Why Scientists Are Listening To Insects
by The Daily Eye Team May 4 2017, 1:41 pm Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 48 secsResearchers are reviving a field of study grounded in both music and biology: wingbeat frequency. This peculiar line of study could help us fight malaria It's a warm summer afternoon in the Tanzanian village of Lupiro, and Mikkel Brydegaard is crouching in a brick hut, trying to fix a broken laser. Next to him, on a tall tripod, three telescopes point through a window at a tree in the distance. A laptop rests on an upturned box, waiting to receive a signal. With a working laser, this system is known as lidar – like radar, Brydegaard tells me, but using a laser instead of radio waves. The setup is supposed to gather precise data about the movement of malaria mosquitoes. But as the sun starts to set outside, Brydegaard is getting nervous. He and his colleagues have spent a week in Tanzania, and their device still hasn't started collecting data. They're almost out of time.