Invasion of Cockroaches... Coming Soon to Your Home!

I wasn't sure where to post this, but since cockroaches can affect our health, I decided to post it here.
MODS, if this needs to be moved, please do your thing. :-)

I find it disturbing that these pests keep adapting to what used to kill them.
I fear before long we could all be overrun with cockroaches if something new isn't found to get rid of them.

I left my external text out of the box to make it easier to read:


Source: news.yahoo.com...

For decades, people have been getting rid of cockroaches by setting out bait mixed with poison. But in the late 1980s, in an apartment test kitchen in Florida, something went very wrong.

A killer product stopped working. Cockroach populations there kept rising. Mystified researchers tested and discarded theory after theory until they finally hit on the explanation: In a remarkably rapid display of evolution at work, many of the cockroaches had lost their sweet tooth, rejecting the corn syrup meant to attract them.

In as little as five years, the sugar-rejecting trait had become so widespread that the bait had been rendered useless.

"Cockroaches are highly adaptive, and they're doing pretty well in the arms race with us," said North Carolina State University entomologist Jules Silverman, discoverer of the glucose aversion in that Florida kitchen during a bait test.

The findings illustrate the evolutionary prowess that has helped make cockroaches so hard to stamp out that it is jokingly suggested they could survive nuclear war.

Online: Journal Science: www.sciencemag.org...

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If you have roaches chances are your neighbors have roaches. Because they travel from door to door. If you live in the city. And you find a roach it does nothing to bomb your house because your neighbors and they're neighbors would have to be bombed at the same time. it's just something you have to live with.

Say you bombed your house. The neighboring hive is cookin up another queen to come start a hive at your house so your back to square 1.

reply to post by sled735
The rainy season always brings cockroaches- the big flying kind. We've tested every method of killing them, from poisons and sticky traps to microwaving and flushing them. The only thing we've found that truly does the job is going Samurai on them with a good flyswatter in each hand! I hate flying cockroaches!

reply to post by littled16


I haven't had roaches since I moved out of a rinky-dink apt. in my late teens. I hate those things! They're nasty!
Crawling all over your dishes, canned food, etc. YUCK!!

I hope science comes up with something else to get rid of them, but as it says in the text... they will probably survive a nuclear explosion! Just our luck!

They are part of the creation too. Mother Earth made them immune to our influence. That's something we need to think about. Maybe we don't understand the message. Maybe one day science will discover an important use for them, then we will thank God we didn't exterminated them.

reply to post by Trueman


You make a good point.

I just can't imagine what good could come from such a disgusting bug!

Originally posted by sled735
reply to post by Trueman

 

You make a good point.

I just can't imagine what good could come from such a disgusting bug!

Two words come to my mind : "Immune System".

Take a read :

If one implants a foreign tissue in the cockroach's abdomen, the GRs become activated and begin to encapsulate the implant by flattening and wrapping around it. The activated GRs show considerable increase in the number of both the microtubules and the nuclear pores of the nuclear envelope. Such structural changes in an activated arthropod immunocyte and their functional significance in its immune reaction against a foreign tissue have not been previously reported.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

Also :

Karp began by injecting his roaches with honeybee venom. He gave them two weeks to mount whatever immune response they could, and then injected them with another dose--this one large enough to be lethal. Not only did the roaches survive the onslaught but their immune response seemed up to even human standards. It was specific to honeybee venom--subsequent injection of a similar dose of snake venom killed them--and it had a memory. You could rest these animals almost two months and then challenge them with the honeybee venom again, and essentially it acted like a booster, says Karp. You got these tremendous, very quick reactions to the venom.

discovermagazine.com...

Think about that.

German roaches are the worst to get rid off - so live with them.

My complex has them living in the walls since hurricane Katrina (2006) . They get into the condo from electric outlets, AC vents etc. The bylaws state it is the Office Staff's job to get rid of bugs. They won't do it because it will cost thousands the complex doesn't have. . I am going to have to get people together one day and sue our homeowners association.

Sure we fog and bait on a regular basis (you name it we've tried it) but it doesn't help much - so I just live with them.

5000 new pets for my cat to play with. They may look bad but are harmless. The wife and I have never gotten sick. We keep a clean house so they dont stay long but you do see them going from here to there. Honestly, I dont care after all these years. I cant fight them and they don't bug me ( ha ha) Yeah, I live with German roaches - thousands of them. Big deal. There are billions of people all over the world who live with bugs and they are not going extinct due to any germs spread by the bugs. I think the hype on the dangers of these things is overrated. I should know.

reply to post by Trueman


Well, they have stuck around for some reason. Sounds like they offer some secrets about the immune system for sure.

The "higher powers" must have some reason to allow them to stay, after everything man has come up with to rid ourselves of them. There should be plenty of the "medicine" they have to offer, if we ever discover what it is.