The most important part of yesterday’s story about the brand new cold-loving cockroaches of New York City is the discovery that scientists have learned nothing from Jurassic Park and will damn us all with their hubris and lack of foresight.
The likelihood that the new species will mate with the locals to create a hybrid super-roach is slim.
“The male and female genitalia fit together like a lock and key, and that differs by species,” Evangelista says. “So we assume that one won’t fit the other.”
COUNTERPOINT THE FIRST
NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING
COUNTERPOINT THE SECOND
HOW SLIM IS “SLIM” EXACTLY
COUNTERPOINT THE THIRD
Henry Wu: Actually they can’t breed in the wild. Population control is one of our security precautions. There’s no unauthorized breeding in Jurassic Park.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: How do you know they can’t breed?
Henry Wu: Well, because all the animals in Jurassic Park are female. We’ve engineered them that way.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: But again, how do you know they’re all female? Does somebody go out into the park and pull up the dinosaurs’ skirts?
Henry Wu: We control their chromosomes. It’s really not that difficult. All vertebrate embryos are inherently female anyway, they just require an extra hormone given at the right developmental stage to make them male. We simply deny them that.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: John, the kind of control you’re attempting simply is… it’s not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh… well, there it is.
John Hammond: There it is.
Henry Wu: You’re implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will… breed?
Dr. Ian Malcolm: No, I’m, I’m simply saying that life, uh… finds a way.
COUNTERPOINT THE FOURTH
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Gee, the lack of humility before nature that’s being displayed here, uh… staggers me.
COUNTERPOINT THE FIFTH
Dr. Alan Grant: Oh, my God. Do you know what this is? This is a dinosaur egg. The dinosaurs are breeding.
Tim: But Grandpa said all the dinosaurs were girls.
Dr. Alan Grant: Amphibian DNA.
Lex: What’s that?
Dr. Alan Grant: Well, on the tour, the film said they used frog DNA to fill in the gene sequence gaps. They mutated the dinosaur genetic code and blended it with that of a frog’s. Now, some West African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female in a single sex environment. Malcolm was right. Look…
[we see a trail of baby dinosaur footprints]
Dr. Alan Grant: Life found a way.
COUNTERPOINT THE SIXTH
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Dr. Sattler, Dr. Grant, you’ve heard of chaos theory?
Dr. Ellie Sattler: No.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: No? Non-linear equations? Strange attractions? Dr. Sattler, I refuse to believe that you aren’t familiar with the concept of attraction.
These cold-loving super-roach hybrids will almost certainly be worse than we could possibly have imagined. Possibly they will feed on snow itself, growing to immense proportions after every blizzard. Almost certainly they will develop some sort of rudimentary “snow language” or “ice-chatter.”
They’re very clever girls.
Tags: cockroaches, dinosaurs, jeff goldblum is a funny guy but he is not sexy and there was no reason for him to have his shirt off in that movie, jurassic park, my particular brand of science sensationalism, panicking, this metaphor is exact
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is there even any point in anyone else commenting now?
Lord, there’s really not.
I was going to, but as you say…
I mean, it’s not stopping anyone (myself included). We will bask in its greatness.
How about this: go to <a href=”http://www.vogue.co.uk,” target=”_blank”>www.vogue.co.uk, <a href=”http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk,” target=”_blank”>www.gq-magazine.co.uk, and <a href=”http://www.wired.co.uk,” target=”_blank”>www.wired.co.uk, click anywhere on the screen as long as you’re not clicking on a link or ad or something, and type the Konami Code (up arrow, up arrow, down arrow, down arrow, left arrow, right arrow, left arrow, right arrow, b, a).
THE ONE WITH THE HAT
THAT’S MY FAVORITE THING TO DO.
WUT
I guess this is the place to leave Jurassic Heart: http://hima.gptouch.com/games/jurassic_heart/
I’m leaving New York because of the superroaches.
I’d invite you to stay with me, but I live in a humid swamp, so….
On the plus side, this article gave me flashbacks to waking up on the sofa in the dark living room of a house I was babysitting in for the first or second time, and realizing it was the GIANTASS FLYING COCKROACH who’d just LANDED ON MY T-SHIRT that disturbed my midnight nap. So that was fun.
LISTEN TO JEFF GOLDBLUM.
Sexy, sexy Jeff Goldblum…
I’ll be in my bunk.
I was going to find something different, but then I found you this:
YOU GET THAT OFF OF MY WEBSITE YOU GET THAT OFF RIGHT NOW
you’re a madwoman, Ortberg
actually, what you need to see is this. I am just inept and always forget how post a picture properly. but click the link! Trust me.
Apparently I am also inept and have forgotten how to post a link.
http://images.dangerousminds.net/uploads/images/j…
yesssssssssssssss
(to post images: *img src=”link here”* but with < and > instead of * and *, respectively.)
LIFE FINDS A WAY, EVANGELISTA.
In related scientists-have-learned-nothing news (“news”), the scientist who led the team who cloned Dolly the sheep thinks we should take a stab at mammoths: “I think it should be done as long as we can provide great care for the animal. If there are reasonable prospects of them being healthy, we should do it.”
WHAT COULD GO WRONG
I know, I know, but I really really want a mammoth.
if they can somehow play around with stuff so that I can have a mammoth that is, say, the size of a large cat, I would be immensely happy and would remortgage my house in order to reserve one.
I worry that this would end up like mini pigs, where you get one and they swear up and down it won’t get more than 30 pounds and then you end up a year later with a 300 pound mammoth that barely fits through the door.
(Except the pig/mammoth, of course.)
that is a concern
but if pet mammoths became a thing, imagine the pets stores. The mammoth Aisle, with little Mammoth leads (reinforced). Tusk caps, to prevent damage. Mammoth treats. Bowls with cutesy ‘cave art’ designs. Basic mammopth food, and luxury mammoth food. There would be at least one mammoth food brand that specialised in ‘as close to their natural diet as possible’ food stuffs. Little mammoth beds. Skin products to stop the, getting dry skin. Tusk polish.
True Paleo.
(I am totally enamored of this idea, you have convinced me. I worked in pet retail for many years, so the thought of the mammoth chew toys alone has killed me and I am dead.)
people taking their mammoths on walks
mammoths drinking out of the little bowls shops put out for dogs in summer and blowing water all over themselves with their trunks
mammoth poop-a-scoops
Mammoths very politely pulling little carts with babies or elderly dogs in them.
Aahh the best email I have ever gotten from the university listserv was “Pig For Sale”:
Hi all,
I recently bought a vietnamese pig (also known as mini pig, or teacup pig). His name is Silvio, and is a great pet. The problem is that he is growing excessively, 100 pounds in 2 weeks, and I suspect is not a mini size pig but is regular pig.
I now want a slapstick comedy where George Clooney buys the wrong kind of pig and it trashes Lake Como.
That is absolutely amazing. (Nicole, I would watch every episode.)
I’d be totally first in line for a teacup mammoth.
Not gonna lie, I’d eat mammoth steak.
I don’t know BUT LET’S FIND OUT. I want to ride a mammoth.
This thread has gotten away from me.
But it’s gone to a marvellous place.
But OK, the reason cockroaches want to be in your house is because it’s warm, and outside is cold. If they loved the cold, they would just go outside, and therefore not be in your house. This seems like an improvement?
Until the summer comes.
In that we’d eventually end up surrendering the entire outside to the ever-growing population of mutant flying insects, perhaps not?
Oh! So my smart little brother who was trying to explain evolutionary biology to me once explained it is impossible for bugs to go Jurassic Park size because since they take in oxygen through their exo-skeleton, the atmosphere/current conditions mean they would never receive enough oxygen to breathe.
Scientists help me out! Is this true? it has been my solace.
It’s true, for a variety of physics reasons. Bugs gotta be small.
fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly
bugs gonna be small due to present atmospheric conditions or they’ll diiiiieee
I clicked the link and was greeted with a full screen, wings spread, giant fucking cockroach picture.
So I’m just going right back to never clicking on a Yahoo news story ever again.
My one true phobia has discovered yet another way to conquer the planet. I am never going to NYC again. I would burn it all down if I saw one, therefore it is safer for everyone if I do not visit. Please advise me when they start moving towards the Delaware Valley, and I will evacuate to my human gerbil ball immediately. dear god I wish I had a human gerbil ball
http://m.xkcd.com/152/
Yeah, they haven’t really learned anything from Terminator either. I recently read a feature in Wired (tried to find it but not sure where it is right now) where this dude was like, “Yeah, we don’t understand how the human brain works, but that’s not going to stop me from making one in a computer and seeing what happens!”
Wired is pretty much a horror magazine.
Hahah this is basically an entire subfield of cognitive science/ psych (that is, building models of brains in computers IN ORDER to figure out how real brains work), and the potential sci fi horror element never occurred to me until just now.
I KNOW DO YOU SEE WHY I AM TERRIFIED
That bit where they said the dinos couldn’t breed because they were all female made me yell, “PARTHENOGENESIS” and hide behind the couch.
Relatedly, how Toasty is parthenogenesis? We don’t need dick for anything.
I’m reading that last bit to the tune of “we don’t need no education.”
I decided long, long ago that should I ever reproduce, it’s going to be via parthenogenesis. In bulk. My mini-mes will then conquer the globe.
even better, the organism I study (the sprightly water flea (which is not actually a flea but a crustacean)) normally reproduces parthenogenetically and makes only female offspring, but produces male babies WHEN IT FEELS LIKE IT. Which is usually at the end of a season under conditions when it’s a good idea to have them around because with them you can produce a type of egg that can survive in the pond sediment till next year (or for 700 years, which is the current record for oldest egg resurrected from the sediments by lab scientists). So literally it’s like oh we’re all about to die, I GUESS let’s make some males to help us make daughter-time-capsules.
sprightly water flea
This neither roaches nor dinosaurs nor mammoths, but it does make me think that a database of “life finds a way” moments in science might not be a bad thing to start, if only so that later, when we’re all building camouflage out of cold-resistant cockroaches to hide us from the genetically-identical mammoths that rule the earth, we can whisper “I told you so”:
“AquaBounty has said that even if it expands, its sterile, all-female fish would be raised in land-based facilities, eliminating the possibility that they would escape containment and reproduce in the wild — an assessment that the FDA agreed with.”
Did anyone else go see the re-release of Jurassic Park in theatres? It was perfection.
I watch it annually. It’s the movie I enjoy most.
I feel compelled to watch it whenever it’s on TV – I cannot see it on the guide or flick past it and keep going.
It was! My husband and I have matched Albertosaurus tattoos, and we make a big deal out of seeing JP whenever the second run theaters play it.
I did! In 3D, no less! It was glorious.
YES. I was the person screaming at shirtless Jeff Goldblum.
I was in a full theater and EVERYONE cheered at that scene – it was a magical moment.
everyone in my theater also clapped at “It’s an interactive CD-ROM!!”
I saw it in 3D, and it was one of the best things I have ever done. So, so wonderful.
I think I will now spend the rest of my day thinking about Jurassic Park and how I’m going to watch it as soon as I get home. PERFECT for Christmas (or any festive or non-festive occasion!) Maybe I’ll just get some champagne too…
With all of these altered, unattainable images of saurian beauty standards. I feel compelled to share this with the velociraptors at home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvzTMrvpOUs.
Not a cockroach expert (but I did study evolutionary biology) and this seems wrong because cockroaches can use something called “traumatic insemination” which–TRIGGER WARNING– is where the male genitalia stabs through the female’s exoskeleton and just deposits sperm anywhere in her body cavity. This works because cockroaches have a sort of loosey-goosey-circulatory-system where everything just sloshes around inside so it isn’t necessary to actually aim for the genitals. In other news, it is impossible to study cockroaches and continue to believe in a benevolent creator.
There is not a big enough TRIGGER WARNING in the world for that. I want to burn my eyes now.
Apologies. Nature is weird and gross and science people truly shouldn’t be allowed in public.
No, it’s okay. I secretly loved it…in the way that I might toss my biscuits if I think too hard about it.
Then you’ll be delighted to know that female cockroaches have a way to fight back. They develop a second set of genitals in the likely stabbin’ location, so that the male might accidentally just do normal cockroach sex. And know you know…the rest of the story.
D:
you're a madwoman, Ortberg
Jurassic Park is still relevant.
“I could imagine japonica being outside and walking around, though I don’t know how well it would do in dirty New York snow.”
Why?
I saw it in 3D, and it was one of the best things I have ever done. So, so wonderful.
I think I will now spend the rest of my day thinking about Jurassic Park and how I'm going to watch it as soon as I get home. PERFECT for Christmas (or any festive or non-festive occasion!) Maybe I'll just get some champagne too…
http://m.xkcd.com/152/