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Cockroaches Overtake Home on TLC’s ‘Hoarding: Buried Alive’

On the Dec. 28 episode of TLC’s “Hoarding: Buried Alive,” viewers met Sherry, a woman who has coped with depression and the loss of her mother by not coping with the growing mess in her own home. It has driven her husband out of the house and provided the perfect environment for a slew of creepy crawly tenants.

The insects were, in fact, skittering across surfaces throughout the house. An open can of food in the kitchen alone was filled three inches deep with roaches. Even the refrigerator, or what one exterminator called “an incubator,” was packed with them.

And as it turned out, unbeknownst to Sherry, roaches weren’t her only pest problem. Hidden beneath trash on her kitchen floor, exterminators found a nest of black widow spiders.

“I’m really concerned about the safety of you and your kids in that house,” a psychologist warned Sherry after the spider discovery. “This is a really disturbing environment. It’s not safe.”

Billy Tesh, Pest Management Systems, Inc., was called in to assess the situation and come up with a solution. A video clip of this episode is available on the PCT Online homepage in the Online Extras section.
 

Army Eyes African Giant Rat as Bomb Detector

They may not be man’s best friend or even a friend at all, but rats someday could be used for what dogs now do: finding bombs.

Alexander Ophir, a professor at Oklahoma State University’s department of zoology, is getting money from the Army Research Office to study the African giant pouched rat, an animal with bad vision but an acute sense of smell. Ophir says the rat’s olfactory ability could someday be used to detect explosives.

“This is the kind of technology that would be hopefully used to save lives,” Ophir told AOL News.

In fact, using rats to detect explosives is not entirely new. APOPO, a Belgian charity, already uses the African giant pouched rat, which can grow up to 3 feet long, to detect land mines. The group, which works in Tanzania and Mozambique, also is training the rats to smell the bacteria that causes tuberculosis to determine if someone could be suffering from the disease.

Ophir plans to study the rats’ innate abilities and then find a way to maximize their bomb-smelling potential. He says his work is aimed at observing the rats in their natural environment and then identifying “personality” types, or temperaments, that may determine whether some rats are more disposed toward detection.

Source: Aolnews.com

Why are Flies Attracted to Beer?

Ever wondered why flies are attracted to beer? Entomologists at the University of California, Riverside, have, and offer an explanation. They report that flies sense glycerol that yeasts make during fermentation. Specifically, the researchers found that Gr64e, a receptor associated with neurons located in the fly’s mouthparts, is instrumental in signaling a good taste for beer. Once a fly has settled on beer, Gr64e detects glycerol and transmits this information to the fly’s neurons, thus influencing the fly’s behavior.

“Insects use their taste system to glean important information about the quality and nutritive value of food sources,” said Anupama Dahanukar, an assistant professor of entomology, whose lab conducted the research. “Sugars signal high nutritive value to flies, but little is known about which chemical cues flies use for food sources that are low in sugar content – such as beer.”

Dahanukar’s lab examined the feeding preference of the common fruit fly for beer and other products of yeast fermentation, and found that a receptor (a protein that serves as a gatekeeper) that is associated with neurons located in the fly’s mouthparts is instrumental in signaling a good taste for beer.

The receptor in question is Gr64e. Once a fly has settled on beer, Gr64e detects glycerol and transmits this information to the fly’s neurons, which then influences the fly’s behavioral response.

Dahanukar explained that flies use other receptors in their sensory organs to find food from a distance.

“Taste becomes important only after the fly makes physical contact with food,” she said. “A fly first locates food sources using its odor receptors – crucial for its long-range attraction to food. Then, after landing on food, the fly uses its taste system to sample the food for suitability in terms of nutrition and toxicity.”

Dahanukar, a member of UCR’s Institute for Integrative Genome Biology, explained that taste receptors also come into play when a female fly has to locate a suitable site for laying eggs.

“Females come to a decision after they have conducted intense probing of various potential sites,” she said.

Study results appeared online Nov. 6 in Nature Neuroscience.