Tremex behaviour & our behavior

[Peter Stevens]

>
>      But let me suggest yet another possibility---as I brainstorm a little
>further.  With the perfume industry mixing hundreds or thousands of
>different chemicals into their "seductive" formulas, and increasingly using
>various animal musks and pheromones, would it not be likely that humans
>wearing such chemical concoctions (or the dogs, cats or horses which they
>pet and groom) would be at increasing risk of becoming chemically attractive
>(positively or negatively) to various insects?
>      I've always wondered if people who wear strong perfumes and
>aftershaves might not be at greater risk of being stung by bees, bitten by
>mosquitoes or ticks, or just bugged by insects in general.  For all we know
>the dog killed by all those bees might have been petted by an owner with
>lots of aftershave or perfume on his/her hands.  With hundreds of chemicals
>in such mixtures, one could have mimicked the distress chemical of bees.
>Who knows, as it only takes tiny amounts (parts per million or even parts
>per billion) to trigger reactions in the insects detecting them?
>


To add information to this thread, a dragon fly laid an egg on the
back of my hand as I was watching tadpoles/pollywogs in the school
pond.  This was many years ago now, and I was not and am not a heavy
user of perfumes, etc.  On the other hand, it was a very hot, dry
summer, at least by England's standards.

Peter S.