科学美国人60秒:Chicken Scent Deters Malaria Mosquitoes

In Africa's battle against malaria, two low-tech tactics—insecticides and bed nets—have done a decent job killing off mosquitoes. "But it's mainly one species that's been affected. That's a species called Anopheles gambiae, sometimes called the African malaria mosquito.” Rickard Ignell, a chemical ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

在非洲抗击疟疾的战斗中，两个低科技手段：用杀虫剂和蚊帐来杀死蚊子。但这两种手段只是主要让一个物种受到影响。这是一种叫做冈比亚按蚊的物种。有时被称为非洲疟疾蚊子。瑞典农业科学大学，化学生态学家，Rickard Ignell表示。

He says, despite that success, the problem is far from solved. For one, mosquitoes are developing resistance to insecticides. And two, there are many other species that can spread the disease. Including one that's common in the horn of Africa: Anopheles arabiensis.

他表示，尽管作用如此成功，这个问题还远没有解决。其一，蚊子正在产生对杀虫剂的抗药性。其二，还有许多其他物种能传播疾病。其中一个物种是非洲之角常见的——阿拉伯按蚊。

Unlike the pickier gambiae, its palate is wide-ranging. Arabiensis sucks the blood of cattle, sheep, goats. But… not chickens. "First of all, chickens like mosquitoes. So they'll actively feed on mosquitoes and other insects. So avoiding chickens could be a way of surviving, and evolving a way of smelling the chickens could be an early warning system for them."

与挑剔的冈比亚按蚊不同的是，在口感上，它的范围更加广泛。阿拉伯按蚊会吸牛、绵羊、山羊的血，但是…不会吸鸡的血。“首先，鸡喜欢蚊子，因此它们会以蚊子和其他昆虫为食。所以，避免吃鸡肉是生存下来的一种方式。使闻鸡的味道的这种方式得到进化，将会成为一个早期预警系统。

And it turns out, that aversion to chickens can be used against the insects. Ignell and his colleagues isolated chemical compounds from chicken feathers, and dispensed them next to a human sleeping under a bed net—a human lure. And they found that fewer mosquitoes came round for a snack, due to the repellent chemicals. The findings appear in the Malaria Journal. [Kassahun T. Jaleta et al., Chicken volatiles repel host-seeking malaria mosquitoes]

而且事实证明，利用对鸡的反感可以对付昆虫。 Ignell 和他的研究团队将来自羽毛中的化合物分离出来。把它放置在睡在蚊帐里的人的旁边——人为诱惑。由于讨厌这种化学物质，他们发现很少的蚊子会进入蚊帐吸食鲜血，该项研究结果发表在《疟疾杂志》上。

Ignell says this chicken cologne won't be immediately available. "Ideally the world would be like that, that we could bottle it up and send it off and they don't have to pay anything. But that's not the case obviously." Luckily, there's an equally effective substitute. "We can actually reduce the number of mosquitoes indoors by just using a chicken. So that's probably the cheapest option."

Ignell表示，这种鸡味的科隆香水现在不能立即拥有，最理想的世界应该是这样的，我们可以把它装进瓶子里，然后让味道散发出去，并且他们不需要付出什么。但是显然情况并非如此。幸运的是，有一个同样有效的替代品，我们可以通过在室内使用一只鸡来减少蚊子的数量。可能这是最便宜的选择。”

—Christopher Intagliata

克里斯托弗·因塔格里塔报道。