How he became interested in painting people's bodies: "It goes way back to when I was in college. VANN GODFREY (the artist painting Miller) Females that bite and suck blood from host animals respond to the same signals as the males, but also to light signals from in the vertical plane, such as the standing models," concludes Susanne Åkesson.Vann Godfrey is the artist painting Alison Miller. "These results are in line with previous experiments in which we showed that males gravitate towards water in order to drink and land on surfaces that reflect horizontal, linear polarised light, such as signals from a water surface. The results show that only females were attracted to the standing models, whereas both males and females were drawn to the supine models. They also examined whether the attraction of horseflies differed between models that were lying down or standing up. The dark model attracted ten times more horseflies than the striped model, and the beige model attracted twice as many as the striped one. They then covered the three models with a layer of insect glue. In the new study, the team has taken the research a step further and examined plastic models that are the same size as adult humans.įor the experiments, which were conducted in Hungary, the researchers painted three plastic models of humans: one dark, one dark with pale stripes and one beige. The discovery won the IgNobel Prize in Physics in 2016. It is also known that pale fur, on horses for example, can provide protection, in contrast to dark fur. The research team has previously observed that the zebra's stripes act as protection against horseflies. They suggest that they had been body-painted with earth pigments such as ochre," says Susanne Åkesson. There are archaeological finds that include markings on the walls of caves where Neanderthals lived. "Body-painting began long before humans started to wear clothes. It is not known when the tradition started. The researchers also found that a beige-coloured plastic figure used as a control model attracted twice as many bloodsuckers as the striped model.Īccording to Susanne Åkesson, professor at Lund University's Department of Biology, the tradition of body-painting may have developed simultaneously on different continents. A brown plastic model of a human attracted ten times as many horseflies as a dark model painted with white stripes. The study shows that body-painting provides protection against the insects. When these insects bite people there is a risk of bacteria, parasites and other pathogens being transferred. Most of the indigenous communities who paint their bodies live in areas where there is an abundance of bloodsucking horseflies, mosquitoes or tsetse flies.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |