As soon as we learned how music can influence the maturing of cheese, we now have learned how it can influence mosquitoes!
Under the usually complicated scientific title of “The electronic song ‘Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites’ reduces host attack and mating success in the dengue vector Aedes aegypti”, published in the journal Acta Tropica is the analysis of no less than eight scientists that subjected their mosquito test group, that are carriers of yellow fever, to this 2010 hit from dubstep artist Skrillex.
As the NME reports, the reasoning of the scientists was to use this song because it has both extremely low and high frequencies. As the scientist explained in their abstract of the study, “Sound and its reception are crucial for reproduction, survival, and population maintenance of many animals. In insects, low-frequency vibrations facilitate sexual interactions, whereas noise disrupts the perception of signals from conspecifics _[members of the same species] _and hosts.”
In testing the mosquito activity in reproducing and attacking humans, with music and without music, they found that both activities were on decline with Skrillex’s “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” playing. It would appear that this type of mosquito, that is known for carrying diseases like the zika virus, has some serious adversity to Skrillex, dubstep, or both.
As the scientists concluded, “The observation that such music can delay host attack, reduce blood feeding and disrupt mating, provides new avenues for the development of music-based personal protective and control measures against Aedes-borne diseases.”
While there’s still no comment from Skrillex, further testing is yet to show whether the mosquitoes are adverse to just this song, or maybe the whole dubstep genre, and the music of say, the genre’s top artist, Burial. On the other hand, what about other music, and say, David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters and Super Creeps”?
