PHOTO: Cockroach: “Can I get you a sugary cocktail to convince you to mate with me?” (via Go Green Pest Control)
Well, way to go humans – your efforts to get rid of household pests have now cock-blocked cockroaches trying it hook up. It turns out, the sugar that is often placed in roach traps is too similar to the sugary gifts male cockroaches use to attract a mate. Decades of Pavlovian conditioning have now turned off females to their mating practices.
The German cockroach is the most common in the world. It is found in homes, scurrying around in the bathroom and kitchen when you flip on the light switch. Researchers found that some of these German cockroaches started to avoid traps laced with glucose, a form of sugar. They had wised up to the sugar trap and learned to avoid being baited by it.
But now their famously pervasive aversion to death has…
