New Scientist Dying beetles go out with a bang - News: "Dying beetles go out with a bang
12 November 2005
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WHEN death looms, saving for the future is no longer important: it's all about the here and now.
It is a mindset that can be summed up by a T-shirt once seen by biologist Ben Sadd of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. 'It said, 'I'm dying of cancer - please have sex with me'.'
Now Sadd and colleagues have found that mealworm beetles, Tenebrio molitor, do a similar thing. If their immune systems are so seriously challenged that the beetles may die, they divert their resources into producing sexual pheromones."
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