Do you know your cockroaches?
So I didn’t know much about the amazing resistance of D. radiodurans but I had already heard about another tough fellow, the cockroach. I’d read and hear about cockroaches being able to outstand a nuclear war. If you don’t believe me, just watch the first episode of Heroes or a random episode of CSI Las Vegas (Grissom seems to like cockroaches).
Anyhow, getting back to the radiation resistant cockroaches, are there any questions you have related to those creepy crawly lurkers? I do!
Here are a couple:
- Why do they seem to always die on their backs?
- Why can some fly and other don’t?
- How many offspring can they produce at a time? And how often?
- Why are there specifically American cockroaches and German cockroaches? No Portuguese, Italian, French, Chinese versions?
- And can they really live for a week headless? (I heard this one on Heroes ep.1)
So, in an attempt to answer some of my questions and trying to find out more about their radiation resistance, I happened to run across an amazingly complete FAQ totally dedicated to answering questions regarding cockroaches. So dedicated that it happened to answer just about all my curious questions. (Check out #’s 6, 18, 26, 47, 51, 52, 58)
The radiation issue was left a little in the dark (no pun intended), but there seems to be some explanations running around.
[Image from Wikipedia.org]
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You should look for a book called “Parasite Rex” - it’s full of little gems about bio-diversity and the weirdness of life.