Horse fly prevention

[The Singing Stalker]

Maybe we need to use stripey camouflage. They used to to a tiger strip camo. Who wants to volunteer to go sit in a horse fly enclosure?

 

[Cootmeurer]

There has been some very interesting research been done on Zebra's and their stripes. Turns out that if you put a zebra strip rug on a horse in UK then the incidence of insect bites/attacks plummets. It would appear that Zebra have possibly evolved stripes to lessen insect attack and so exposure to lots of nasty diseases. I think I heard it on Radio 4 a few months ago.

D

I listened to the same story on the CBC. The Oxford Prof was theorizing that the stripes didn't do anything to disguise the zebra, but rather severe,y inhibited the depth perception of the flies. The pests still came after them, but failed to slow down and light, instead hitting at full speed and bouncing off.

This actually makes sense with the horsefly traps we use around the paddock. These are a piece of black plastic angled above a small trough filled with soap water. Never watched them at the moment of impact, but the trough does fill up with their dipteran corpses. I think I will try using some zebra striped plastic this year.

Around the farm at least, they do seem attracted to motion, and never seem a bother when sitting still.

 

[dartmoordog]

Slightly aside guys, but a Brixham man died after getting bitten by a Horsefly! He tragically and sadly died from an Anaphylactic Shock.

If you google it the BBC report is still available.

We should all be very cautious.