Roaches Evolving (Quickly!) To Evade Our Traps
266For decades, people had been getting rid of roaches by putting out sugar traps laced with poison. It was working out great...until the technique stopped working and roaches thrived in people's homes again. What happened?
Evolution happened.
Researchers have found that some cockroaches have evolved to "reorganize" their senses of taste to ensure their survival and outsmart our traps. While they previously loved the sweet taste of corn syrup, many groups of roaches learned to perceive the taste as bitter, and avoid it completely. They developed a sugar-rejecting trait and outsmarted humans again...for now.
How could an animal learn to perceive a sense differently? Surprisingly, this adaptive change has happened before! Dave Koller (The Young Turks co-founder) joins in to discuss!
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TAGS: Cockroach Evolution, Cockroach Sweet Tooth, Cockroaches, Insect Evolution, Insects, Roach Bait, roach evolution, roaches evolve, roaches evolving, Evolution