Mosquito WAR Drones

**Mosquito WAR Drones **

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I saw an interesting article on drones used in the fight against mosquitoes. I thought it would make for an interesting article and decided to Google the subject, and then found 3 different ways in which drones are used against the fight against these annoying buzzers!!

The photo above shows a drone used in Brazil to fight the Zika infested mosquitoes. These drones are used to release huge numbers of sterilized male mosquitoes into the wild. (You read correctly sterilized mosquitoes!!). These sterilized males then mate with females, who will lay eggs, but no offspring is produced from these eggs. This then reduces the mosquito population.

In Australia they have a different approach. They first locate pools that are potential breading places of the mosquitoes. They then dispense larvicide into the identified pools, poisoning the larvae. This is where the drones come in. It takes a human hours to walk through wet-lands to administer the larvicide, but a drone can do the same job in minutes. The larvicide comes in small pellets, which the drones can carry and drop into the pools containing the mosquito larvae, and in the process kills the mosquito larvae.

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The third mosquito fighting project is project Premonition, run by Microsoft. They have a completely different approach to the fight against disease spread by insects, including mosquitoes.

The drone shown in the photo above is used to capture mosquitoes. The drone will record where and when the mosquito was caught, and will also record conditions, like humidity, temperature and wind etc. The blood inside the mosquito will then be analysed for viruses. This will be a type of early detection for possible harmful viruses. This can be used to prevent the outbreak of diseases,as scientists will detect harmful viruses before they even spread.

This is amazing!!

Below is a video on the Premonition Project.

Below are the sources of my information
Source: Brazil
Source: Australia
Source: Microsoft

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed reading the post.