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Cockroaches Keep Coming Up With News Ways To Evade Us
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published May 24, 2013
Modified May 24, 2013
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published May 24, 2013
Modified May 24, 2013
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Now that we've gotten confirmation that bed bugs have been sent from the depths of hell to condemn New Yorkers to a lifetime of soul-and-blood-sucking torture, we can turn our attention to that other insect scourge of city life: the cockroach. According to a recent study, some species of cockroach started noticing humans were using glucose to bait-and-kill them, so they evolved, and now they hate the taste of sugar. It's therefore harder to smite them, and they've also probably cut down on their obesity rates. Bloomberg, take note!
The study, conducted by a team at North Carolina State University, found that though roaches were known to be attracted to sweet substances, some began to develop a resistance to the taste once pest control companies started lacing poisoned baits with glucose. Instead of activating the sweet-detecting part of the cockroach's brain, sugary substances started activating the part that sensed bitter tastes, thus repelling the roach. "It behaves like a baby that rejects spinach," researcher Dr. Coby Schal told Science while describing a roach's reaction to a dose of sugar. "It shakes its head and refuses to imbibe that liquid, at the end, you can see the [glucose] on the side of the head of the cockroach that has refused it." You know, just something to rattle around in your brain before lunch.
This anti-sugar mutation is so far only present in German cockroaches; as in, the many little ones you find crawling on your kitchen cabinets at night, not the sole, big, evil bug who sometimes stares you down in the shower and judges you for stealing your roommate's conditioner. And pest companies say the anti-sugar switch won't stop them from coming up with new methods to help hunt down bugs. But don't think this genetic adaption isn't a warning from the roach armies that they will one does rise up to rule us all: "We keep throwing insecticides at them and they keep evolving mechanisms to avoid them," Schal said. "They depend on us, but they also take advantage of us." We know you're coming for us, cockroaches. And, despite Hollywood's attempts to tell convince us otherwise, let's be real...we'll lose.
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Rebecca Fishbein
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