Instructing Maasai |
Making a "DIY" Trap - It's easy This page introduces the information needed to make a Nzi trap from cloth or alternative materials (plywood, plexiglass). Instructions are provided elsewhere on how to choose optimum fabrics, how to site and erect a trap, and how to make collecting systems to retain flies. Use common sense to adapt these guidelines to readily-available materials (costs). A cloth trap is used to show the general layout and principles. |
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Cloth Traps |
Rigid Traps |
Compare the photographs to the schematic below to understand the layout and the geometry of the pieces (external poles are shown in the photos; internal poles in the schematic).
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 A
view of the trap from behind shows the
back edge of the horizontal shelf
and the gap at the back.Flies enter at the bottom front, fly into the transparent netting, and are then trapped when they fly up through the gap between the netting shelf and the back of the trap. The inner shelf is important as both it and the large transparent area at the back make it difficult for flies to find a route out of the trap once inside.
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| The sides
at the back are formed by a single square piece of netting; the sides at the front
are
formed from black rectangles. The body of the trap
is closed
at the front by a top blue shelf. Two blue rectangular
"wings" extend out at an angle from the
front framing the lower entrance. An
inner trapezoidal piece of netting extends horizontally half-way
into the body from the bottom of the blue shelf. The top is closed by a
netting "cone", made by cutting a
wedge out of a
square piece of netting and sewing up the sides.
This results in a tetrahedron: a
3-d shape with three triangles
joining at the apex. |
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Download Power Point or PDF |
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The trap is made from simple
