Tamil Nadu Girl Uses Ovillantas Technique To Build Mosquito Trap

Mosquitoes seem to love old tyres in backyard settings, making them a rather popular breeding ground and posing a bigthreat of infections for people around.

However, the same tyre can also be used to construct a DIY trapfor menacing mosquitoes.

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A 9-year-old girl from Tamil Nadu's Kalpakkam has worked on the concept of Ovillantas, and developed a homemade trap for the insects.

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For the DIY trap named Ovillantas, the girl named Indira used a 13 inch old tyre, 1 hanger, a 1-inch PVC pipe, silicone glue, ball valve, PVC glue, filter paper and a bottle filled with water, reports News18.

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The tire is cut and made into the trap filled with a milk-based liquid to attract the mosquitos. When the eggs hatch a pheromone is released by the larva into the water and it acts as bait for female mosquitos.

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The Ovillanta traps are found especially in villages ofMexico. The word actually comes from the combination of two words, from theLatin word 'ovi' for egg and the Spanish 'llanta'.

According to Smithsonian, Gérard Ulíbarri, a chemistryprofessor at Laurentian University in Ontario, invented the traps almost byaccident.

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The report states that he and his team received a grant fromGrand Challenges Canada, a government agency that funds health research, tostudy whether the traps would work in Central America.

Ulíbarri developedthe idea when he had worked on a project involving mosquitotraps to combat West Nile virus, that broke out in parts of the United Statesand Canada in the 2000s. Researchers say Ovillantas can destroy up to seven timesmore mosquitoes than other insect traps and is also effective in reducing theuse of pesticides and other chemical repellents.