It’s that time of year when we start spending more time outdoors, and when the mosquitos are on the prowl for your blood. Colin Purrington bought these simple devices that are non-toxic but promise to kill mosquitos around your yard — not that I’m at all interested, I like having spider food living around my home — but I can understand not wanting biting, flying insects disturbing your parties. It also seems ecologically safe, since all it is is a tube containing a yeast solution (to produce CO2, a mosquito attractant) and boric acid, to kill insects that drink from it.
Only problem is that they don’t work. They produce very little CO2, mosquitos don’t take the bait, and if they crawl inside the tube, they don’t drink, they just fly out again. And it’ll cost you $50 for a box of 4 tubes! They really shouldn’t have let these devices fall into the hands of a scientist who can think quantitatively and who can devise easy tests of their efficacy.
Oh, another little problem with Spartan Pro: if you write a negative review of their product, they will sue you. It’s a stupid SLAPP suit that was eventually defeated, at a cost of $90,000 to Purrington. No, he didn’t get his legal costs back.
SLAPP suits are evil, and anyone or any compony that deploys them is evil, too.
I’m amazed at all the people leaving comments on Purrington’s site to claim that they actually do work. I don’t know whether they’re gullible, or Spartan Mosquito is paying puppets to leave phony testimonials, or my most charitable interpretation, they’re seeing the effects of general insect decline and attributing it to the magic cylinder they hung from a tree. I’m seeing fewer insects year by year in my area, so this might be a good time to be selling ineffective insect traps and letting your reputation thrive on ecological decline.
My next door neighbor bought a CO2 emitter about a decade ago. I can’t recall the company name, but it wasn’t this product. It was fairly large and had a lower compartment that zapped the mosquitos once they flew inside. He set it up on his back deck. He likes to throw big, cookout parties and figured this would take care of the skeeters and not bother his guests. Err, no. It attracted the bugs, alright — exactly to where all the people were gathered. I guess it was difficult for the mosquitoes to differentiate between artificial CO2 and that given off by people. At one party, he had more mosquitoes than he’d ever seen before. Everyone fled indoors. I watched in amusement from my screened in back deck.
PZ said: I’m seeing fewer insects year by year in my area,
Fireflies and Butterflies. About 10 years ago I noticed a significant drop in fireflies where I live. They went from hundreds to about a dozen an evening over the course of 3 years. I also noticed butterflies were not as plentiful. I regularly used to see dozens over a few days, now I’m lucky to see one a day. Monarchs, I would see two or three a week, now I’m lucky to see two or three the whole summer. To be fair there has been increased development during that time.
i used them all winter in minneapolis and i did not see a single mosquito…
;)
Many years ago I read about brown sugar and yeast in water in a 2 liter plastic pop bottle.
My intent was to get the small number of mosquitos that would get into my 10 foot by 16 foot single room home, not large scale outdoor use. The buzzing while I was trying to go to sleep was a bigger problem than actually getting bit.
Never tried doing the trap.
SLAPP suits are evil indeed and for those who don’t already know there’s a group trying to shut down Greenpeace with one at the moment over the American oil pipeline issue :
Source : https://www.wits.ac.za/news/sources/cals-news/2025/660-million-defamation-suit-against-greenpeace-the-rise-of-slapp-suits.html
“Funny” how all the Freepeachers!!1ty! who are so quick to defend reichwing hateful bigots in their “right” to offend (& supposed to be platformed and allowed to speak on a privileged loudhailer everywhere) and attack others seem to just totally disappear when it comes to such issues of real Free Speech like these where they are really needed and there’s a real case for them ain’t it?
“I’m seeing fewer insects year by year in my area”
I remember driving 2500km through Australia, from Rockhampton to Melbourne, a few years ago moving house, and the sheer number of kangaroos and wombats on the road was astonishing, but there were hardly any dead insects on my windscreen.
Would a real he-man Spartan Warrior® ever deign to even notice mere mosquitoes?
Seems to me, instead of trying to get a mosquito to ingest boric acid, it would be more effective to include a bit of mammalian blood infused with a short lived substance toxic to mosquitos. I don’t know is boric acid is blood-soluble or toxic when bloody – that’s up to Spartan’s R&D. But there’s no reason to suspect that the current system works.