Fancy sleeping with a chicken? Strange as it may sound, a clucking bedfellow can protect you from malaria, research from Africa suggests.
Researchers in Ethiopia claim a chicken by the bedside can ward of mosquitoes carrying dreaded malarial parasites. Odors of the bird are attributed to the 'chickening effect' but just what deters the mosquitoes is not known. To arrive at their conclusions, agricultural scientists used people as bait to attract mosquitoes.
"Chicken odorants acted as natural repellents," said study senior author Rickard Ignell of Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
The study began when Ignell and his team observed biting habits of Anopheles arabiensis. Species is known to prefer humans when indoors and feeds on goats, cattle and sheep when outdoors but avoided chicken both indoor and outdoor. Scientists then got volunteers to sleep with caged chicken.
They placed mosquito traps that sucked in insects when they ventured too close. Researchers found fewer mosquitoes trapped than what one would find when sleeping without the bird.
In their bid to zero in on what exactly chicken possess to ward off mosquitoes they extracted chemical compounds responsible for chicken odors for dispersion in bedrooms. To make a comparison, researchers also used extracts from cattle, sheep and goat. They found a 95 % reduction in mosquito presence when the ambiance smelt like hen. Researchers established not only do mosquitoes avoid biting chickens but they also avoid venturing close to the birds.
Some theories proffered to explain the observations include predator-prey relationship that chicken share with mosquitoes and the chicken blood being unsavory for anopheles.
Mosquitoes infected 214 million people with malaria in 2015, resulting in over 400,000 deaths worldwide. Chicken could add to armory of tools to keep mosquitoes away in endemic areas.
