The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: January 20, 2008

Official News page 6


REAL LIFE NEWS: THE RISE OF THE SPACE COCKROACHES

by Hazed

Those dratted cockroaches; they get everywhere and are really hard to eradicate. Now they are even infesting space installations. You can bet that when we start to build manned facilities on the moon or Mars, cockroaches are going to come with us. And when they do, we may be in for a surprise.

Right now, they are confined to research experiments: specifically, the Russian Foton-M bio satellite (no, I've never heard of it either). Cockroaches conceived in space on board this satellite have been monitored since they were born in October, and the result is that they have developed faster and become hardier than their ordinary 'terrestrial' brethren. Both their bodies and their limbs have grown faster.

"What is more, we have found out that the creatures... run faster than ordinary cockroaches, and are much more energetic and relisilient," Dmitry Atyakshin said. Great, just what we need: super-cockroaches that will be harder to catch and kill.

Cockroaches can give birth several times after one impregnation, and the cockroaches that conceived during the bio-satellite's flight have since given birth to their second and third batches of offspring. "The second and third batches did not show these peculiarities of growth and physiology," the scientist said. But what will happen when the super-cockroaches breed - will their spawn share their resilience and energy? Could we be facing the start of a new super-strain that will out-breed the basic cockroaches and take over the world?


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page