[extropy-chat] cockroaches (was Making noise)

[spike]

bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Robert Bradbury
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Making noise

...  Sometimes if they mix their paint colors just the right way they end up
with a very pretty new color.  Other times they end up with yucky
brown...Robert


Yucky brown.  There are two words that just go well together.  Why?

I have been pondering why people and even pets tend to be so squicked by
cockroaches.  They don't bite or sting, they are no more filthy than any
other bug, altho they have gotten a bad rap for being dirty.

It occurred to me that mammalian excrement is almost universally yucky brown
(never blue, never red).  So the mammalian brain may have evolved to avoid
devouring things that are yucky brown.  The cockroach is an enormously
successful beast from an evolutionary point of view.  We have never seen a
pretty blue roach, or a red one or any other color besides yucky brown.
Perhaps part of the cockroach's success comes from the cheerful evolutionary
accident of appearing to predators as a scurrying turd.

spike

(End of random thought, and now, back to our originally scheduled program.)