Sonic “pest” repellent technologies and multispecies disposability

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. “Pet Repeller Yard Sentinel” (Aspectek, March 3, 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAjV_Xt6IMo&ab_channel=Aspectek. Accessed September 15, 2023. Aspectek does not indicate when the Yard Sentinel was invented and the device is not patented, but because Aspectek was founded in 2006 (with web operations apparently beginning in 2008), it seems the device was developed in that year or later.

2. It is unclear what Aspectek means by “ultrasound” in the marketing for this device since ultrasound is commonly defined as sound whose frequency is above about 20 kHz, which is above the upper end of the Yard Sentinel Range. The company does not publicly list the device’s volume range.

3. “Pet Repeller Yard Sentinel” (Aspectek, March 3, 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAjV_Xt6IMo&ab_channel=Aspectek. Accessed September 15, 2023. For a recording of the ultrasonic and sonic harassment settings, see “Setting Up Your Yard Sentinel to Humanely Repel Pest Birds or Animals” (Bird Control Australia, August 29, 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LKf3z3bEdg. Accessed September 15, 2023.

4. “Yard Sentinel: Your Ultimate Guide to Effective Pest Control” (Aspectek, December 11, 2023), https://aspectek.com/blogs/news/yard-sentinel-your-ultimate-guide-to-effective-pest-control. Accessed January 2, 2024.

5. It is worth noting that the literature on other ultrasonic animal repellents indicates the technique has mixed effectiveness. Authors (Aflitto and DeGomez, 4) of a University of Arizona agricultural extension report from 2014 reviewing a range of sonic pest repellents concluded that “commercially available sonic pest devices for use in residential applications have not been shown to be effective in scientific studies”, though they also predicted that “as our understanding increases of how pest species receive and process sound, more relevant sonic devices may be developed”. Their review notes that technologies that use biologically relevant, species-specific, and often biosonic (derived from an organism) sounds showed the most promise at the time of the 2014 review. A more recent review of successful electronic pest repellent technologies by Ghorse; Kene, and Agrawal (2022, 87) supports Aflitto and DeGomez’s predictions and concludes that “acoustic devices have proven highly effective in trapping, identifying, detecting, and behaviorally manipulating pest species”.

6. For a recording of the Mosquito device’s sound, see “Kress IGA’s ‘Mosquito’, an Anti-Loitering Device” (strangervideo YouTube channel, November 18, 2019), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0wFj0t2Xvk&ab_channel=hamchris815. Accessed October 18, 2023.

7. “Mosquito FAQ: Solutions” (Moving Sound Technologies), https://www.movingsoundtech.com/mosquito-faq. Accessed December 8, 2022.

8. Some have speculated that the human-repellent devices are a direct adaptation of the nonhuman repellent technologies. Music scholar and artist Steve Goodman (2010, 184) explicitly describes the human-repelling mosquito devices as “an adaption of technologies initially deployed as a means of rodent control”. Howard Stapleton, the Mosquito MK4 inventor, has retold the same story about its invention in numerous forums, where a memory of hearing high-frequency sounds of machinery as a child that adults could not hear became useful when he sought to protect his daughter from loitering teens. See, for example, NPR Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan’s 2010 interview with Stapleton (“Mosquito Targets Teens with Audio Repellent”, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129581152). It is, however, still possible that Stapleton was also inspired by “pest” repellent technology, which has existed since at least the 1950’s (Aflitto and DeGomez 2014).

9. Further details on the Mosquito accessories are viewable on product listings in the Moving Sound Technologies “Store” page at https://www.movingsoundtech.com/store/p_1490866/mk4-security-cage. Accessed December 8, 2022.

10. Marcus Gee, “Oshawa Activist Confronts City’s First People Repellant”, The Globe and Mail, October 10, 2022, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-oshawa-activist-confronts-citys-first-people-repellant/. Accessed December 16, 2022.

11. For more on the designation of certain species as “pests” and relationships between animals and humans struggling in the face of social inequalities, see Biehler (2013).

12. For example, Moxon; England, and Allison (2010) and her research team consider whether ultrasonic devices like the mosquito devices impact guide dogs’ ability to fulfill their service to humans and do not assess signs of the dogs’ discomfort.

13. See, for example, the reports linked at “Mosquito: FAQ: Is it harmful?” (Mosquito Loitering Solutions), https://mosquitoloiteringsolutions.com/faq/is-it-harmful/. Accessed December 13, 2022.

14. Lawton (2001) establishes the importance of duration of exposure in assessing consequences of exposure to high frequency sound. See Goodling (2020) for more on environmental exposures associated with homelessness and homelessness as a form of systemic violence magnified by disability, race, gender, age, and more.

15. Goodling (2020) particularly considers the issue of homelessness and its concomitant increased risks of exposure as an environmental justice issue, and though she focuses on human environmental justice, nonhuman animals also experienced increased exposure to environmental problems because they most often live outside permanently. As environmental justice scholar David Naguib Pellow (2018, 15) notes, “when and where humans suffer from environmental inequalities, so does the more-than-human world (and vice versa), often as a result of ideological frameworks that devalue and associate marginalized humans with ‘nature’”.

16. See Cusick (2006), Goodman (2010), and Daughtry (2015).

17. See Kim (2015), Plumwood (2003), and Jackson (2020).

18. “Here’s why you can hear a shrill, irritating sound near the John Street bridge” (CTVNewsToronto TikTok channel, October 11, 2022), https://www.tiktok.com/@ctvnewstoronto/video/7153324383317069061?lang=en. Accessed December 2, 2023.

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Bailey Hilgren

Bailey Hilgren is a PhD student in ethnomusicology at New York University. She is interested in music and sound and ecofeminism, critical environmental justice, and human-animal studies. Before attending NYU, she taught in the Western Oregon University Sustainability Department. She received her M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon and M.M. in Historical Musicology from Florida State University.