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Scientists Use Sex-Crazed Bugs As Pesticide
ByronScott writes "In today's 'gross news' category, some female insects just might be getting lucky. As an alternative to toxic pesticides, scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have created 'super-sexed' sterilized male leafhoppers to knock bug boots with females in the wild, resulting in decreased populations. Yes, that means that the female bugs will miss out on the joys of motherhood, but the idea that the insects will be having some fun instead of being gassed to death by poisons is pretty cool."
How long before unsafe sex becomes a concern? This smacks of the 60's for grasshoppers. Free love (as in beer). Woot!
"but the idea that the insects will be having some fun instead of being gassed to death by poisons is pretty cool" That's assuming it's at all fun for them. For all we know, sex among animals is painful, messy and downright disturbing... Kind of like the first time you did it. (Oblig /. troll: it's slashdot, we're all virgins)
Wait 'til somehow one slips in with the super-sexed modification but not the sterilization.
So what makes the "super sexed" males so, well, sexy and irresistible to the females? Yuval and his team are using a high-protein, bacteria enhanced "stud" breakfast to feed to the males before they're released. The formula should significantly improve their sexual performance.
All natural male enhancement that works? And is legit?
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Sterile insect technique. Developed in the 1950's.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
from TFA "uval and his team are using a high-protein, bacteria enhanced “stud” breakfast to feed to the males before they’re released." I wonder if they use spanish fly?
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
I heard they grew the bugs with some of Tiger Wood's blood and that made them all crazy.
Now we just need this in a human female version
Fascinating, but I can only imagine this is a very expensive solution to implement since the sterilized males must be specially bred, and, well, it's not exactly a self-propagating solution. Of course, that's also a benefit since as far as solutions that tamper with biology go, self-limiting processes can't very well get out of control. The article doesn't discuss what effect one male has or any practical implications of the solution.
Although the technology certainly doesn't exist to implement it, I wonder what would happen if some sort of genetic time-bomb—something like the mechanism for the Hayflick Limit—were used to create a bug that reproduces for a while, then it's descendants become sterile. It would still be self-limiting, more potent than one bug, and still pesticide-free! Well the hard part of scientific discovery is done, now it'll only take fifty years of toil in the lab to achieve it...
nuff said.
Free love (as in beer). Woot!
Uh, since when did grasshoppers ever pay for love or even sex? What would they use for money, anyway?
So they are going to introduce effectively a new specie to bring the population of another specie back (despite it being both grasshoppers here).... Great plan, I mean what could could possibly go wrong?
"In today's 'gross news' category, some female insects just might be getting lucky. As an alternative to toxic pesticides, scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have created 'super-sexed' sterilized male leafhoppers to knock bug boots with females in the wild, resulting in decreased populations.
What does the Torah say about pre-marital sex?
I kid I kid, don't be so fahklumpt!
insect sex is notoriously violent, insects do not use sex as a bonding mechanism so there's no pleasure, in the sense we know, associated with it. Many different species have developed various strategies to work around this, such as scrapers on the end of the males penis to remove rivals sperm. I kid you not, god help me, I'm after a bottle of wine and can't be bothered finding the link.
prepare the survey weasels.
The sterile insect technique dates to the 1950s, and has been used with great success in suppressing the screw-worm (eradicated in the US in 1982). An animal infested with screw worm maggots can die simply from the tissue damage as the maggots "screw" into their flesh. It's one of the few species against which there is an intentional attempt at extermination, and I can't disagree with it.
The technique inspired the Nebula Award-winning science fiction story The Screwfly Solution. In the story, the technique does not so much go wrong as horribly right.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Do they have lots of $100's? do they play golf?
Sex should be for procreative purposes ONLY! :-P
The bug will not only have sex with one, but many male bugs. And one of them will have working sperm. Done.
Maybe making the females sterile would make a bit more sense. ^^
For database designers: It’s a one-to-many relationship.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The hardest part was making a Porsche small enough for the Leafhopper to attract the female leafhoppers.
Life... finds a way.
Higher intelligence made lower intelligence go and make sex like crazy. Now imagine that WE are at the lower end, and some hypothetical super-human AI on higher end (it made us go and have sex like crazy, so we don't eat it's resources). It would be pleasurable, but still.... not sure if that would be optimal situation :/
A sterilised insect is actually a foreign entity. I do recognise that feeding the population involves killing insects but a surplus of these insects might be good for the environment when it occurs. It seems that we are trying to micro manage an environment that we really do not understand. My area is loaded with pythons, monitor lizards, iguanas, a three foot long exotic rat, many species of parrots and more plants than I can name all of which are foreign to Florida. The funny thing is I enjoy most of the invaders that our government makes war upon. I particularly like fishing for huge talapia as well as rainbow and peacock bass. All three of those fish are foreign species.
Now they just need to make these sterile studs' sperm/penises either
A. Sterilize the female
B. Kill the female
doc: "Good news Is youre gonna get laid all the time, but you wont be able to have kids"
Guy:"Doc dont hold back, whats the bad news?"
Seriously, STOP Playing GOD... Nature will find a way, and might even create a new species that is *WAY* more dangerous to crops.
:)
Many things were deemed safe until they found out otherwise. I'm pretty sure GenX and previous remembers Thalidomid. Many crippled or dead children.
Thay are many more examples but it's the only one that comes to mind at that late hour. Seems a human being needs 8 Hours of sleep *PER DAY* , not per week
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
What scientists say: (insert abstract followed by lengthy, scholarly work which includes some mention of sex).
What journalists hear: SEX, SEX,SEX,SEX,SEX,SEX,SEX,SEX... Oh, BTW SEX!
The preceding was an homage to Gary Larson author of The Far Side.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Insects hate anthropomorphization.
How many unwanted pregnancies could be prevented if Ecstasy tablets included a dose of birth control hormones? Club kids would make wonderful lab rats.
No Tiger Woods related jokes yet? Is this slashdot or what?
the board of tourism would like to remind you to call the "three foot long exotic rat"s possums.
you have no idea how much pr has been used to make people believe giant rats don't exist.
Perhaps they do need to go to rehab. http://topgradeacaiextreme.net/
The scraping is true and happens in all species where the female has no concept of fidelity. You can also judge the fidelity of the female by the relative size of the male balls. The bigger, the more sperm he produces. NOT to fertilize the egg, but to flood out his rivals sperm and create a protective covering against further attempts.
Biology, messing with your preconceptions.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well pesticides were never fantastic, but now you're telling me my fresh produce had front row seats, and was more often that not probably the stage, for rampant bug sex ?
You mean that if we supercharge human libido with pr0n, pr0n-like clips on TV, semi-naked girls everywhere *and* give them contraceptives - the population will start quickly decreasing? Oh.. It's good no one have tried anything like that.
This will work for a short time but it is a certainty that there are females out there now that can detect and prefer the fertile male partners over the infertile male partners. Natural selection will favor the resulting offspring that all will inherit this stronger ability to select the fertile males. Then this technique will be, ahem, neutered. Read The Beak Of The Finch if you do not believe me. It has a chapter devoted to the long term ineffectiveness of pesticides.
The test version was called 20th century liberalism.
The result on fertility rates was equally catastrophic, except of course full extinction will require a lot more than just 2-3 generations.
unfunfunf
AND when beetles from a bottle have a fizzle with their jizzle it's called a bottled beetle jizzle fizzle. AND...
when beetles from these bottles with the fizzle in their jizzle eat a brekkie that is specky and battle beetles for a jottle...
they call this a fizzled jizzled specky brekkied bottled beetle jottle battle.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Haven't these so called scientist learned anything from that little Killer Bee incident??? @#$%% Next thing you know these bugs will be chasing your cat trying to mate with her.
So, Rick James was actually a biologically engineered pesticide?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Gee thanks, now when I eat fruits or veg I'm going to be thinking of bugs having sex on it.
As I told you, it would be absolutely, totally, and in all other ways inconceivable.
It is the universe that makes fun of us all.
Is your sig a direct quote of someone else?
I ask because the actual phrase is "for all intents and purposes".
Oh, and I disagree about the "no longer a word"-ness of "whom".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Personally, I could care less.
The much smaller male spider puts a fly in her face to distract her while he focuses on her "no-no spots" like an ol' man on the 5-cent slutmachines back in vegas.
You think THAT'S bad? How about the insect that realized "Hey, we have open circulatory systems... I can just stick it in anywhere and the sperm could probably get to an egg!"... and then proceeded to evolve weaponized penises (now there's a nice phrase) so that they could just puncture the female's carapace and inject semen, instead of trying to coerce the female into the right position. You know what the female's response was? Evolve a second set of genitals on its back.
What, you don't believe me? Wikipedia has an article. With pictures.
(Okay after reading the article again I don't see any reference to a second set of genitals. Maybe my memory made that part up, but it does discuss female evolutionary reactions.)