When the early 19th-century scientist Thomas Malthus contemplated ways of reducing the population before it outstripped the food supply, he considered infanticide, murder, contraception, starving the poor � and homosexuality. The latter has been harnessed by present-day scientists to halt an explosion, not of people, but of brown-tailed moths.

Moths and their larvae have multiplied in such numbers in some parts of the country recently that they have become a menace to people. Experts have come up with the novel solution of tricking the males of the species into thinking that they are gay.