Official News page 8

REAL LIFE NEWS: COCKROACHES ARE NIGHT OWLS

by Hazed

No, I don't literally mean that cockroaches are sprouting feathers and eating mice, that would be ridiculous. But apparently, cockroaches perform better in the evening than they do in the morning, making them AM morons but PM geniuses. I know the feeling!

Researchers at Vanderbilt University taught individual cockroaches to associate peppermint - a scent they normally dislike - with sugar water, causing them to favor it over vanilla, which they normally find universally appealing. They did their training of individual roaches at different times of the day, and found that those which were trained during the evening or at night retained the memory for several days, while the morning-trained cockroaches were totally incapable of forming a new memory.

"This is the first example of an insect whose ability to learn is controlled by its biological clock," said Professor of biological sciences Terry Page. "It's very surprising that the deficit in the morning is so profound. An interesting question is why the animal would not want to learn at that particular time of day."

Certainly, as somebody who hates mornings, I can sympathize with the cockroaches!

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