The Cockroach Approach to Defense Depends on the Wind

How can cockroaches escape from a swat with a shoe or attack by a toad or a wasp? Dima Rinberg and Hanan Davidowitz of the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J., have discovered that the wily insects can sense danger by changes in air movements around them. Tiny hairs on their back appendages act as sensors to tell them when to run, the pair report in today’s Nature.

“When a predator comes in for an attack, they sense the wind that the predator makes and they calculate the direction it is coming from and then run away in the opposite direction,” Davidowitz said. The scientists discovered this by measuring the response of the American cockroach to tiny bursts of wind.

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--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II