Do chickens stop mosquito bites?: BBC News Review

Can chickens stop you getting bitten by mosquitoes? Join Rob and Sian in News Review as they bring you this exciting story and the language you need to understand it.

Learn more about this and test your understanding here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/course/towards-advanced/unit-4/session-2

The story:

Scientists have discovered that malaria-carrying mosquitoes are deterred by the smell of certain animals, particularly chickens.

Working in Ethiopia, researchers found that the Anopheles arabiensis mosquito strongly preferred human to animal blood. And while it fed randomly on cattle, goats and sheep, it avoided chickens.

Habte Tekie - Addis Ababa University

They feed on humans and other domestic animals, but not on chicken, because the mosquito antennae did not respond.

Person sleeping under untreated bed nets inside the house, the light trap attached to the chicken didn't catch the malaria mosquitoes, while the light trap in which human beings slept overnight collected quite a significant number of malarial mosquito.

Key words and phrases:

repel
keep something away (for example: insects/water) by being unattractive or unpleasant to it

something/someone repels you
you find something/someone disgusting or unpleasant and want to stay away from it/them

deter
prevent/discourage someone from doing something by making it difficult or unpleasant for them to do it

a pun
a funny way of using a word so that more than one meaning is suggested

steer clear of
to avoid someone or something

Видео Do chickens stop mosquito bites?: BBC News Review канала BBC Learning English