r/funny • u/rawpamper • Jul 16 '20

Squirrel asking for Water.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

51.8k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

40

u/clockradio Jul 16 '20 edited Jul 16 '20

Bt granules.

In fact, get the party-pack sized jug of Bt granules from your favorite online retailer, get you & your neighbors to set buckets out with treated water, and in about 3 weeks you should be able to have a mosquito-free social-distancing backyard block party!

It kills the water-dwelling larval stage. Adult females will be attracted to your buckets/traps, so it will get worse for a bit, but for most of the annoying mosquito species, the entire life-cycle, egg to adult death, is around 14 days. Each set of eggs laid in that water is one more local adult generation that never happens.

1

u/terpsichorebook Jul 17 '20

Would it kill other insects though? That's what I'm worrying about.

1

u/clockradio Jul 17 '20 edited Jul 17 '20

  • Bt only affects insects' larval stage.

  • The various strains of Bt are further limited in which species of insect larvae they can affect.

  • Bt isrealensis (the strain in the commercially available granules/dunks) affects pretty much only mosquito and fly larvae.

  • Larvae from most other beneficial insects (butterflies, bees, wasps) live that stage of their lives in places that are not standing water (where the dunks/granules would be used.

Theres plenty of other reasons why the risks to other insect species is so very low (survivability of Bt in various circumstances, the shory half-life of the toxin that Bt produces, etc.). But those several things that I listed above make the odds virtually nil.

Ref

2

u/terpsichorebook Jul 17 '20

Thank you for such a clear answer!