Pest Wars: How Sound Can Save Crops, Planes, and Our Sanity

Audio tactics to avoid a pestocalypse

Pests are like that annoying roommate who refuses to move out.

These little buggers are a constant annoyance, buzzing in our ears, destroying our crops, and causing havoc in the skies.

We’ve thrown everything at them — chemicals, scare tactics, you name it. But they’re getting resilient, crafty, and frankly annoying. It’s a battle we’re losing, and it’s costing us financially and environmentally.

But have we tried using sonic weapons?

By using volume, vibrations, and sonic nets we don’t have to break the bank or harm our planet.

Sound is the one thing these pests can’t outsmart.

An unexpected mosquito repellent

Despite all our tech advances, we’re still dealing with a major global health issue: diseases like Zika, chikungunya, and dengue transmitted by those annoying mosquitoes.

We usually deal with them with insecticides but that’s not working so well anymore.

Mosquitoes are becoming resistant and these chemicals are causing environmental problems.

Sound could be an alternative.

Mosquitoes communicate and mate through sound so what if we could disrupt their game with music?

A group of researchers from Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan put it to the test. Scientists wanted to see if electronic music would mess with the behavior of dengue mosquitoes. They chose Skrillex’s song “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” to mess with bloody bastards.

The setup had two scenarios: one where the music was playing and another where it wasn’t (the control). Oh, and the mosquitoes were really hungry — they hadn’t eaten for 12 to 14 hours before the experiment!

The results? When the music was on, mosquitoes were less interested in feeding, visited hosts less often, and had trouble in the romance department (mating). Some of the findings were as follows:

• The response times of female mosquitoes to host (i.e. human) presence were significantly prolonged when music played, with an average of 131.30 seconds compared to 35.22 seconds when the player was off.
• The timing of the first biting attempt followed a similar trend, with an average of 191.70 seconds in the music-on environment compared to 82.44 seconds when the music was off.
• The most striking divergence was in copulation activity, where exposure to music resulted in an extremely rare occurrence (0.90 events on average) compared to a significantly higher frequency in the music-off environment (5.18 events on average).

It seems like the mosquitoes couldn’t handle the electronic beats.

Vibrational warfare against bugs

How can we reduce the need for traditional and expensive pesticides?

Insects build resistance to pesticides and if we keep spraying our crops we’ll just be harming ourselves in the long run.

A mixed group of researchers from Italy and New Zealand thought of a different way of battling pests. They turned to the world of vibrations.

Since insects use vibrational signals to communicate, the scientists wondered if they could disrupt their mating behaviors using different types of vibrations. They used it on the tomato potato psyllid (i.e. the Bactericera cockerelli) as it causes severe losses in crops like potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers in countries like the United States, Mexico, Central America, and New Zealand.

They used a recorded sound mimicking the vibrational signals produced by the female to attract males. This disrupted the insects’ mating behavior in both lab and field settings.

They found that the female playback led to fewer successful matings. The playback crew experienced a strikingly lower success rate in the mating game (23.3%) than the control group (56.7%). And those male suitors, instead of heading straight for the damsel leaf, swayed towards the sound source (i.e. the speaker).

The game got even wilder because the females didn’t want to play second fiddle. They also responded to the playback, throwing their signals into the mix, but they did this to compete (or cooperate) with the speaker.

A drama worth a Shakespearean play.

This suggests a potential tool in pest management that doesn’t mess with our food or the environment. It hurts for pests but keeps our wallets and the planet green.

Who would have imagined that introducing a bit of courtship drama would be the key to success?

A sonic net for birds

Almost 50 birds collide with airplanes daily in the U.S., mainly during takeoff or landings, costing the aviation $400 million annually. Worldwide, bird strikes cost airlines approximately $1.2 billion annually.

Even if it rarely leads to a serious outcome, it’s still a big cost for companies (and the lives of these poor birds).

The traditional approach is to shoot, poison, or scare the birds away. These methods are like burning cash and aren’t very sustainable. Birds also get used to the usual scare tactics pretty quickly.

Scientists from the College of William and Mary thought of a different bird-scaring method. They conducted a study where they blasted pink noise in the frequency range where birds usually chirp (2 to 10 kHz turned on 24/7). They called it a sonic net.

They tested this in an airport near Newport News, Virginia, with an outdoor speaker with sound-reflecting walls on three sides. This setup made sure the noise was mostly going in one direction — right onto the airfield they wanted to protect.

The results were impressive. The researchers saw an 82.3% reduction in birds in the sonic net area. Even the problematic European Starling flew away. They estimated a potential 96.4% reduction in the costs associated with bird strikes.

Did they hit the jackpot in aviation savings?

Final thoughts

We need to find innovative ways to tackle pest and health challenges or we’ll screw the environment, and ourselves and create resistance among the ones we’re trying to fight against.

Sound could be a big step in solving the environmental discord we’ve created.

With sound weapons, we can turn airports into bird-free zones, discourage mosquitoes from biting us, and significantly decrease the population of tomato potato psyllid.

Who knows? The intersection of science and music might save the day.

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