Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels

That's fine by phantomfive · 2013-05-23 14:29 · Score: 5, Funny

Maybe soon they will learn an aversion to everything in my house. Then they can live outside and we will all be happy.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

Re:That's fine by hairyfeet · 2013-05-23 22:06 · Score: 4, Interesting

Dude you might not like them living outside. I don't know about the German ones but here we have what is locally called the "VC cockroach" named because it is as tough as the Viet Cong and those things are happy to live outside in the sewers...until the storm drains flood and then they'll try to climb up through the pipes and get into your house. Since they can live without worrying about poisons they get fricking HUGE, we are talking bigger than a grown man's thumb and tough as hell to kill, you can't use an ordinary fly-swat as it won't even stun 'em, you better have a shoe ready and be putting some arm behind your swing, TOUGH bastards.

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ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.

Ah, yes! by Black+Parrot · 2013-05-23 14:30 · Score: 4, Funny

That Intelligent Designer is a crafty one! You'll never best his cockroaches!

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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Re:Ah, yes! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-23 14:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

That Intelligent Designer is a crafty one! You'll never best his cockroaches!
IDers accept microevolution.
Re:Ah, yes! by girlintraining · 2013-05-23 14:44 · Score: 3, Interesting

That Intelligent Designer is a crafty one! You'll never best his cockroaches!
I see your intelligently designed cockroaches, and raise you intelligently designed science.

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#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Re:Ah, yes! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-23 14:45 · Score: 5, Funny

IDers accept microevolution.
Which just makes them more illogical, not less. For example, I accept that I live in my mother's basement, but I don't accept that I will never get a date. Yet the latter is a consequence of the former.
Re:Ah, yes! by Black+Parrot · 2013-05-23 15:03 · Score: 5, Informative

That Intelligent Designer is a crafty one! You'll never best his cockroaches!
IDers accept microevolution.
Do they? Back before they got pwned all their marquee arguments[*] took the form of "this-or-that-structure-or-system could not have evolved".
If you want to defend them, maybe you should clarify what definition of microevolution they accept, and what other flavors of evolution they reject.
[*] Except for Dembski's "no free lunch" argument that evolution doesn't work any better than blind chance, which of course would apply to microevolution as well as to any other flavor.

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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:Ah, yes! by sqrt(2) · 2013-05-23 15:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

There's really no distinction. What is called macro evolution is determined by hindsight, usually because we are only able to compare fossils separated by millions of years. By definition every organism is a member of the same species as its parents. We only place them into discrete categories for taxonomical convenience. It's not a fact of nature, it's a human contrivance to make doing (some aspects) of biology easier.
It's like natural languages. I speak English, a Germanic language. I can speak to my father and mother just fine. I can speak to my grandfather, and also converse in German with him. If my great-grandfather were still alive I'd doubtless have no trouble speaking to him, too. He could speak to his parents. They could speak to their parents, and so on. Each person in the chain can speak to and understand the people directly around them. But if you go back just a few hundred years, I wouldn't be able to easily converse with my ancestors, despite the fact that there is an unbroken chain connecting them to myself linguistically. Farther back and I wouldn't even recognize the language they're speaking as English, or German. So from microevolution comes macroevolution of languages.
So to with biology. If we had access to a fossil or living specimen of every intermediary individual from single cell to human then the very idea of species would become meaningless, lost in the smooth gradient of gradual change. You could line them all up and walk down the line and see them change, almost imperceptibly from one form into another. Every individual would look so much like his parents and offspring that you wouldn't even be able to tell there was a change at all. But you could compare every 10, 100, or 1000 individuals and see that they are in fact changing. At some point they'd be so different as to need a new name, for humans have an almost pernicious compulsion to place things into discrete categories.
Some people find it impossible to break out of this mindset. Some find that their religion even compels them not to try.

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If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Re:Ah, yes! by JoshuaZ · 2013-05-23 16:13 · Score: 4, Informative

So, most of the other responses here meet most of the major relevant issues. But one thing that's curious is that while some young earth creationists clam they accept "microevolution" what they mean by this is quite hard to pin down. One common claim is that by microevolution one means evolution below the species level. But Answers in Genesis, the world's largest YEC ministry lists claiming that speciation does not occur as an argument that creationists should not use because the evidence for speciation is so strong. http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers/topic/arguments-we-dont-use. Now, here's the really neat bit: A variety of ID proponents argue that speciation doesn't happen. There's an interview in Expelled where one of the ID proponents says that speciation doesn't happen. This isn't the only example. So it looks like the ID proponents are frequently even more reactionary than the most sophisticated YECs. That's what happens when you are constructing viewpoints to sound just plausible enough to have an appearance of controversy and not actually trying to figure out the truth.
Re:Ah, yes! by JoshuaZ · 2013-05-23 16:24 · Score: 5, Informative

IDes can accept evolution...the only thing they don't accept is that life on the planet was not in some way fashioned for some particular purpose (which was presumably either already fulfilled long ago, or hasn't been completed yet, or else has been completely forgotten about)
And now we have yet another variant of ID, and this version is so vague that it isn't even clear what the point is. Sometime there may ave been a purpose at some point- and this is supposed to be a scientific hypothesis?
But let's look at what the ID proponents actually say.. The primary ID textbook, Of Pandas and Peoples rejected evolution. Of course this is the book that apparently had a litera search and replace from "creationist" to "intelligent design proponents" leading to among other fun bits leading to the infamous ""cdesign proponentsists" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People#Pandas_and_.22cdesign_proponentsists.22. But let's look at what other ID proponents have said. Michael Behe accepts most of evolution, except for apparent occasional tinkering. His primary example is malaria so you could summarize his views as "There is a designer and he's a bit of a dick". William Demski used to be ok with an old Earth but now questions that and believes in a literal global flood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Dembski#Southwestern_Baptist_Theological_Seminary_flood_controversy. Paul Nelson is a straight out YEC while claiming that that view isn't common among IDers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nelson_(creationist). Etc. Etc. Ad infinitum et nauseam
ID exists to disguise creationism as something more palatable to be taught in schools or discussed by respectable people. But the proponents aren't very good at having anything like a coherent hypothesis, with each of them trying to decide just how vocal a creationist they'll be and which parts of science they'll reject. ID was made to try to infiltrate public schools under the guise of science, and it shows.
Re:Ah, yes! by sqrt(2) · 2013-05-23 17:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Mutations are random, and most aren't improvements, aren't adaptive. Natural selection then goes to work. The mutations which are better become more numerous by virtue of being better. Detrimental changes terminate the organism's lineage by killing it outright or making it less successful at reproducing. Drop a bacterium into a pond and after a billion years I'd expect to still find bacteria or something analogous in that pond. Ignore the fact that location on the Earth loses meaning at that time scale due to plate tectonics. I'd expect to find bacteria AND lots of other forms of life all over the place everywhere I looked. This demonstrates another misunderstanding ID people have with evolution. Bacteria and humans are equally evolved. We've all been evolving for the same amount of time. Bacteria are just as old as humans, all contemporary species are. No extant species is "less evolved" than any other. You can say they are "more primitive" but what does that really mean? Compared to what?
Anthropocentrism is a vice biologists are broken of early on. Religious people often find the idea that humans aren't special, that the world wasn't made just for us, positively abhorrent. Strangely these same religions often preach humility. What a contradiction.

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If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Re:Ah, yes! by Black+Parrot · 2013-05-23 17:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

A quick search appears to show they haven't folded their cards as yet.
Creationists never fold their cards, no matter how many times their claims are refuted.
I remember reading about a debate where the scientist pointed out that the creationist's argument was based on a long-since refuted claim, the creationist replied that they don't rely on that claim anymore, and the scientist then asked "So why is it in the literature you're selling in the lobby?"

I would think that evolutionary theory would predict, and even practically demand, the presence of ID theorists and Creationists of various flavors as part of the scientific community. Every scientific community, and they are segmented, is its own little ecosystem. It has sources of energy (grants), and consumers (scientists) and various forms of reproduction (ideas and new scientists, etc.). Some members of the ecosystem will consume resources, but give little back, or produce poor quality offspring. The herd only improves if the strongest survive. Think of the role of predators taking the weak in any animal stock. In this case it is weak theories and science. By the two communities engaging in adversarial struggle, the weak science is exposed and made stronger. What is passed over in silence by on community is exposed by the other and account demanded. Intellectual rigor increases. Their ways are strange to you, perhaps even irritating. But directly and indirectly they help real science grow stronger, and more innovative. They probably also bring additional funding into the scientific community that it otherwise wouldn't have. And without them, your droll post would have no meaning.
I suspect it's something like the reason physicists don't feel a need to have Time Cube proponentists and historians don't need holocaust deniers.
As the saying goes, you're entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. If you don't deal in facts, science doesn't need you.

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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:Ah, yes! by JoshuaZ · 2013-05-23 17:48 · Score: 4, Interesting

No, there's a serious misconception here. Neutral traits can become universal in a population, and frequently do. This is especially likely in small populations (which is part of why bottlenecks matter so much).
Re:Ah, yes! by cold+fjord · 2013-05-23 17:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

You are complaining to the wrong person. Make your complaint to Black Parrot or some of the other ones up thread. He started it off with a joke post involving ID, started the thread topic, and then made the inquiry I responded to. There are other posts about it as well. Complain to them. If it is OK for them to post on it, it is OK for me to post on it. Fair is fair. If it is just a matter of viewpoint discrimination - well, sorry, but I will continue to post on running topics, but do not agree to one sided discussions.
If you're bored with it, feel free to ignore the posts. I often ignore threads in a story, or even entire stories, in which the discussion is one in which I am uninterested, or at least find to be a lesser priority.
I don't think the ID community would agree that what they do either is, or has, spirituality as a central component to the day to day work. Many of them are working scientists as well. They just hold a particular view about what the ultimate source of everything is. Drop an anvil on your toe and a physicist that ascribes to ID will tell you it was gravity that pulled it to earth, not God's will. A chemist that ascribes to ID will tell you that the anvil is made of high carbon steel with traces of scandium, not "stuff that God holds together." A physician that ascribes to ID will still tell you that the toe has to be amputated. Don't make the mistake of thinking that people that believe either ID or associated beliefs must be stupid.
I know a PhD physicist that graduated from a major research university, is the head of an academic physics department (last I knew), and believed in either ID or Creationism, I forget which. Besides his academic duties, the good doctor does solid research for outside customers and is well regarded in that particular research community. Believing that God exists, created the universe, and established creation in a particular fashion is a very remote question from trying to understand a particular problem in surface physics.

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much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Re:Ah, yes! by sFurbo · 2013-05-23 19:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

It isn't an idiot designer, as cephalopods have their eyes the right way around. The designer clearly can do it correctly, but chose not to do it with vertebrates. Furthermore, when looking at the way the world works, it becomes clear that the designer is evil, mad or both. All in all, Cthulhu is the best guess at a designer, given the evidence.
Re:Ah, yes! by jkflying · 2013-05-23 20:04 · Score: 3, Informative

Just a quick pointer, most evolution (in mammals at least) isn't through mutations, but through recombination. Just as an example, in humans, on average there is only one new mutation (ie. one corrupted base-pair) per two generations. When you consider the size of the genome is equivalent to 3.5GB of data, that is virtually nothing.
Then compare that to something like HIV, which only has a genome size of 1.2KB of data, but still averages about 1 to 2 mutations per generation.

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Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Re:Ah, yes! by hawkinspeter · 2013-05-23 20:25 · Score: 3, Informative

I like the way you're thinking there, but I have a counter-example for the whole Intelligent Squid Designer philosophy:

Cephalod gills don't use a counterflow arrangement (where blood and water move in opposite directions) which would provide a maximum concentration gradient. However, the much more efficient counterflow system is used all over the place (e.g. lungs, fish gills, kidneys, penguin feet) but not in cephalopods.

It's almost as if Cthulhu came up with a great design and then decided to give all his children the retard version of it. Maybe he just hates his kids.

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You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Re:Ah, yes! by cyborg_zx · 2013-05-23 21:54 · Score: 3, Insightful

I know a PhD physicist that graduated from a major research university, is the head of an academic physics department (last I knew), and believed in either ID or Creationism, I forget which.
Yes, it's always the physicists and mathematicians for some reason who hold these ideas.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that people that believe either ID or associated beliefs must be stupid.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that smart people can't be stupid.
Re:Ah, yes! by hawkinspeter · 2013-05-24 02:08 · Score: 4, Informative

Richard Dawkins states the case quite clearly in The Blind Watchmaker:

My second example of an evolutionary progression that didn't happen because of disadvantageous intermediates, even though it might ultimately have turned out better if it had, concerns the retina of our eyes (and all other vertebrates). Like any nerve, the optic nerve is a trunk cable, a bundle of separate 'insulated' wires, in this case about three million of them. Each of the three million wires leads from one cell in the retina to the brain. You can think of them as the wires leading from a bank of three million photocells (actually three million relay stations gathering information from an even larger number of photocells) to the computer that is to process the information in the brain. They are gathered together from all over the retina into a single bundle, which is the optic nerve for that eye. Any engineer would naturally assume that the photocells would point towards the light, with their wires leading backwards towards the brain. He would laugh at any suggestion that the photocells might point away from the light, with their wires departing on the side nearest the light. Yet this is exactly what happens in all vertebrate retinas. Each photocell is, in effect, wired in backwards, with its wire sticking out on the side nearest the light. The wire has to travel over the surface of the retina, to a point where it dives through a hole in the retina (the so-called 'blind spot') to join the optic nerve. This means that the light, instead of being granted an unrestricted passage to the photocells, has to pass through a forest of connecting wires, presumably suffering at least some attenuation and distortion (actually probably not much but, still, it is the principle of the thing that would offend any tidy-minded engineer!).

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You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe

Easy fix to this problem by volkerdi · 2013-05-23 14:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

Use high fructose corn syrup in the roach motels instead of glucose. I'm surprised they don't do this already, since they use it in everything else.

Re:Easy fix to this problem by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-23 15:19 · Score: 5, Funny

Cockroaches have taste and need quality stuff. High fructose corn syrup is only for lower species.
Re:Easy fix to this problem by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-23 15:24 · Score: 4, Funny

.... and just leave poison out --- let the diabetes, liver disease, and obesity kill the roaches instead ...
Re:Easy fix to this problem by Solandri · 2013-05-23 16:51 · Score: 5, Informative

Most high fructose corn syrup is 42%-53% glucose.

Yes I know this contradicts the conventional wisdom that HFCS is bad, while sucrose (which your body breaks down into 50% fructose / 50% glucose) is good. But the people pushing that agenda aren't really the types who took chemistry in school. It's just called "high fructose" because it has a larger fraction of fructose than regular syrup, which is mostly glucose.

Roach Motel - Free Wifi by srobert · 2013-05-23 14:40 · Score: 5, Funny

I noticed the roaches weren't going for it, so I added a sign to it: "Free Continental Breakfast, Free Wifi".

Re:Roach Motel - Free Wifi by naroom · 2013-05-23 14:44 · Score: 5, Interesting

Once wifi has been around for 30+ years, we may start to see pests like roaches and mosquitoes becoming attracted to it. A wifi signal is a good indicator of delicious things nearby.

Re:solution possibly by c0lo · 2013-05-23 15:04 · Score: 3, Interesting

blend a mix of starches and sugars. if they avoid all simple and complex carbs, they reduce pop. if they do not, they go in and eat poison.

Ummm... they may start enjoying cellulose, the way termites do.

Better use their mating pheromones for this (yes, I know: may be also a moving target)

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Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.

Re:Is it evolution, or survival of the fittest? by Black+Parrot · 2013-05-23 15:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

Seriously, did the roaches actually evolve and pass it to their young, or did the specific roaches which HAD the sugar aversion trait simply avoid being poisoned and passed along said aversion to their offspring?

I'm kinda thinking it's the latter.

I'm kinda thinking that's evolution.

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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Re:Is it evolution, or survival of the fittest? by camperdave · 2013-05-23 15:12 · Score: 4, Informative

did the specific roaches which HAD the sugar aversion trait simply avoid being poisoned and passed along said aversion to their offspring?

But that *is* evolution. Gen N had a mix of glucose aversion and non. All the non died and were selected out, so Gen N+1 have the glucose aversion.

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When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!

It takes all the running you can do... by sqrt(2) · 2013-05-23 15:30 · Score: 5, Interesting

...just to stay in the same place. Natural selection follows from basic principles of logic. It's so close to first principles that it always amazes me that we had to wait so long for Darwin to show up and slap humanity on the face with the simple truth of it. Living things exist because they inherited what it takes to exist from their ancestors. The ones that didn't have what it took to stay in existence...didn't. The world is full of things that exist. Protons, stars, iron, roaches, people. Natural selection acts on everything. The universe itself may even have been "selected" through some process of cosmogenesis where universes that don't have what it takes, physical laws and constant appropriate to produce stars, black holes, daughter universes, see their lineage die off. Hard to prove, probably impossible, but it is not even a new idea to think natural selection is too powerful and too basic to reality to be confined to biology.

Unless you can eradicate an entire species quickly and completely, all you do is set up a selection pressure which favors mutant individuals who have what it takes to beat your attempts to eradicate them. The ones that don't have what it takes to counter your attack, roach motel or whatever it is, don't survive, and don't pass on their genes which failed to adequately equip them for survival and reproduction.

Arthropod life cycles are very fast so it's not even surprising to see evolution like this happening in just a few decades. I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner.

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If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org

Re:It takes all the running you can do... by dryeo · 2013-05-23 17:32 · Score: 3, Informative

Darwin stood on others shoulders, as do most all great thinkers and natural selection wasn't a new idea though Darwin did express it very well in his writings. One example is his grandfather Erasmus Darwin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Darwin ) who amongst other things wrote "the strongest and most active animal should propagate the species, which should thence become improved" in Zoonomia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonomia ) and he based his ideas on earlier proto-evolutionists such as James Burnett, Lord Monboddo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnett,_Lord_Monboddo ).

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Re:Selective breeding, not evolution by janimal · 2013-05-23 15:33 · Score: 5, Informative

I just can't believe how many such comments I'm seeing here. Where are the nerds?!

Selective breeding is based on positive feedback, where a human being selects the specimens with a desired trait and breeds them to get more of the same trait in the next generation. That's how you get house pets that do not stand a chance of survival in the wild.

What happened with the cockroaches is the same process conducted by mother nature; only the surviving ones can breed.

Now, here's the kicker for all of you high school dropouts. Both cases are essentially evolution according to the definition in wikipedia.

Re:Is it evolution, or survival of the fittest? by DutchUncle · 2013-05-23 15:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Darwin called it "natural selection". "Evolution", like the OP "developed an aversion", suggests something active happened - these bugs changed - rather than something passive - these bugs are the only ones left (because the other ones ate the poison).

a better class of roach requires a better trap by Tumbleweed · 2013-05-23 15:56 · Score: 5, Funny

If they've upped their standards and don't like motels, we'll have to increase our efforts, and create roach B&Bs.

Re:Is it evolution, or survival of the fittest? by camperdave · 2013-05-23 16:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

Darwin called it "natural selection". "Evolution", like the OP "developed an aversion", suggests something active happened - these bugs changed - rather than something passive - these bugs are the only ones left (because the other ones ate the poison).

Poor wording, or poor understanding of the wording. The individual bugs didn't develop an aversion; the population as a whole became more glucose averse over time compared to previous generations. Evolution doesn't happen to a single generation, or a single individual. It is the result of passing on genetic traits to offspring. The species evolves, not the individuals. Granted, from time to time a mutation may arise and contribute to the gene pool, but that's only a statistical anomaly in the process of evolution. The big mover is selection - be it natural, or artificial.

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When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!

Re:Using cockroaches by femtobyte · 2013-05-23 16:04 · Score: 4, Informative

This approach might not work out so well with r-strategy breeders --- you'll fill the house up for sure with happy little roaches, but they won't be leaving the neighbors' homes to get there (just exponentially exploding their population to catch up with the expanded resources). Setting up "guard rows" of tasty pesticide-free crops to lure pests away from agricultural fields works to the extent that said pests are highly mobile and individually "exploring" a wide enough area to "find" the guard rows in preference to the main crops. However, roaches tend to locate and nest in one area (with only "excess population" expanding out into new territory) --- some very lucky bugs will find the new house (and start breeding to fill it), but the roaches behind your kitchen cabinets will stay behind to raise their kids behind your kitchen cabinets.

Pff by Greyfox · 2013-05-23 16:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

If I were designing them, they'd thrive on the poison in the traps. Of course, if I were designing them, the cockroaches would be the focus of the experiment. I'd throw increasingly difficult challenges at them, culminating in some moderately clever primates. Once the cockroach Alpha arises, it would be saved for future study, and the rest of the experiment would be reset. That's the problem with an intelligent designer, isn't it? One tends to believe that they're the focus of the experiment. One tends to think that they will somehow qualify for special treatment. When, in fact, all that awaits you is euthanasia and a brain dissection. And that's if you're one of the lucky ones.

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I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

Re:Is it evolution, or survival of the fittest? by LordLucless · 2013-05-23 17:05 · Score: 5, Informative

Darwin actually called it evolution through the mechanism of natural selection. Evolution is the observation; natural selection is the mechanism whereby certain genes get "selected" for over the generations. The origin of the diversity of the genes is not covered by either term.

Those glucose-aversion genes had to come from somewhere. They may have come from mutation, or crossed from another species, or whatever. Whether they lay "dormant" (that is to say, unselected for) in the genome for centuries, or years before the environmental change that caused them to become beneficial is irrelevant.

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Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face

Similar observation with ants by catchblue22 · 2013-05-23 17:24 · Score: 3, Interesting

I have noticed over the past few years that ants in my area have "learned" to avoid consuming Raid borax laced syrup. I remember early on in my house that ants would feast on the stuff, sucking large drops dry in a matter of minutes. Now, the new ants crawl up to the syrup I have left, seem to probe it, and then run away quickly. Even if I applied the syrup to an established ant pathway, they go around the drops without consuming any of it. I don't know whether they are averse to eating the sugar, or whether they can somehow sense the borax in the syrup. There seems to be some evolution going on here.

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This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)

Re: Is it evolution, or survival of the fittest? by Smauler · 2013-05-23 17:24 · Score: 3, Informative

Ever notice how African-American males are often muscular, large boned with large lips, and African-American females tend to have wide hips (thought to be better for childbearing)? This was due to forced mating under American slavery, where (unfortunately) slaves were force-bred to reinforce traits desirable for both hard manual labor and for producing more slaves. Compare an "African-American" to recent immigrants from Africa. Note post-slavery immigrants by and large lack those traits.

You know... most western Africans share those traits too. It's not because of slavery. I'd like to see any study showing significant differences between african americans and the population they came from (which cannot be explained by interbreeding with white & indigenous people).

This could be good by Coward+Anonymous · 2013-05-23 19:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

Part of the roach's success stems from its omnivorous diet. Removing glucose from its diet is likely a considerable hit on its caloric intake. If the aversion to glucose can be maintained while developing aversions to other abundant and nutritious food stuffs, like meat protein, we could bio-engineer cockroaches to become specialized eaters.

Specialized eaters are easier to control and eradicate. Furthermore, if they over specialize to the degree of Pandas and Koalas they may be bio-engineered out of existence. Personally, I wouldn't mind never seeing another cockroach again.

Re:This could be good by the+biologist · 2013-05-23 21:00 · Score: 3, Funny

Another aspect of the success of the German cockroach (mentioned in article) is that they're colonial animals. If the food source runs out, they will simply eat each other and keep breeding... resulting in a slowly shrinking colony. Eventually the colony will starve itself out of existence, but generally the humans living near by will have accidentally given them some food that isn't the colony... resulting in the colony rapidly growing again.

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