Water filled plastic bags on trees scare bugs away?
The folks at my daughter's preschool say they learned this trick on a kibbutz in Israel: plastic bags filled with water, and hung from tree branches to scare the bugs away. Does it work?
The folks at my daughter's preschool say they learned this trick on a kibbutz in Israel: plastic bags filled with water, and hung from tree branches to scare the bugs away. Does it work?
It definitely works on tigers.
This doesn't make sense to me. I guess the only thing we have to keep away here are mosquitos and since they spawn in water, I'd think they'd be attracted to it. But what do I know?
They do this at a restaurant in Houston I like to visit on the patio....the flies still land on your food. Maybe it's bug specific.
ok,which bugs?
Supposedly if you fill a narrow-necked glass jug with water bees will find their way to it but won't be able to fly out of the water due to the narrow neck.
NO!!!!
I lived on a small island in the carib for 2 years which was known for having these bags everywhere. When it wasn't raining there were flies everywhere including flying around and landing on these silly bags. Either we had blind flies, fearless flies, or the bags had NO EFFECT.
Old folks have been using this in Mexico to scare away flies for as long as I can remember, and probably decades before that. Does not work but if the flies retreat to somewhere else, they claim it was the bags. They believe the flies are scared of their refracted image, or maybe other fly looks bigger behind the bag.
I'm sure it's highly effective on cooties.
now,a paper bag that looks like a wasp nest, that works
I have no idea how this would work. Most insects wouldn't discern a bag of water based on sight. It'd all be via smell or pheromones, which a bag of water is not giving off.
You can keep bees from your picnic by leaving bowls of beer at the periphery. They'll be really attracted to the beer (aren't we all!), and hopefully not bother you.
I've used this method for years and it works, not 100% but it certainly reduces the number of insects around. I understand that it works because it messes with the insects visual system. I don't know if this is true. Light blue painted walls are supposed to work as well. I learned this trick from a taco vendor in Hermasillo, Mexico.
How do I scare corporate bugs away?
They have these hanging in the windows of the Wheel Inn in Cabazon, the truck stop diner next to the dinosaurs from PeeWee's Big Adventure. When the waitress tried to explain it, I almost choked on my buttermilk.
I saw this at Rudy's BBQ in Austin on my last business trip, and they swear it works. When I walked around back there wasn't a single fly over the dumpsters...
I works well as a mammoth repellent, but that's about it.
I've had bags of water hanging all over the house and haven't been attacked by a single mammoth since I put them up.
I hear a Maytag (or two) in the yard keeps the blackflies away.
My In-Laws had these over their open doorways in the summer to keep the flies out. They had seen this in town at some of the shops and decided to give it a try. Needless to say, it did not work, which perplexed me because I thought flies could not fly under-water ;)
What a coincidence! I just started selling these repellent devices, only $30 apiece.
hah! mine are only $25. Charlatan! Further, mine have been blessed by Bennie the Rat himself!
Re: the bags of water...if this were the case, flies would leave live humans alone as we're basically big bags of water with some assorted chemicals.
Light blue walls...ha ha haaaaaaa. I have light blue walls in my place. The only things between me and flypocalyptic doom are fly strips and amazing swatter-fu. Some of those bastards ar etougher than Chuck Norris, too. I've known cockroaches go down easier than Arizona flies.
So, does this correlate in any way to people putting bottles of water on their lawns to frighten dogs away? I've never understood this one, either...
Hmm..what are the odds of a religious commune like a Kibbutz being a place of superstition?
You have to put a piece of aluminum foil or a penny in the bag. At least that's what they do here in Ga. I have no idea if it works, but a lot of people say it does. *shrugs*
This reminds me of a viral behavior from a few decades ago where a plastic milk bottle filled with water placed on a (presumably well-manicured) lawn would keep neighborhood dogs from defecating on it
(http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/lawn.asp)
i recall seeing several lawns with a dozen of these on it. was that less unsightly than the pile of crap that it supposedly scared away (but didn't)? [shrug] (peoplz iz kwazy)
Seriously it does work!
I am living in South Korea and it is quite common here especially for the street food seller's truck in SUMMER.
Pity that since it is still few months left for Summer, I can't take pictures right away.
Well, maybe it only works for the normal bugs which means the one who can see properly. 'Cuz I heard that becuase of the water inside of the plastic bag, the bug will see himself but really bigger than the realsize. Also I heard that it is also related with it's eye structuer. What we call as a stemma..
I have no idea if this works, but it reminds me of my next door neighbors as a kid; they had glass jars of water on their lawn. They swore up and down it kept dogs off of their grass.
My thought, even as a kid was 'Ok, so you don't have poop making your yard ugly... instead you have frekin strange jars of water. Go you!'
#25, we must have posted at the same time. They do look a sight, don't they?
There are plastic bags full of water decorating many of Austin's outdoor eateries. After much evaluation of this technique at a variety of places I can sum this up very simply: it does not work.
Except maybe like Sam Jackson's car's heater in "The Long Kiss Goodnight". It doesn't work but it makes a very annoying noise that distracts you from the cold. These don't work, but they are such a compelling mix of stupid (WHY would this POSSIBLY work?) and ugly (dusty, greasy, floppy bags of water bulging from every rafter) that they upstage the flies and make you think about other things.
Since ugly bags of mostly water are known to attract bugs, perhaps attractive bags of 100% water are enough of a contrast to repel them.
This is awesome. How does shit like this get started? There's even folks in here claiming it works. So brilliant.
I want to start one of these, something so outrageous and stupid yet with just enough of a dog-head tilt to it to make it work for the gullible and go viral.
There's a lot of "I heard it from so-and-so" in this thread, so that's definitely something that has to factor in.
Seriously? BUGS?
These are effective at keeping BIRDS out of trees, not BUGS.
They use them in outdoor Austin eateries to keep the grackels and sparrows from dropping a bomb into your dinner plate.
The random refractions as they move in the wind is evidently off putting enough to repels birds. From what I understand the original repellent was aluminum Pie Plates, but they were replaced in favor of something quieter in the wind.
it works, it has something to do with the way the light refracts through the bag with water in it, it messes up the bug's vision
#23, Just what sort of Peace is it that you're advocating in your screenname? The cultural insensitivity of your comment suggests it's not global.
Kids, don't listen to the teacher. It's a piñata!
Kids, don't listen to the teacher. It's a piñata!
This sounds like a total cargo cult to me. "Messes with the bug's vision" sounds totally bogus -- why doesn't the sun have that effect?
I've seen this at the Hobbit Cafe in Houston. I've asked them about it, and they swear it works.
mcdonough (#6) Please don't kill the bees! We need the bees!
You know those big transparent blue plastic jugs that water-cooler water comes in?
If you fill those with kraut juice and put it in your apartment building's elevator, you won't be bothered by vampires or werewolves.
Really, try it.
But you have to fill it with MAGIC water...
It works. I used to work at an auto shop that had a big rollup door, that we would keep open during the really hot summer. We always had a problem with flies buzzing around the shop. After seeing it down at the cafe (they put a penny in theirs, and i've seen others put coins in the bag as well), we tried it (with pennies) and within a couple days, once all the original flies had found their way out..no more flies. it was awesome.
I know this works because all of the programmers at Microsoft have plastic bags of water hanging over their cubicals, and Vista is bug-free.
It only works with holy water.
#6, what's a water bee? Sounds scary.
I use aluminum pie plates to frighten birds away from my fruit trees (this works). When I pick the apples and cherries I find wormholes and at the end of the summer there are always cicada shells on the trunks of the trees. Maybe I should try the water bags. Doesn't seem like it would do anything. I'm pretty sure the bags are intended for birds not bugs.
Well, it seems no one has really done a study on if this works or not so the jury is out. Also, please note that anecdotal evidence(IE, "this one restaurant I visited used them...") is not an acceptable argument.
But there is the possibility it might mess with the insects visual systems.
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~weg22/opticFlow.html
Clearly, we need to get the Mythbusters to test this.
This bag is part of a Maker project aimed at detecting the quantum goldfish tunneling effect.
You all need to move into the big city. Very few bugs in Chicago downtown. We've got 3 million people swatting them, maybe that's why!
I like the pinata idea, but use kerosene and give the kids flaming torches (..what?)
#37 - the sun alone doesnt have the same effect because air doesnt bend light, while water does bend light...the bent light, refraction and the number of eyes that bugs have detracts them...think about looking at a light through a kaleidoscope, bugs wont fly into an area where their vision is affected that much.
Sugar water in a 2-liter soda bottle acts as an effective trap for yellowjackets and such, but that's because they're attracted to the contents and drown. If a plastic jug is too redneck for your yard, you can buy fancy-looking glass things made specifically for that purpose. (Insofar as anything visibly full of sodden bug carcasses can be "fancy-looking.")
This totally works.
See what happens is when the bug gets close, the water bag falls on its head and makes the bug look really foolish.
There has to be a penny in the bag.
Really.
I was first introduced to this on the patio at Juan in a Million (best breakfast tacos evah) in Austin, where we never saw a fly. I was told that bugs' compound eyes can't deal with the refraction (light bending) in the bags, so they steer clear.
This doesn't sound too far-fetched to me, considering that it's thought that flying insects use the horizon as a reference to stabilize their flight. The bags of water, and the resulting visual effects, may have the effect of creating a no-fly (heh) zone in the vicinity, where the insects' flight instrumentation goes haywire.
what year?
My grandfather in Chile has been using the "plastic bag" method ever since I remember. He says the reflection of the bugs in the water scares them and they go away.
Nobody here thinks it really works; but we let him install the bags everywhere, anyway.
Im not a biologist nor have studied optics, but I can try to guess about this:
I am sure it works. Do you actually think that thousands of people would be hanging water bags all around if no one ever saw some results? LOL
The insect eye is a compound eye, made of hundreds individual lenses, these lenses see parts of the image and work in different modes according to the insect see here for more info
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/CompoundEye.html
Some insects have more eyes that also add to the complexity. Since humans have single lensed eyes it is hard for us to imagine how exactly an insect sees. There was a simulation online of how an insect sees however its not online anymore.
But even that simulation would be wrong, because we might simulate the insect eye, but not the insect BRAIN, and no one can simulate that yet.
The reason is this:
What scientists are discovering is that its not the eye alone that makes the image of course, but the brain of each animal insect or human is what actually creates the image. And this image may be different from what the actual light information normally would show. Many experiments were done years ago by the creator of the instant photo Kodak camera showing that the brain compensates for variation of lighting unlike mechanical cameras that need filters according to the lighting they are receiving (for example interior or exterior lighting)
see here about bees and how their brains can compensate to find flowers even though lighting can change.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1101_051101_bee_vision.html
So my guess is that the way light is scattered from the hanging water bags gives the impression to the bug that there is a barrier of water, like a wall, and will not want to pass it.
It is the combination of the water AND the shape of the bag that creates a sort of lens.
This of course is due to a natural mechanism of self preservation, if there was a waterfall the bug would not want to just run into it and be killed.
Having bags all around mixes up the bug and finally it flees... or should I say fleas :-)
K.S
#23 - A Kibbutz is NOT a "religious commune", the whole Kibbutz movement is based on secular, socialist ideals.
@51 - ROTFLMAO
Well that explains why mirages of beatiful oases are figments of the imagination of dehydrated desert travelers. NOT.
A ray of light changes direction everytime that it encounters a change in the density of the medium through which it it is traveling; the effect is called refraction. That's why sunsets are red and the shimmering 'puddles' of water that appear in the distance on those hot roads in the summer disappear when you get close to them. It's also the principle upon which the lens of your eye works. Oh, and by the way, the sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering.
Oh Thank God! I thought it was a goldfish lynching....
Seriously though, I once read about a very similar device that has been hailed as the reason Mothra hasn't been back to Tokyo since the 60's!
Goldfish LYNCHING! There isn't enough of that! I will have my REVENGE, Goldie! I will have my revenge!
:D
yep, it does work! I've seen it in a small village in Honduras; the women used to scare the flies, so they could chop veggies without having to wave them away every minute... very high tech, isn't it?
I have not idea if it works or not, but they do use this same technique here in Bolivia. I don't see many bugs, though being at 12,000 feet might also have something to do with it.
No.
Oh please.
It's the kibbutz that scares them.
Flies have a primitive if-then decision tree for a brain. Neither fear nor bravery plays a role in any of their reactions. What are they supposed to be afraid of, the water, the bag or the fact that it hovers? The truth is most bugs don't have eyesight worth a plugged nickel.
Couple of quotes from an Orlando Sentinel article a while back:
"Phil Kaufman, a University of Florida professor of veterinary entomology, said there is no scientific research to back up those claims.
"It's a pretty safe bet it doesn't work," he said."
"But a North Carolina State University researcher spent 13 weeks looking at the effects of water bags on flies at an egg-packing plant. Mike Stringham, also a veterinary entomologist, meticulously counted droppings left by flies on white "spot cards."
The results were conclusive: The water bags attracted more flies.
"In the control room versus bags, the bags were consistently higher every time," he said."
In the words of XKCD, "Stand Back! I'm going to try Science!"
This reminds me of a great lifehacker post on a DIY fruit fly trap made from a two-liter soda bottle. Made my kitchen enormously more habitable.
#58 "I am sure it works. Do you actually think that thousands of people would be hanging water bags all around if no one ever saw some results? LOL"
Perhaps you're right.
Would thousands of people carry around the foot of a dead rabbit if it didn't improve their luck enough that it outweighed the fact that they were carrying around the foot of a dead rabbit? Nah. People aren't that dumb.
#55: "This doesn't sound too far-fetched to me, considering that it's thought that flying insects use the horizon as a reference to stabilize their flight"
Thought by whom? There are many places, including the indoors, where an insect can not see a horizon. They seem to do alright despite that, and certainly don't avoid those places. A quick google search only shows a few mentions of using the horizon that way, but not of requiring the horizon for navigation. It's just, possibly, one of the things they use to find their way around.
Evolution! first 2 liter bottles showed up on lawns in Auckland New Zealand in 1987 and now they take to the trees. Can the bipedal tool-users be far behind?
(bottles keep dogs off if the entire lawn is covered)
I just got back from Israel. While in the Golan Heights, I saw something that looked similar. It was a bag hanging from a string like that but it had sugar water in it and a small hole poked in it. The idea was that the bugs could find the hole through smell, but could not find their way out once in, and they would eventualy die. (Or at least be stuck in the bag, I would imagine with an huge supply of water and food they could live a good long bug life)
It seemed to work well, there were quite a few bugs in them.
@#66: Fundamental methodological flaw: "Mike Stringham, also a veterinary entomologist, meticulously counted droppings left by flies on white 'spot cards.' The results were conclusive: The water bags attracted more flies."
In fact, the rooms with bags had fewer flies but, terrified of their reflections, the flies reflexively evacuated their bowels, causing spurious spot card results.
Here is an abstract of the article in the Orlando Sentinel that PJCAMP mentioned. I am too cheep to pay for the full version.
This thread is AWESOME.
In fact, the rooms with bags had fewer flies but, terrified of their reflections, the flies reflexively evacuated their bowels, causing spurious spot card results.
Hahahahahaha! That just goes to show ya, you need peer review! Somebody WILL come up with a better theory!
LOL!
FWIW - it's not blue walls, it's sky blue porch ceilings (very common down south) and it's only supposed to prevent wasps, dirt dobbers and hornets from building nests because it looks like they are not protected from open sky and nest destroying rain.
We did it a few years ago when we repainted toe porch just for the traditional look and have had noticeably fewer wasp nests (spiders don't care a bit, may even have more since they aren't competing with wasps).
"Do you actually think that thousands of people would be hanging water bags all around if no one ever saw some results? LOL"
Yes. It's a very common and well understood phenomena:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
So no, on its own, "thousands of people" is not proof, and it's not even suggestive that it might be likely to be true.
Now, there are strong first-person reports of great success, which is much better, and should also be easy to prove. Hang up a bag of water every other day near a garbage bin next to a white wall (so you can see the flies against it more easily), and take a picture of it on a consistent basis.
(Un)fortunately, I don't have a fly problem around here, so I'll use that as my excuse for being too lazy to do it myself :)
But without evidence, a lot of people nodding in agreement is *known* to be basically worthless.
They've been doing this down in texas for years, I've always wished the mythbusters would pick this one up.
As far as I can tell perhaps the water triggers something in the fly's brain to go hide.
If you were a fly do you think it would behoove you to be out in a rain storm?
It's what runs a certain percentage of Boing Boing when it gets all political :^)
"is the process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions.
Politics consists of "social relations involving authority or power"[1] and refers to the regulation of a political unit, [2] and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy."
Politics is who gets what, when, and how.
Seth Brundle: Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects… don’t have politics. They’re very… brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can’t trust the insect. I’d like to become the first… insect politician. Y’see, I’d like to, but… I’m afraid, uh…
She-e-e-it, these water-filled plastic bags to scare bugs are nothing compared to Japan, which has tens of thousands of plastic bottles of filled with water to scare cats away from buildings.
See my report, Silly Japanese folkways: Cat-scare Bottle.
they use these
http://www.bird-x.com/mas_assets/full/T-EYES.jpg
If you hang a bag of water in your bedroom, does it prevent Fan Death?
Korean fan death?
have we looked into the possibility of ZipLoc perpetuating these myths?
Korean fan death?
Is there another kind?
MS users should try tying one of these to their 'puters...
Buzz buzz buzz. Dum de dum buzz buzz.... oh shit... OH SHIT! Get outta here, boys, it's BAGS OF WATER! Fly for your lives!
They do this at restaurants and bars here in Austin. It works better if they drop a couple of pennies in the bag.
Yahoo Answer: Is it true that by hanging a plastic bag with water in it, it will keep flys away or is these a myth?
Also answered on Straight Dope:
What's the purpose of bags of water hanging in restaurants?
I have only seen something like this once before. I know a guy from here in Louisiana who fills bags with water and pennies. He hangs them from his porch awning and told me they're for good luck. I assumed this was a modern version of the apotropaic "spirit bottles," which are just bottles you hang in a tree to scare off mean boogeymannish ghosties. It's not an unusual custom here but I don't know how widespread this is... I think it's a voodoo thing brought over from Africa. There seems to be a similar custom in the middle east using nazar amulets instead of bottles, pic: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://lh3.google.com/_5Q1TB6UIp-c/RqM6valN-4I/AAAAAAAABeo/Ry39oGcdGl4/s800/2a%2B-%2BCappadocia%2B01%2B-%2BA%2Bwishing%2Btree.JPG&imgrefurl=http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/35-EzUG-56_ZkIBf3PAsnQ&h=600&w=800&sz=130&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=vhA0LdhCQ1EQPM:&tbnh=107&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3Devil%2Beye%2Btree%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG
Anyway, I have no factual basis or anything for my theory about the connection here, but I guess its as good a guess as any.
As for the Japanese cat-scare bottles, why would they do that? Especially since they have to rent dogs?!
More bags of water over doorways here. Seen in Newport, OR.
My grandparents always had these things hanging around. They swore by it, but I always found it a bit silly.
Yeah, they do it in Korea too.
It works better if you add red dye to the water before you hanging up the bag, then spray the whole area with poison.
I second what folks have been saying, specifically TARO 3YEN.COM for mentioning cats.
When I was in Japan, I saw water bottles EVERYWHERE, especially on steps and around poles. Not giving it much thought, I assumed that it was just the Japanese saving rain water... I finally spoke to a friend about it and he said that it's to prevent cats from peeing everywhere. Who knew!
Posting on Boing Boing about hanging water bags definitely attracts more comments than posting about how mortgage derivatives tanked the economy.
Some people here in Java Land believe that by hanging colourful water inside a plastic bags on the tree will avoid their house from evils.
I know it's only a myth, but it's nice to see those hanging colorfull water inside plastic bags.
In Italy, a urban legend say that you leave a bottle filled with water next the entering door, cat's don't urine in that place.
:-|
The explanation I've gotten to this phenomena is that the bug gets close to the plastic bag filled with water, sees his distorted reflection, thinks to himself "oh my god! this dude is ugly and scary" and runs away.
TARO 3 YEN, HEYDN -
Using PET plastic drink bottles filled with water to scare away cats, that WORKS. At least everyone tells me it does.
It seems best to use not the ordinary ones but the ones that hold like a quart and are oblong in cross-section. The angles catch the sun and scare the cats away it seems.
There is one really, really big problem with this though. THEY CAN START FIRES! I shit you not. Fires have been started by the lensing effect in bright sun so you don't want to have the focus on anything that can burn.
A similar problem MIGHT exist for those hanging plastic bags, so watch out!
@1 -- Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.
@26 -- from the same country that thinks people die all the time by sleeping in rooms with the fan on. (damn, someone beat me to it)
I can see a better use for plastic bags of water hanging from trees in dry/hot climates... but it'd have to be the kind with super-small holes in it... sort of a basic evaporative cooler. And there are probably better ways to do that than plastic bags.
I can see it keeping birds away though. But the best bet is #61 -- "Goldfish Lynching"
Actually, if you use a coke-type bottle with a 1/4 cup of some type of sweet drink (orange juice works best), a bunch of bugs (especially gnats) will drown themselves in it.
It looks like a disgusting insect death-pit, but it works. :P
@#43
Yeah, Vista has no bugs, they're "features".
@23:
While some kibbutzim are religious in orientation, most are secular. Further, as someone mentioned earlier, the kibbutz movement was initally a socialist, secularist movement.
Of course, they're in *Israel,* and everyone knows that place is full of religious whackjobs...
*eyeroll*
I am terrified by that picture. Please take it down. Now.
Kip "Giant Flying Insect" W
Lots of good jokes in this thread. That said, sometimes weird things work without a scientific explanation and this is one of them. In our co-op we use bags of h2o with a penny to keep flies at bay. As anyone who has dealt with flies in the south knows, every little bit helps.
Sea Water
they have them in the Canary Islands.
I was told that the water in the bag has to be Sea Water, as it causes the bugs (mosquitoes) to think that they were traveling over the sea. This would cause them to turn around and fly off from whence they came, in fear of getting lost over the ocean with no food.
Maybe we could just PRAY that the bugs will leave.
I'm pretty sure that will work just as well.
We usually use vodka and drop a pear in it.
The bug gets attracted to the pear then $hits
himself we then collect the excrement to use as fertilizer to grow our marijuana which we smoke and come up with new ways to utilize all these plastic bags we got lying around the pear flavored vodka needs to be drunk every three months so we make up holidays with fat men in red furry suits the bugs come around for the alcohol infused pear which begins the cycle in the first place well the alcoholic bugs anonymous complained and told us to put water instead thats why the bugs dont come around anymore I swear
It may not be effective at keeping bugs away, but it'll certainly keep -me- away. Superstition = nutbaggery = I don't want to know you or give you my money.
nutbaggery, roffle.
you should suspend another bag full of rice next to it, instant social commentary.
Good heavens. I've seen and heard an awful lot of goofy urban myth over the years, and even now I still wonder how it is that otherwise intelligent people (for the most part) cling to the most patently ridiculous, specious crap as though admitting that it doesn't work, can't work and never did work would somehow spoil their lives. Then they pass the same silly crap down to their offspring.
*sigh*
Got brains?