Humans using sugar in cockroach traps has inadvertently led to female roaches being turned off by the sugary “gifts” males use to entice them into mating.
But don’t celebrate the demise of cockroaches just yet — some males have adapted new ways to continue wooing females, including by shortening the length of foreplay, a study said on Wednesday.
The small but stubborn German cockroach is the most common species of the insect, lurking in kitchens and bathrooms across the world.
Glucose, a form of sugar, has long been used to bait these cockroaches into deadly traps.
Thirty years ago, researchers first noticed that some German cockroaches had developed an aversion to glucose and were avoiding the traps.
This distaste for glucose may save them from death, but it has also put a damper on their sex life, according to the study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Male cockroaches have a very particular manoeuvre to attract females into mating.
They lift…
Source: Guardian Newspaper
