(PCM) A company out of California has just earned a Gates Foundation grant to continue its’ research and experimentation with an unorthodox form of pest control which is cow cologne.
Created by ISCA Technologies, the cow cologne according to Smithsonian is “a mildly-scented shampoo-y goo is sprayed onto a cow that makes the animals smell like humans from several weeks to months.” The idea to trick the mosquitoes into biting the cows instead of humans. Humans run the risk of picking the disease malaria from mosquito bites, while cows are not at risk for human malaria.
Another bonus is that when the mosquito bites the cow that is treated with the insecticide it will also die after it ingests the poison. The plan is provide a safer alternative to control the mosquito population.
The product will be tests on cows in California now and then in Kenya this fall. It is the companies hope to be able to treat cows that reside in places like sub-Saharan Africa where malaria is a huge epidemic.
