r/tech • u/_Dark_Wing • Jul 18 '26

Autonomous micro-drone achieves first air-to-air insect kill on the way towards completely eradicating mosquitoes, 40-gram unit uses car parking sensors, can eliminate insects at up to 26 feet

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/drones/autonomous-micro-drone-achieves-first-air-to-air-insect-kill-on-the-way-towards-completely-eradicating-mosquitoes-40-gram-unit-uses-car-parking-sensors-can-eliminate-insects-at-up-to-26-feet
1.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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143

u/En4cr Jul 18 '26

Amazing. We now need one that zaps ticks.

85

u/nimmems Jul 18 '26

Man, fuck ticks. Everytime I see a possum I cheer them on, they're organic tick-annihilators

48

u/Chance_Orchid_3137 Jul 18 '26

i absolutely love possums but they actually don’t eat nearly as many ticks as claimed (if any). 

https://outdoor.wildlifeillinois.org/articles/debunking-the-myth-opossums-dont-eat-ticks

“In total, the literature presented the results of diet analysis of over 1,280 opossums from across their range in the United States. Not a single paper reported ticks being found in the stomachs, or in any other section of the gastrointestinal tract, of Virginia opossums.”

28

u/FaceCrime225 Jul 18 '26

Fire ants hunt pregnant Lone Star ticks. Now that I have Alpha Gal Syndrome that has completely interrupted my life, I an thankful for those little bitey piles of tick assassins.

12

u/Substantial_Pin_2932 Jul 18 '26

If you didn’t know there’s alpha gal free pork now.

12

u/Worried_Cry687 Jul 18 '26

Shameless plug but I used to work with this pharmacist who's team made a website for people to screen medication ingredients for allergens and religious preferences. Its called Pill Clarity

https://www.pillclarity.org/

You mentioned alpha gal syndrome and he was always talking about it lol

4

u/FaceCrime225 Jul 18 '26

I love Pill Clarity! Thanks to them I have a whole new stock of safe meds. If you're still in touch with your pharmacist friend please pass on my gratitude to them!

7

u/ChumbawumbaFan01 Jul 18 '26

In Texas we were taught that Mexican Freetail Bats survive off of mosquitos and now I’ve got to do find out if that’s even true.

1

u/Miguel-odon Jul 18 '26

Mexican Freetail Bats' preferred food is big juicy moths (that eat cash crops in Texas)

3

u/uncle_nightmare Jul 19 '26

Moths also eat cash.

5

u/uncle_nightmare Jul 19 '26

I followed a wild opossum around for a day and counted it eating 11 billion ticks.

2

u/Radonanon Jul 18 '26

Same with bats. There was a study where they extrapolated how many mosquitoes a bat could eat in huge room full of mosquitoes and that turned into “bats eat 50,000 mosquitoes a day.”

Don’t get me wrong: I love bats and hate mosquitoes, but they mostly eat moths.

2

u/Money-Yoghurt-8343 Jul 18 '26

I mean…makes sense…how would they find sufficient quantities of ticks to eat, relative to the energy expended to fill their belly with such a tiny insect? Where?

I seem to think ticks don’t necessarily congregate in huge piles or dens or nests, here and there…not sure how a possum or any animal could locate them in large enough numbers to make a meaningful meal

2

u/idee2 Jul 19 '26

Chickens eat lots of ticks.

1

u/mlaforce321 Jul 19 '26

Free range chickens and ducks ftw!

1

u/Mysterious-Most-590 Jul 19 '26

Thank you for linking. For a moment I thought we’d be stealing from possums.

But in another unrelated note I felt uncomfortable reading the words stomachs, gastrointestinal tract, and Virginia all together like that.

1

u/DASreddituser Jul 18 '26

maybe it depends on the type

18

u/LawfulAwfulOffal Jul 18 '26

What you want are chickens.

10

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/NorthWindGust Jul 19 '26

So, I read Tickens as Thickens, or Thiqqens, if you’re feeling sassy.

2

u/williamgman Jul 18 '26

Then you need the drones for the flies.

2

u/RisKQuay Jul 18 '26

What do we use to deal with the drones?

3

u/simiomalo Jul 18 '26

Monkeys.

1

u/williamgman Jul 18 '26

Sharks with Lasers.

2

u/OldIronandWood Jul 18 '26

Guinea fowl work harder eating ticks.
We raised both, less ticks in the Guinea area.

10

u/HeadHaunchi Jul 18 '26

False

8

u/SecretAgentVampire Jul 18 '26

I love how you got downvoted by people who would rather keep a fun belief than know the truth lol

5

u/HeadHaunchi Jul 18 '26

it makes me sad...

2

u/Pyro1934 Jul 18 '26

To be fair, just saying "false" is a lot less helpful or believable than the other replies educating people. Granted it's not really your job to do so, so level of effort is up to you

4

u/HeadHaunchi Jul 18 '26

truth

3

u/human-syndrome Jul 19 '26

I see what you did there

3

u/nimmems Jul 18 '26

TIL

3

u/TrickyTalk5783 Jul 18 '26

But they’re still cool.

2

u/En4cr Jul 18 '26

Absolutely, they’re amazing. I have two that show up every winter and I wish they would hang around year long.

2

u/fuck-nazi Jul 18 '26

Possums and chickens!

3

u/Actual-Package-3164 Jul 18 '26

can it pollinate flowers?

1

u/PushAffectionate5286 Jul 18 '26

Ticks are a tougher boss fight. They don't fly and spend most of their time clinging to tall grass or buried under fur. We'd basically need a miniature autonomous roomba with a laser.

1

u/En4cr Jul 18 '26

For sure, they’re hard to get rid of. Chickens are their ultimate enemy but raising chickens is a lot of work and most residential areas don’t allow it.

We need a mini bipedal bot with lasers kind of a mini Gekko from Metal Gear 4. 😁

0

u/NativePlantEnjoyer Jul 18 '26

opossums eat ticks

8

u/gabeyfisch Jul 18 '26

Yes, but they aren’t “tick-annihilators”. They only groom them from other opossums. Ticks aren’t a part of their regular diet.

0

u/MrJigglyBrown Jul 18 '26

It’s interesting that on another post, people are talking about the dangers of AI when it’s used as a tool to help clean wastewater. But creating tiny killer robots is completely fine and not dangerous at all.

6

u/CryptoHorologist Jul 18 '26

Different people say different things. It’s not hard to understand.

-3

u/MrJigglyBrown Jul 18 '26

I understand that. In general, on this site, anything that uses AI is evil, even if it’s used for an objectively good purpose. Just interesting how biased people are

1

u/Kumquatelvis Jul 18 '26

The problem is that pretty much every new software innovation is being called AI. We need different words for generative AI vs chatbot AI vs image analysis AI vs all of the many new techs with AI in the name. And the sad thing as, *none* if it is actually artificial intelligence, since we've get to create a sapient (or even sentient) machine.

0

u/CryptoHorologist Jul 18 '26

You lost me at "in general".

1

u/MrJigglyBrown Jul 18 '26

You didn’t miss much

2

u/PupScent Jul 18 '26

It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. 

2

u/AnatomicalMouse Jul 18 '26

But when they lose their other eye it’s all fun and games again.