#but ohhh my god some if the things they've put these animals through is awful. wire-mother levels of awful. demikhov-dog levels.

[is-the-bug-video-cute]

The downside to reading older studies is that there were no animal welfare guidelines back then, so no one would bat an eye if a bachelor's student cooked a bunch of bugs alive -_-

There may not be a lot of protection for invertebrates now, but at least you can't get away with this today. Not at my university, anyways. My supervisor would have me kicked out on the spot if I tried something like this.

For those who don't know, T. molitor larvae have an optimal metabolism at roughly 30ºC, after which point they begin to experience heat stress. Newly hatched larvae (and possibly adults, but the data on them is lacking) are unable to eat fast enough to keep up with the optimal metabolism, so if you keep them at anything higher than 28ºC they starve to death within days. Such is the plight of ectotherms :(

So basically, this bachelor's student, in 1937, simultaneously cooked and starved a bunch of beetles to death to test of they could still reproduce under stress. The fact that 8 females only produced a total of 12 eggs during a period where they should've produced 500-600 speaks for itself.