes regularly and sampling mosquito population genetics using CO2 traps to proactively anticipate new problems.

Look at the wording closely: it says "rumored to be." That's corporate-speak for "we're lying."

Guarantee if Disney were using natural pesticides, they'd be shouting their lungs out about it, especially in what appears to be a corporate-paid-for blogspam article.

As a central Florida native I have little doubt that the landscape architecture plays a big role. Mosquitoes breed and multiply incredibly quick in this climate. Every city sprays regularly to keep populations lower, but they are still around.

I lived and traveled all around central florida, and don't remember ever really seeing a mosquito much less getting bit by one. The spray and chemicals they put in the gray water work wonders.

In the Midwest, those suckers eat you alive. No body of water or pool in sight, but summer nights you wouldn't go out without bathing in Off.

I went boating in the Everglades in August last year for 3 days and I haven't seen a mosquito. Not even one.

>My assumption before reading: barrels and barrels of pesticides.

>I went boating in the Everglades in August last year for 3 days and I haven't seen a mosquito. Not even one.

The unspoiled Everglades had tons of mosquitos.

Before they built Disney World that was a hell of a place to get a flat tire on the turnpike.

Day or night it was just as bad as the Everglades, and if you didn't have loads of repellent more mosquitos would be circling for a landing spot than there was room for on any bare skin.

Most likely almost all of the tonnage that was applied by all parties, of the most effective pesticides available, were dispersed in the area in the decades since.

With the much larger human population today still using ordinary toxic stuff widely on their homes and lawns, maybe this helps make it easier to use non-toxic pest control within the tourist attractions.

I live in central Florida near Disney, and I can't remember seeing a mosquito.

They were ubiquitous in the North during the summer when I was growing up but around here they seem to have been all but eliminated, at least in the populated areas.

Now other bugs are everywhere around here. It took a big adjustment to get used to just how many insects there were everywhere and how quickly they'll take hold without proper precautions.

In my experience ticks are a much bigger pest, especially if you like hiking.

I grew up in Lake County (which is just north of Disney) and there's tons of still water for mosquitoes. Don't know about dense residential areas. I'm there now and if you're hanging by the lake at sundown with no spray, you're going to get skewered. WDW is a large plot of land and there are many lakes and ponds on the property that are prime breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Eliminating mosquito breeding grounds is the most effective approach of mosquito control. They do not travel very far, have a massive reproductive ability, and have a relatively short lifespan. Larvacides in standing water do stop larvae but not adults. If you do have standing water that is a necessity then there are larvacides that can treat the water with bacteria for a safe effective treatment. It must be done often though. Insecticides do kill adult mosquitos and repel them but still if there is an area nearby they can breed in, they will be replaced very fast.

Turbidity is another good strategy with necessary water.

I was going to guess that they used something like industrial-scale mosquito dunks.

You put them in water and they release a live bacteria (bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israeliensis) that specifically attacks mosquito larvae and is harmless to everything else as far as we know.

https://summitchemical.com/products/mosquito-dunks/

Mosquito fish are also effective, and the article says they use those.

Dragonflies are another very efficient predator of mosquitoes. I could imagine Disney World maintaining dragonfly ponds around their properties. Though I guess if you're good enough at controlling mosquito larvae then the dragonflies might migrate elsewhere where they have more to eat. (It'd be an interesting strategy for Disney to grow species of mosquitoes that don't attack humans and releasing them around their park, just to attract more mosquito-eating predators.)

> "If you're from a country without mosquitoes- like the United Kingdom"

The article suggests that there are no mosquitos in the UK, but this is not correct. The UK has over 30 native mosquito species, and many of them bite humans.

One urban-adapted species, Culex molestus, is even known as the "London Underground Mosquito": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_mosquito

Yea. I've been "eaten alive" as is the vernacular by the biggest mosquitoes I've ever seen in London. Horrendous. Also hard to avoid unless you live at height

Interesting, I've lived in the UK for many years, have heard many times that it is mosquito-free and haven't run into mosquitoes in all my time here. I would still say that the UK has many orders of magnitude less mosquitoes than other countries, from personal experience at least. In any case, the article has been fixed to say "Iceland" instead.

Iceland doesn't seem to have any/many mosquitoes, but yowza, does it have midges (especially, as the article below says, near Myvatn).

https://icelandmag.is/article/are-there-midges-iceland#:~:te....

Why doesn't Iceland have mosquitoes? Greenland does.

the theory is that Iceland has so many fluctuations in temperature that the mosquitos are not able to complete a whole breeding cycle

Yea it has only happened in London, which does seem to have its own more temperate climate. I never saw one once in NI about 500 miles north or in West of England

There is even a common one found in the underground system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_mosquito

Correct. Most of them appear to have been feasting on me this week. Grr.

That's because the article was likely a contract-written piece by a copywriter who knows nothing about the subject.

I can guarantee you that it wasn't.

It's been changed to Iceland. Icelanders travel a lot and most of us know how annoying mosquitos are. We also have midges so it's not hard to imagine how annoying this can be.

NYC back in early 2000's had a West Nile Virus scare so gov did extensive aerial spraying of pesticides for many months ... that was the end of mosquitoes... gov publicized the nighttime spraying back then, not today yet the city continues to be mosquito free ... my guess is the pesticides they use has contributed to the abject loss of most insect species not just in the city but in upstate NY as well ... the NYC watershed covers several hundred miles into upstate where insects are simply absent today in comparison to decades ago

Spraying is pretty rampant all across Florida yet the mosquitoes find a way.

To your point I don't recall ever being bitten by a mosquito in NYC proper but my parents said it used to be pretty common. I believe I got a few bites on Governors Island once, though.

Story time: I was in Brooklyn at that time and took a large dose of magic mushrooms with a friend one Sunday evening. We thought we heard strange noises outside around 1AM and went to investigate.

With the world around us oozing and flowing crazy psychedelic colors, we see what appears to be a military vehicle rolling up the block going about 5 miles an hour. We’re standing there confused when the silence is broken by a loudspeaker on the truck, “Stay inside. Close your windows. Stay inside close your windows”. We drop to the ground, terrified, trying to figure out if we’re hallucinating, as the echos of the command reverberate off the buildings around us.

When the truck rolls directly past us we see what’s 20 yards behind it: another army truck with floodlights glaring, flanked by a crew in full hazmat suits with hoses spraying a cloud of something in the air as they pass us walking slowly down the block.

Then just silence, and the sinister shadow of the sprayers backlit by floodlights disappearing around the corner onto fifth avenue heading north toward Park Slope.

There are no words that describe the psychedelic terror I felt in those moments. We legit thought the world was ending and/or there was an alien invasion, and the military was somehow involved like an X-Files storyline come to life.

A few hours later we calm down and are debating whether or not it really happened.

And in the morning we see the flyers all over the neighborhood: mosquito spraying Sunday night, “stay inside, close your windows” They forgot to include, “don’t take mushrooms”.

Hahaha, that was a great read, thank you!

Spraying still happens all the time, it's just not very visible. It's just a large pickup truck with a leaf blower type device attached to a large container of the stuff rolling down the street in Brooklyn in the middle of the night.

I live in the East Village and there are certainly mosquitoes that bite me on my patio and ones that come in through my screen door. Upstate even as close as Westchester has them as well and much worse than the city I admit.

NYC still does nighttime spraying: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/west-nile...

I remember wondering the same thing twenty-five years ago, when I lived not far from Tokyo Disneyland. I took the kids there once in August, when the Tokyo area is hot and humid and insects abound, especially in the evenings.

At Disneyland, not only were there no mosquitos; there also weren’t any moths, gnats, or other flying insects. I also remember noticing some cute birds flying around freely within the park. When we left and headed for home, a short train ride away, bugs swarmed around the street lights as usual and the birds were pigeons and crows and other less pleasant species. Tokyo Disneyland’s wildlife control program must have extended to more than just mosquitos.

> Tokyo Disneyland’s wildlife control program must have extended to more than just mosquitos.

Between this comment and one part of the thread above your post, this makes me think that “broad-spectrum pest management” is an inadvertent side effect of the methods used by Disney.

I would have been more convinced if the article hadn't included an ad for a Disney world vacation.

> Avoiding stagnant water even goes as far as when it comes to the plants that are chosen to grow inside the parks.

Took me about 5 tries to wrap my mind around this sentence structure.

Kind of a garden path sentence.

Could just remove "when it comes to" and the sentence would read much better.

Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?

>“The pesticides used are said to be non-toxic and include substances such as liquid garlic, soap, peppermint and rosemary.”

Said to be? Call me skeptical. The vector control districts in Florida, including Orange County’s, use conventional pesticides in abundance, including by aerial application. They’re very effective when combined with Integrated Pest Management.

Disney claims it's all garlic extract or whatever but I have always flatly not believed the claim.

They need little robots/drones to scout about at night for larva and kill them.

True, this will take a lot of robots. But that's ok, since during the daytime when the guests are there, the robots can go back to the fab shop and make more robots.

That should get the last few percent. I can't imagine anything going wrong with this idea. You're welcome!

I keep wishing this wasn’t vaporware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser

Good chuckle imagining that as the laser light show every night... title alone.

Just sell me popcorn and play Star Wars space combat music.

Way better than a bug zapper! Those are commercially available, somewhat popular, indiscriminate killers of any small species that crosses the relevant boundary, and hazardous to humans -- they typically explode the insects, releasing parasites and pathogens that manage to stay alive.

> they typically explode the insects, releasing parasites and pathogens that manage to stay alive.

This seems dubious to me. I can't imagine it would aerosolize, and even droplets would need to be close to a human to infect them.

Is there a citation for this?

There seems to have been only one study, which is what is cited by everyone. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s002840010132

The study only looked at houseflies and as long as you're two meters away from the zapper, the danger is very low. You probably don't want the zapper on your patio but if it's in a part of the yard where people aren't close by, it's probably ok.

Wirecutter[0] cites at least two others, from Kansas State University[1] and the University of Delaware[2].

They have so many hyperlinks in the article that I don't want to check if any go to other studies. Certainly a lot of the links are to statements by professors and organizations rather than papers. But this passage seemed at least noteworthy:

"""We found similar statements from the Harvard Medical School (“Don’t buy a bug zapper”), Iowa State University (“Bug Zappers are Harmful, not Helpful”), the Texas Tech University Infant Risk Center (“Don’t use bug zappers”), and the US Department of Agriculture (PDF) """

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/do-bug-zappers-work/

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s002840010132

[2] https://archive.org/stream/cbarchive_110397_densityanddivers...

My thought exactly. Far more dangerous is to allow them to inject it into your veins rather than fling it through the air.

If, as the U of Delaware study found, only 0.22 percent (not 22%) of what's killed are mosquitoes, it had better be at least 1 / 0.0022 = 454 times worse.

[0] https://archive.org/stream/cbarchive_110397_densityanddivers...

Might be easier to build one for indoor use only, to clear a room. First clear the room of humans & pets. Let it run for a while. Maybe converge multiple beams on a target to reduce the damage from misses. Use sound to identify and classify targets: quiet bugs that aren't mosquitoes or flies can be ignored.

>They need little robots/drones to scout about at night for larva and kill them.

Those are called dragonflies. And they have the highest success/attempt rate in the animal kingdom at 95%: https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/animals-ecology/article-s...

At the very least, the dragonflies should be cyborgs that can be centrally controlled and can build cyborg components.

I'm pretty sure the Imagineers are already on it.

You could give the dragonflies little Disney Princess heads. That would be cute.

I like the way you think.

they have the highest success/attempt rate in the animal kingdom at 95%

I'm sure you realize why it can't be 100%.

Dragonflies are gorgeus, my favourite bugs. I used to get hypnotized seeing them around my house as a child. But there were many mosquitos too.

Tangential, but local Odonata populations in Prince Edward Island have anecdotally exploded in the last couple of years. The greater region has seen a collapse of bat populations from white nose syndrome over the last decade. The coming of dragon and damselflies in mid- to late summer is a relief to the sanity of many.

The drawback is that relief does not come until dragonflies are in their adult stages, versus bats which would eat mosquitos all spring and summer.

I e always imagined for my balcony in Africa a 2d vertical axis laser array that zaps bugs that try to cross. I'm sure it could be done technically but obviously there are safety issues

Gainesville has those: they're bats. The University of Florida has the world's largest bat houses. The bats eat 2.5 billion insects every night.

Swallows also do work. I read that each swallow can eat about 800 flies and mosquitoes a day. A combination of swallows during the day and nocturnal bats would be ideal.

> If you're from a country without mosquitoes- like the United Kingdom-

I wish this was true, but they certainly exist in this country

Unrelated to Disney but related to mosquitoes: Singapore's Wolbachia-Aedes suppression technology is very interesting, but specific to Aedes mosquitoes. The government releases male Wolbachia-Aedes mosquitoes that suppress the Aedes aegypti mosquito populations.

> Male Wolbachia-Aedes mosquitoes are released regularly at NEA’s study sites to mate with female urban Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Their resultant eggs do not hatch and no offspring are produced. Continued releases lead to a decline in the urban Aedes aegypti mosquito population, and therefore less dengue transmission.

https://www.nea.gov.sg/corporate-functions/resources/researc...

> If you're from a country without mosquitoes- like Iceland- then you might not realise just how annoying mosquitoes can be.

If there's no mosquitoes in Iceland, then they're pretty well-balance by the presence of midges

"The pesticides used are said to be non-toxic... Growth regulators are also used to limit mosquito larvae, killing them before they can even hatch. Disney sprays these agents twice a day."

So technically true perhaps, but...

I recently took my campervan all over the mountains of middle california and omg... once you get to any sort of elevation, the number of mosquitos is insane. Really takes the fun out of camping!

Whatever they’re doing, they need to do to the whole state of Alaska. The mosquitoes there are wild, and make Houston mosquitoes seem tame by comparison.

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