> To fight malaria, the lab has invented a “photonic fence” device that identifies, tracks and zaps female mosquitoes (only females bite humans).
Can anyone explain why it's important enough to only kill the females that we might want to add (presumably expensive) sex-identification technology to mosquito zappers that are aimed at eliminating malaria in poor countries?
After a quick search I found this link leading to a page of Intellectual Venture's
http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventions-patents/our-i...
It's pretty cool but unfortunately looks tied to IV. My first guess might be to avoid any criticism that by killing ALL mosquitos, they're harming the ecosystem. I guess that's wishful thinking for a company that I kind of despise even being on their website.
Mosquitoes eat nectar from plants. They only use blood for mating purposes (and the female is the one that has to get it).
So if there are mosquitos around humans, they are almost all female anyway (and the ones that aren't don't bite).
But if you just kill the females at least it cuts whatever damage you're doing to the food supply by half.