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Terminix Reaches Out to Rat-Weary Wrigleyville Residents

Wrigley Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs and a ballpark whose history dates back to 1914, is in the midst of a renovation. Good news for fans seeking modern amenities, but bad news for residents of Wrigleyville, the neighborhood adjacent to the ballpark, where residents are complaining about an influx of rats. “The rats have been running rampant. I’m not kidding you,” Wrigleyville resident Terie Kata told the Chicago Tribune. “There are people in the alley and there are still rats running around and it’s daylight.” Terminix took to its Facebook profile on Jan. 30, to announce that from now until the Cubs open their season on April 5 against the St. Louis Cardinals, they’re offering area residents a 25 percent discount on all rodent and wildlife removal services.

Cockroaches Have Individual Personalities, Researchers Report

New research indicates that “cockroaches have personalities,” as scientists say in a statement. Specifically, they have two, the Guardian reports. The discovery could help explain their evolutionary success.

Scientists observed the character traits as they studied the way the “gregarious insect” seeks shelter when they come out into the open.

If they had the same personalities they would all behave exactly the same when in the open but observations have revealed clear differences.

Some, those classified as shy, keep hidden as much as possible and seek the safety of shelter, while the more adventurous are keen to explore their surroundings.

Isaac Planas Sitjà, one of the researchers from the Université libre de Bruxelles that uncovered the personalities, said: “We have categorized the observed personalities. We call them ‘shy or cautious’ and ‘bold or explorers.’”

The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the research team said: “From studying the way they find shelter, we show that individuals have consistent behavior which can differ between individuals in a group — cockroaches have personalities.”

Ants Being Studied for Their Ability to Handle Traffic

In an NPR interview, physicist Apoorva Nagar discussed how he thinks studying ants reveal clues to reducing highway traffic jams.

Nagar, from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, says he got interested in the topic when he came across a study by German and Indian researchers showing that ants running along a path were able to maintain a steady speed even when there were a large number of ants on the path.

Nagar says there are three main reasons ants don’t jam up. No. 1, ants don’t have egos. They don’t show off by zooming past people.

“The second thing is, they do not mind a few accidents or collisions,” say Nagar. So unless there’s a serious pileup, they just keep going.

The third reason, he says, is that ants seem to get more disciplined when paths get crowded, running in straighter lines and varying their speed less. They’re less likely to make unexpected moves in this sort of heavy traffic. It’s the kind of steady control you see when a computer, rather than a human, is controlling a car. There’s less variability unless it’s absolutely called for.

Nagar felt this kind of behavior could be explained by something called the Langevin equation, an equation physicists use when describing the movement of liquids, or how individual atoms behave in a lattice.

Source: NPR