cockroaches

Scientists Create Mutant Cockroaches (Because Regular Cockroaches Weren’t Bad Enough Already?)

Photo: Paul Starosta (Getty Images)

In a move that will inevitably mean the end of mankind as we know it, a team of scientists has successfully edited the DNA of cockroaches to create a new mutant super breed of the disgusting, hard-shelled insect. While we don’t know much about science or DNA, we do know that regular run-of-the-mill cockroaches are already the most difficult to kill, adaptable creatures on Earth.

Making mutant super roaches pretty much guarantees that not only will they still be here in the event of a nuclear holocaust, but they’ll also likely rise up on their own and destroy all humans. OK, we might be getting ahead of ourselves. Scientific gene sequencing experiments never go bad in the movies ever, right? Things might be alright. Everything turned out well in The Fly, right? You know, the one with Jeff Goldblum. Oh, wait.

To be fair, the point of this experiment isn’t to create monster cockroaches bent on world domination. In fact, the scientists at Kyoto University are simply researching whether or not it’s possible to alter cockroach DNA. And apparently, it is. Maybe it’s not so scary after all.

They did this by injecting adult female cockroaches with new genes that were then passed onto their now mutated offspring. You might not want to hear this, but similar research has already been done on wasps and mosquitos (although instead of gene-editing, the embryos themselves were injected). Why they’re choosing the scariest possible insect, though, we have no idea.

So far, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. But if we start seeing giant cockroaches flying around wreaking havoc, we’ll know who to blame. We have enough problems without having to deal with swarms of giant, mutant, scurrying cockroaches popping up all over the place. Only time will tell.

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