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Bug Science

Cockroaches Know Things We Don't 29

Posted by Roblimo from the some-bugs-are-literal dept.
bulgroz0 writes: "`They have been evolving for more than 300 million years. So they have got it right. They have been around a lot longer than we have,' said Davidowitz. Please see the Yahoo! News story."
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Cockroaches Know Things We Don't More

Cockroaches Know Things We Don't

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  • ...of years, then why don't they have a technology and/or some kind of civilisation? It would seem to me that the zenith of evolution isn't being an inch long, hairy, and prone to being an utter nuisance by infesting everywhere.

    No wonder the slack jawed yokel types in Kansas and Tennessee are upset at the idea of evolution. I agree - if evolution makes a large, ugly hairy bug we can't kill very well, then where can I vote against it?

    Of course, even though they don't have much of a brain or technology or civilisation, at least they have culture - quite a few cultures, actually, which they'll be more than happy to transmit to your toothbrush at 2 am.
  • "This sounds to me something like when the hairs on the back of the neck stand up when sensing danger."

    No, that happens from dead people tickling the back of your neck. D'oh! It's happening to me right now as I write this.

    THANKS KID! Now I'm freaked out for the rest of my life about that.


    Mike van Lammeren
  • Turns out cockroaches are more complex than you might think. For instance, they run on two legs when they get fast enough and use their bodies for aerofoils. Probably the most bizzare experiment I ever heard about for roaches involved putting two roaches on opposite day/night schedules and then removing their exoskeloton on their backsand splicing them together (back to back) to study how the hormones interacted. I've also heard rumors of "remote control roaches," being engineered. Does anyone know about this?

  • and. (Score:1)

    by Tarsh ( 144250 )
    They make a squishy noise when you stamp on them.
  • So they have been evolving for more than 300 million years, right? So have we. We didn't just materialize as a new species, some years ago. And let's not take the Bible for reference... not this time.

  • WTF? (Score:3)

    by James Lanfear ( 34124 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @09:26AM (#1000656)
    That has to be true, but doesn't make any fscking sense. What do they expect us to do, add slashboxes for every section?[0] I mean, we're able to filter sections out but not in, so why did they decide to do it this way instead of running everything and allowing us to exclude what we don't want?

    And I'm not about to try to figure out why I never saw this policy announced.

    [0] As I just did. My there are a lot of stories I don't remember....

    -jcl

  • Here is a link [nec.com] to the paper to be published in Nature magazine.

    This sounds to me something like when the hairs on the back of the neck stand up when sensing danger. Is this something mammals have as well, as dogs also have hair that stands up when they sense danger, but has been overshadowed by our other senses, or would that be a reaction rather than a stimulus as the article implies is the case for the cockroach?

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

  • that's becuase they hear with their legs..... scientists have proved this by training cockroaches to come to you if certain sounds are played....after removing their legs, they just seem to ignore the same sounds that attracted them in the first place.

  • After many days of existence, this article has only 4 comments (this is the 5th, unless someone beats me to it). Clearly, only a tiny fraction of /. readers can see this post, if any at all -- I only found it because I happened to scan the list of articles in the older stuff [slashdot.org] section.

    If you click on older stuff [slashdot.org] , you'll see a scattering of articles with less than 10 or 20 comments going back as far as you can look! If you go back far enough, you'll see Cliff's article title Who is in Charge of IPv6 Packet Priority? [slashdot.org] , which has only 9 comments! There is no way an article with such a title could have resulted in only 9 comments here on Slashdot.

    What's going on?

  • After I posted the above I went in search of more and this is what I've got:

    http://slashdot.org/apache/
    http://slashdot.org/awards/ (nothing there)
    http://slashdot.org/books/
    http://slashdot.org/bsd/
    http://slashdot.org/features/
    http://slashdot.org/interviews
    http://slashdot.org/yro/ (your rights online)

    (they were on the left side of the screen under "Sections") ... why only those sections and not ... say "linux" or "games" but atleast it's a start departmentalizing some issues away from the main page. I didn't bother writing the links in this time... I think we all the idea there are links on the right side of the page.
  • CowboyNeal has explained (in private email to me) that articles such as this one are marked so as not to appear on the /. front page, but only in their respective sections. I'm a lot less confused now. Sorry to waste bandwidth on this.
  • I'm no scientist, but the methodology may have been a little flawed in this experiment? Presumably leg-removal has a pretty significant impact on a roach's ability to do anything involving running or walking towards the source of a particular sound?
  • There is no zenith of evolution. The crux of the theory is the revocation of the classic arrogant assumption that humans are the end of the line. There's always something more advanced toward which we're moving.

    I'm sure people 4000 years ago thought humanity was as advanced as it gets. Is there not a more advanced species on this Earth now than the human race of 4000 years prior?

    Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
    Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?

  • Of course they do. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It took scientists to figure this out? Cockroaches have known for years what's underneath my refrigerator. I haven't got a clue.

    Of course, given a choice, I think I'd rather stay ignorant.
  • WTF?!?!?!

    I filtered out the 'bug' topic from preferences.

    This should be in 'science' topic.

  • South American Cockroaches (Score:3)

    by BigBlockMopar ( 191202 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @10:13AM (#1000666) Homepage

    Ya know, I don't know what it is, but humans have such a revulsion to these things, and yet they're really rather neat.

    There are three things in this world that will survive a nuclear war: McDonald's uniforms, Dodge Darts, and cockroaches. Which means the first post-apocalyptic morning commute is going to be really ugly.

    Aside from destroying the electronics in countless microwave ovens, roaches are really not all that bad. I don't have them in my house, but I certainly prefer cockroaches to mosquitos, black flies, deer flies, horse flies, wasps and centipedes. Actually, the one creepy-crawly I have in my house is spiders. Lots of them. And they have a great time when I leave the windows open and the lights on at night.

    Between them and my small collection of carnivorous plants on the windowsill, I do my part for the environment by keeping down the insect population.

    <paranoid_wink>The insects are out to get us, you know.</paranoid_wink>

    Around here, there's a great place if you're into revenge for any reason. A friend of mine was keeping some South American roaches as pets in a large terrarium. These things were in the 2" long range. Needless to say, I asked him where he got them.

    Turns out there's a small company downtown that sells specialty insects for the film and television business. They've got these roaches, and they're just beautiful.

    Not only are they massive, but they fly and they spit. Their size alone is enough to cause shrieks of disgust. That turns into fear when the cockroach lifts off the ground (sounds like a hummingbird). Generally, an individual confronted with such a roach is well involved in the second part of the basic fight-or-flight response before the roach gets a chance to spray the individual with foamy goo.

    Just stick a broomhandle through someone's dryer vent to dislodge the hose, and on a nice, cool morning, ya put the roaches near the vent and SHOOM! They're gone, in there, ready to enforce vigilante justice and wreak havoc for you.

    I can't imagine the sound of trying to crush a 2" long exoskeleton under your shoe. It's probably quite disturbing.

  • Yes, but we were in Beta most of that time - they're a stable release!

    Dunno about that, considering some of my co-workers, I'd say that we were Alpha most of that time, and we're finally getting into Beta stage; the human genome has finally hit a code freeze, now it's just getting rid of the pesky stability problems (tay sachs, etc).

  • I've been finding these little nich articles pleasing - they seem to be a good secret of /. keeping a lot of trolls away, and I often find myself looking deep into the posters comments and not glossing over them like I do out on the main page.

    These are the two sub parts I have found:

    http://slashdot.org/science [slashdot.org]
    http://slashdot.org/askslashdot [slashdot.org]

    The stories that appear in these sometimes also appear on the main page. Anyone find anyother good sub-portions of /. ??
  • Its good to find a use for butt hair, then. I've been conducting a few experiments since reading this. It seems that butt hairs can indeed assist with wind detection. Had less success with danger, though. Got arrested.
  • When I stumbled upon this I felt one step closer to Nirvana.

    http://slashdot.org/tacohell/

    It's easy to find loads of crap on the web.
    Finding something about one of my favorite personalities makes that all worthwhile.

    Computer: $3000
    Connection to a T1 line: $50/month
    Years spent online: 12
    Finding Tacohell: Priceless

  • Reminds me of Stephenson's "supreme badass" theme in Cryptonomicon.

    But anyway, I think what they were referring to is that cockroaches have been in the same general form for 300 million years. Before we were humans, we were lemurs, and before that something else. Cockroaches have been in the same bodyshape for 300 million years, and have been making incredibly fine adjustments that entire time. That's why they can withstand incredible toxins and even radiation "poisoning."

    Think of roaches and humans as two people working on their computers. Humans started out in DOS, then switched to Windows, and finally hit upon Linux, and are even now tweaking for a stable/fast system. Cockroaches started out with an incredibly early UNIX distribution, and never switched. So while humans have been futzing around with different OSes, cockroaches have been fine-tuning and adding-on-to that UNIX distrubition over and over and over and over. Now the cockroach OS looks about the same as when it was first released, but is 1 million times faster, hasn't crashed in 30 years, and can read commands straight from your brain.
  • Try the "preferences" link among the pile of links on the top left, and scroll to where it lets you customize sections.

  • Re:slack-jawed yokels (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I would assert that the idea that species are evolving toward something "more advanced" is faulty. Rather, species that have retained a fairly static form for many millennia, like cockroaches and Horseshoe crabs, can be said to be very highly evolved. They have evolved so as to fit their niche extremely well. Differing levels of somatic complexity or intelligence do not make one species "more evolved-" they just mean that one is more complicated.

  • Re:Running Roaches (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've also heard rumors of "remote control roaches," being engineered. Does anyone know about this?

    If you attach electrodes to a cockroach's antennae, stimulating the left makes it turn left, while stimulating the right makes it turn right. This might be what you meant; just make the electrodes remote-controlled.

    I think I read this in an older Popular Science, which speculated on attaching a camera to their backs for use as inexpensive robots in hazardous areas. Their climbing capabilities and strength would be extremely useful as well, and are certainly more efficient than anything we can make right now.
  • "No such thing as a free-lunch." - Everyone's Irish Dad.
  • One other "hidden" page is Taco's so called "cheesyportal" very amusing, and a good waste of time!

    http://slashdot.org/cheesyportal.shtml [slashdot.org]

  • Ever seen The Fifth Element?

    It contains one most amusing scene involving a remote-control spycam-rigged cockroach and the President...and the President's shoe.

  • ObDisclaimer: IANABiologist, especially mammalian.

    In any case, if I were to speculate (purely), I'd guess that it's actually to make the hair on your neck fluff out to be harder to bite through. While this wouldn't be helpful to a human (not enough hair) it might be handy for a dog, or a big cat.

  • Well I'll be a Lemur's uncle!

    Mike van Lammeren

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