Cockroaches at Their Best at Night

Science_afficionado writes "A new study has found that cockroaches are morons in the morning and geniuses in the evening in terms of their learning capacity. Previous studies suggest that the learning capacity of both people and rats are also affected by their internal biological clocks. But the effect is far more dramatic in cockroaches and it is the first time it has been found in insects. And, no, the researchers didn't try giving their cockroaches a sip of coffee to see if it revived them!"

Comments

"Genius"?!

[Sody]

These are cockroaches we're talking about here, folks. Calling them "genius" at any time of the day is stretching it just a little, yes?

Of course, the same could most likely be said of the person who came to mind when you read the summary, too....

Re:"Genius"?!

[Aladrin]

They also seem to assume there are no other factors involved. Maybe it's not 'ability' to learn but 'desire' instead. Maybe their digestive system doesn't normally work at that time of day, and there's not enough incentive to learn. There's probably a billion other reasons they haven't thought of, right down to which researchers worked with which groups, and what other smells were nearby at each time, etc. I'm sure they tried to rule out all outside influence, but it's impossible to do so completely.

I'd also like to remind everyone that a finding doesn't have any weight until it's been independently verified by a couple other labs.

Re:Who the f**k sponsors those studies

[stranger_to_himself]

From TFA

The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Presumably they're interested in the effect of the circadian system on memory aquisition and retrival, which is certainly worth studying and probably simailar in all animals, and its far easier to do initial work on insects and then scale it up to mammals.

There might also be direct benefits to understanding cockroach behaviour, since they are a major public health risk in some parts of the world.

Answer: The moderators are morons

[Anonymous Coward]

By making this post, I have wasted a modpoint.

Re:Tell me about it

[smittyoneeach]

Vielleicht ein Deutsch Muttersprachler.

eh?

[stranger_to_himself]

I don't think a cockroach has enough theory of mind to 'desire' to learn. And in any case there's no practical difference between desire to learn and ability to learn if predicting cockroach behaviour is the outcome. Either it will learn or it wont.

With respect to other influences, I'm sure a journal like PNAS wouldn't take the research if it had fatal flaws. They're quite fussy.

Also, I don't see why a study needs to be replicated before it has any weight. Unless you think there are significant flaws in the first study that will be overcome later, or there has been some dishonesty in the first place. That's what p-values are for after all, checking whether a result was due to chance, which is then a measure of how likely the results are to be repeatable. What would an extra study add except bigger numbers?

can they turn sentient?

[fadilnet]

If there's a nuclear winter, and cockroaches (which are generally said to survive despite radiation) are left in the dark (somewhere), will the darkness help them evolve to the point of being sentient?

Maybe some experiments aka "learning during darkness" should be conducted on ISS. hmm..*wondering about that ep of Justice League when Vandal Savage was the only human left on Earth. Cockroaches evolved and became big. With the red sun (less sunlight), they appeared to be more organised and smarter. Maybe the writers got that right.