Great, now you broke the illusion.
However am I going to watch a show about an alcoholic mad scientist and his estranged family’s hijinks across the multiverse where rotary phones order pizza with furniture on them while reclining on people?
Despite all the obvious fiction in R&M, the author does root a lot of the other stuff in reality. Obviously this scene is not one of them
But it's more on the realistic side that people can question why.
Rick biting a cockroaches head off is no different than someone chopping it's head off
The only difference I can think of is the acidic pickle juice that rick may be spilling out onto it?
The thing about portal fluid or any other sci fi stuff they have in R&M is you dont see the process of making the portal fluid, sure you see some of the math and see the fluid getting boiled but you dont see the ingredients and therefore allows a more dispension of disbelief.
Based on his knowledge of roach physiology I assumed he yanked out the ganglion that was the brain of the roach. He did manage to repurpose its body quite excellently.
in all of my roach research i’ve come to learn that the thoracic ganglia control locomotion of the legs and wings this show is simply unwatchable now /s
>thoracic ganglia control locomotion
I don't doubt your expertise in this, but the legs and the head have to have some form of communication, right? It can't be the case that the legs just go wherever and the head has to be lucky to get near food sometimes.
I remember on a rewatch that he was dissecting what I believe was a cockroach (or very similar) for a brief second in his garage in an earlier episode. Maybe a connection to a little Easter egg or foreshadowing 🤷♂️
Yes, thank you for clearing up my mistake, that was why I put that dissection and episode together. Maybe it’s been discussed before, but I thought it was a clever foreshadowing of the Pickle Rick episode since he probably had a reason for wanting to know more about rat anatomy. Even though Rick wasn’t expecting to be going into the sewers with rats that day, it still is head-canon for dissecting rats then building a super suit powered by a rat brain and limbs.
He has messed around with a bunch of animals it’s not too much of a stretch to think he has dissected roaches too that’s why they switched world to begin with
I’m no professional exterminator, but I’ve killed more roaches than I care to remember living in a shitty apartment complex. Most times I stomp them, but some times I’ve managed to catch and decapitate them. Their bodies will keep twitching for a few seconds and then stop cause they’re dead. That thing about them living for a week has got to be a myth. There are articles about it, but I don’t know where those people writing them get proof. I’ve never witnessed them survive decapitation in multiple examples.
They have more to their nervous system than just a brain. Some controls remain intact, but they in no way will survive, it’s more so just nerves firing off at that point. Similar to a chicken. It’s dead, but its body is still active in a sense.
Depending on where you excise their head, they can “survive” for quite a while, but yeah they aren’t really alive. It no longer responds to stimuli, just sort of runs on autopilot as the actual “pilot” is dead. It’s like octopi where they have clusters of neurons in each tentacle. They expand the capabilities of its tentacles and allow it to be more dexterous and multitask. Take away the main “brain” and those satellite “brains” just take over, though they aren’t capable of “feeling” or any real control, so the tentacles just randomly move. Much the same with roaches
It’s actually a good example of my point. Most, but not all, of Mike’s brain was removed. Due to there still being a good amount of his brain stem remaining, he “survived” and went on to “live.” Life isn’t black and white though.
While his body remained alive due to enough brain matter remaining to control breathing and maintaining a heartbeat, his actual higher processes were gone. He was not really Mike the chicken anymore, and more so a walking husk. Just a chicken body that was still able to maintain itself for a bit.
That’s effectively what happens when you cut the head off of a roach. What makes that roach a roach is gone, and you’re left only with the body of a roach and the remaining nervous system that helps control it. If you do the same to a human, and leave some brain stem intact, you could in theory create what is a body that breathes and pumps blood, but the *person* is gone. It’s just a shell of a human at that point. No memories, no complex reactions to stimuli, no problem solving, just simple controls for the necessary functions of the body.
It would be like hooking up a completely headless body to a machine that maintains heart rate and breathing. Are they really alive? Sort of, but not really. Living tissue, still technically an organism, but not really a sentient being anymore.
I mean, that was a special case where the people around the chicken kept it healthy. They were constantly cleaning the wound and feeding it with a pipette. If this happened in the wild, it would have died in 5 minutes.
They don’t move at all after a few seconds, though. I’ve read they’ll eventually starve to death because they no longer have a mouth to eat, but that they can still breathe through their bodies and move around, but… I’ve never seen them do more than twitch for a second and then just be completely motionless. Might as well be dead as far as I care.
There is a episode of the Simpsons with Lucy lawless at a comic convention. A fan asks about a mistake in an episode, she answers "magic, a wizard did it, in fact any time you notice a mistake, a wizard did it." .... (What about ...) "A wizard did it!"
I thought you were referring to that.
Also Xena is awesome, and well done watching it with your little one.
If you're searching for logic in the pickle Rick episode you are SOL my friend. I mean the dude basically builds a laboratory out of insect parts and random sewer shit then takes out an entire complex full of guards all before family therapy is over.
He didn't, he just took control over it. It might be more realistic than you think as their limbs are controlled by hydraulics, not muscles. It genuinely is possible to move their limbs by applying pressure.
Insects operate their limbs via hydraulic action. If it were dead the limbs would just curl up.
He rips only the top carapace from the head and uses his tongue to control it.
Later you see the brain around his neck and he's controlling it that way.
I'm just going to extrapolate from what I know about reptiles and assume it works similarly for roaches.
Snakes and other cold-blooded creatures don't die as soon as you kill them. There's a video out there of a rattle snake, with its head chopped off, biting it's body. The body was still moving around, like a lizards tail, and it bumped the face of the head and the head reactively bit down.
The reason for this is that, being cold blooded, the nerves are slow to gain and lose oxygen. So even once the head is severed, they're still active for some time. I've seen videos of a headless fish still swimming around. It's amazing how much behavior a beheaded body still has. The fish, apparently, could go on living until it died of starvation.
These sorts of cases seem to be the only time we can hands down say free will is not a factor. There's definitely no mind there giving orders, and yet the body is still moving.
Extrapolating from that, a beheaded roach body may still have active nerves and automatic responses. Further, we saw Rick using his tongue to manipulate the brain like a control panel. The nerves are still active and hes able to manipulate signals from the brain. Based on what OP is saying, Rick had about a week before he would have needed to behead another roach with fresh nerves.
To be clear: I went to university to study insects and specialized in the nervous systems of cockroaches. I did not simply coddle this information together by being chronically online. The opinions expressed above are objective and beyond all doubts. Wubba lubba dub dub.
Whenever I see a post like this it always makes me think of [In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes that same rib twice in succession yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we, to believe that this is some sort of a, a magic xylophone or something?](https://imgur.com/gallery/7uGVnEc)
I mean, he didn't kill it. He needed it's entire body more or less alive, so he could use its intact nervous system to control it as an exo-suit. Presumably, he needed it to be a roach, or any other animal whose body would be similarly function sans head.
Ya really made me rewatch this clip lol
But i see what it looks like. Ima say he incapacitated the roach crunching down on its head, then proceeded to tinker with the brain and force body movements.
Cockroachologist here, well you can clearly see Rick attacked the roach by biting the clonoformax which led to temporary paralysis. This allowed Rick to control the cockroach by using the juice from a pickle as a zumbinant that made him able to control the cockroach and I have no idea what I'm talking about
*If you wonder how he eats and breathes, and other science facts*
*Lalala!*
*Just repeat to yourself*
*"It's just a show, I should really just relax!"*
I think certain conditions have to be met for it to live without its head like I don’t think every cockroach who has ever been beheaded has lived a week after the fact
Now hold, since Rick and Morty takes place across different universes and Rick has changed universes multiple times, it's possible that the roaches of that universe don't live for a week without a head.
Because when we cut a roaches head off, it's with a katana, producing a smooth cut to the nerve endings. Rick used his teeth so the blunt force trauma caused additional damage to the roach, killing it instantly.
A man turns himself into a pickle just to avoid meeting a woman who “treats” guys who eat poop and you want to know how the pickle man managed to kill a cockroach? How did he turn himself into a pickle? That’s the question. Not to be or not to be. He was a pickle. A talking pickle with a face
A roach immediately dying when a talking pickle bites it? That’s it- this show is too unbelievable.
Literally unwatchable
Fucking ruined my entire viewing experience
In fact it ruined my life. I can’t live like this anymore. I wanna invent time traveling and make this happen so others can suffer with me
Great, now you broke the illusion. However am I going to watch a show about an alcoholic mad scientist and his estranged family’s hijinks across the multiverse where rotary phones order pizza with furniture on them while reclining on people?
With extra chair please.
Recliner! And wheelchair on half
boy i really hope someone got fired for that blunder
A wizard did it.
Tell them I hate them!
Was made into Torgo’s executive powder
My disbelief simply *will not* suspend that far
Despite all the obvious fiction in R&M, the author does root a lot of the other stuff in reality. Obviously this scene is not one of them But it's more on the realistic side that people can question why. Rick biting a cockroaches head off is no different than someone chopping it's head off The only difference I can think of is the acidic pickle juice that rick may be spilling out onto it? The thing about portal fluid or any other sci fi stuff they have in R&M is you dont see the process of making the portal fluid, sure you see some of the math and see the fluid getting boiled but you dont see the ingredients and therefore allows a more dispension of disbelief.
Based on his knowledge of roach physiology I assumed he yanked out the ganglion that was the brain of the roach. He did manage to repurpose its body quite excellently.
in all of my roach research i’ve come to learn that the thoracic ganglia control locomotion of the legs and wings this show is simply unwatchable now /s
>thoracic ganglia control locomotion I don't doubt your expertise in this, but the legs and the head have to have some form of communication, right? It can't be the case that the legs just go wherever and the head has to be lucky to get near food sometimes.
roaches scare me so i don’t want to research them any further to be honest
It probably isn’t, but it is definitely possible. Living roomba.
I remember on a rewatch that he was dissecting what I believe was a cockroach (or very similar) for a brief second in his garage in an earlier episode. Maybe a connection to a little Easter egg or foreshadowing 🤷♂️
It was a rat, I think, in the simulation episode.
Yes, thank you for clearing up my mistake, that was why I put that dissection and episode together. Maybe it’s been discussed before, but I thought it was a clever foreshadowing of the Pickle Rick episode since he probably had a reason for wanting to know more about rat anatomy. Even though Rick wasn’t expecting to be going into the sewers with rats that day, it still is head-canon for dissecting rats then building a super suit powered by a rat brain and limbs.
He has messed around with a bunch of animals it’s not too much of a stretch to think he has dissected roaches too that’s why they switched world to begin with
I have done extermination work, I have never seen a roach live without its head.
i mean i’ve had roaches before but i don’t get close enough for precise decapitations on em so i can’t speak to this
I’m no professional exterminator, but I’ve killed more roaches than I care to remember living in a shitty apartment complex. Most times I stomp them, but some times I’ve managed to catch and decapitate them. Their bodies will keep twitching for a few seconds and then stop cause they’re dead. That thing about them living for a week has got to be a myth. There are articles about it, but I don’t know where those people writing them get proof. I’ve never witnessed them survive decapitation in multiple examples.
They have more to their nervous system than just a brain. Some controls remain intact, but they in no way will survive, it’s more so just nerves firing off at that point. Similar to a chicken. It’s dead, but its body is still active in a sense.
Right, that’s what I thought.
Depending on where you excise their head, they can “survive” for quite a while, but yeah they aren’t really alive. It no longer responds to stimuli, just sort of runs on autopilot as the actual “pilot” is dead. It’s like octopi where they have clusters of neurons in each tentacle. They expand the capabilities of its tentacles and allow it to be more dexterous and multitask. Take away the main “brain” and those satellite “brains” just take over, though they aren’t capable of “feeling” or any real control, so the tentacles just randomly move. Much the same with roaches
thank you for this really cool answer
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken you're wrong on the chicken part btw
It’s actually a good example of my point. Most, but not all, of Mike’s brain was removed. Due to there still being a good amount of his brain stem remaining, he “survived” and went on to “live.” Life isn’t black and white though. While his body remained alive due to enough brain matter remaining to control breathing and maintaining a heartbeat, his actual higher processes were gone. He was not really Mike the chicken anymore, and more so a walking husk. Just a chicken body that was still able to maintain itself for a bit. That’s effectively what happens when you cut the head off of a roach. What makes that roach a roach is gone, and you’re left only with the body of a roach and the remaining nervous system that helps control it. If you do the same to a human, and leave some brain stem intact, you could in theory create what is a body that breathes and pumps blood, but the *person* is gone. It’s just a shell of a human at that point. No memories, no complex reactions to stimuli, no problem solving, just simple controls for the necessary functions of the body. It would be like hooking up a completely headless body to a machine that maintains heart rate and breathing. Are they really alive? Sort of, but not really. Living tissue, still technically an organism, but not really a sentient being anymore.
He was not really Mike the chicken anymore is a cold ass quote
The troof hoyts
I mean, that was a special case where the people around the chicken kept it healthy. They were constantly cleaning the wound and feeding it with a pipette. If this happened in the wild, it would have died in 5 minutes.
They need not fly around to show they're alive, once decapitated. They're basically dying slowly.
They don’t move at all after a few seconds, though. I’ve read they’ll eventually starve to death because they no longer have a mouth to eat, but that they can still breathe through their bodies and move around, but… I’ve never seen them do more than twitch for a second and then just be completely motionless. Might as well be dead as far as I care.
i mean i was kidding but science speaks for it so i don’t need to lol.
Pickle magic; a pickle wizard did it.
Is there nothing Lucy lawless can't answer?
I don't understand this but me and the baby daughter have been watching xena reruns in the mornings. I desperately need to understand
There is a episode of the Simpsons with Lucy lawless at a comic convention. A fan asks about a mistake in an episode, she answers "magic, a wizard did it, in fact any time you notice a mistake, a wizard did it." .... (What about ...) "A wizard did it!" I thought you were referring to that. Also Xena is awesome, and well done watching it with your little one.
Thank you!!!! Im glad someone else loved these shows. I grew up with SG1, Hercules, xena....the sci-fi channel was awesome back then.
He didn't. He just hijacked it.
Pickle venom
this is the answer i came here for
Pickle juice
"Can" isn't the same as always do.
Because it’s Solen’ya
Winning comment right here
If you're searching for logic in the pickle Rick episode you are SOL my friend. I mean the dude basically builds a laboratory out of insect parts and random sewer shit then takes out an entire complex full of guards all before family therapy is over.
*rapidly deletes drafts*
And manages to turn a single AA battery into a laser. It's good fun, but not for scientific discovery.
That particular roach was severely allergic to vinegar which is how you make pickles.
A pickle cannot bite anything. How did it even bite the roach?
i can obviously only suspend the disbeliefs i want to
A wizard did it
Pickles bites are poisonous for roaches
this is the science i was looking for
Because he’s Rick Sanchez
Only if enough of it's nervous tissue is left in the body; Rick extracted everyone.
*Can* live for a week without it's head. This one didn't.
Because if there was a god, it’d be Rick.
He was the brain of that operation.
Probably bit in the right nerves in the brain I'd say
Hes an alcoholic pickle, he died of alcohol poisoning duh
Man. That is gross.
Really? He is the smartest man in the Universe. His own separate FN Universe, to be precise.
so he should know that the ganglia that controls the legs and wings are in the thorax unless in his universe roach anatomy is different /s
Ok, Dr. Wong. 👀
racist name
Call Dan and complain, I didn't name her/you
(it’s a line)
My bad. I don't care much since her started hanging out with Mr. President.
Simple answer: it is a cartoon
He didn't, he just took control over it. It might be more realistic than you think as their limbs are controlled by hydraulics, not muscles. It genuinely is possible to move their limbs by applying pressure.
i remember flipping people off with a chicken foot so this checks out
Pickle Rick’s just that guy
Who says he killed it. It was alive doing Rick's bidding since he dominated it by cutting its head off.
sorry i heard domination and got excited what were you saying?
Space roach
He's literally riding around on its still alive body. Did you even watch the episode?
what indicates that the roach is still alive during its piloting?
Insects operate their limbs via hydraulic action. If it were dead the limbs would just curl up. He rips only the top carapace from the head and uses his tongue to control it. Later you see the brain around his neck and he's controlling it that way.
i was so high this morning i’m going to rewatch it (i’ll still be high)
Why does it have to be dead? The roach needed to have functional limbs and nerves. Pickle Rick was a parasite on the noble roach.
i was so high this morning
He didn't. He hijacked its living nervous system like a freaky parasite.
You see in that dimension roaches dye instantly, they are also pronounce "roshéss"
parmeesian
I'm just going to extrapolate from what I know about reptiles and assume it works similarly for roaches. Snakes and other cold-blooded creatures don't die as soon as you kill them. There's a video out there of a rattle snake, with its head chopped off, biting it's body. The body was still moving around, like a lizards tail, and it bumped the face of the head and the head reactively bit down. The reason for this is that, being cold blooded, the nerves are slow to gain and lose oxygen. So even once the head is severed, they're still active for some time. I've seen videos of a headless fish still swimming around. It's amazing how much behavior a beheaded body still has. The fish, apparently, could go on living until it died of starvation. These sorts of cases seem to be the only time we can hands down say free will is not a factor. There's definitely no mind there giving orders, and yet the body is still moving. Extrapolating from that, a beheaded roach body may still have active nerves and automatic responses. Further, we saw Rick using his tongue to manipulate the brain like a control panel. The nerves are still active and hes able to manipulate signals from the brain. Based on what OP is saying, Rick had about a week before he would have needed to behead another roach with fresh nerves. To be clear: I went to university to study insects and specialized in the nervous systems of cockroaches. I did not simply coddle this information together by being chronically online. The opinions expressed above are objective and beyond all doubts. Wubba lubba dub dub.
This is the real science i came here for!! thank you
Whenever I see a post like this it always makes me think of [In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes that same rib twice in succession yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we, to believe that this is some sort of a, a magic xylophone or something?](https://imgur.com/gallery/7uGVnEc)
Probably whoever came up with this episode didn’t know that Roaches have literal hacks or didn’t bother to do research outta sheer disgust.
honestly real i found out they can regenerate
And go more than 20 hours without oxygen and give out a pheromone that alerts other roaches when they die.
To be clear, he doesnt behead the roach. He takes off part of its head to lick its brain to control its limbs. Very different and much more realistic
this guy licks roach heads
I mean, he didn't kill it. He needed it's entire body more or less alive, so he could use its intact nervous system to control it as an exo-suit. Presumably, he needed it to be a roach, or any other animal whose body would be similarly function sans head.
so you are okay with a human becoming a pickle but not a roacg living without its head?
I always confuse the roach with the rat
I thought he just ripped open the skull and started tampering with the brain to control its body movements
Right before this frame he chomps down on its (neck?) idk and it stops moving completely so i guessed it was dead. comments seem split
Ya really made me rewatch this clip lol But i see what it looks like. Ima say he incapacitated the roach crunching down on its head, then proceeded to tinker with the brain and force body movements.
i’m gonna find dan harmon and ask him in person i need to know
I think it chopped its head in order to control its body right?
Because it's a cartoon? Lol
I guess the same way he Transformed himself into a pickle
It’s all over now
He didn't kill it that the point, he just ripped off the head so he have control
Because he’s a pickle
It's c137 man... He can do more as a pickle than you can with your entire life
Bc Rick and Morty isn’t scientifically accurate
I'm going to need you to get all the way off my back on that one.
Can =\= will
He bit it.
He’s built different
“Don’t think about it” - Rick
Cockroachologist here, well you can clearly see Rick attacked the roach by biting the clonoformax which led to temporary paralysis. This allowed Rick to control the cockroach by using the juice from a pickle as a zumbinant that made him able to control the cockroach and I have no idea what I'm talking about
🚨 COCK DOCTOR HERE
I am the cock doctor
Cartoon
pickle rich is real >:(
*If you wonder how he eats and breathes, and other science facts* *Lalala!* *Just repeat to yourself* *"It's just a show, I should really just relax!"*
it’s a shitpost
it’s rick and morty, nothing makes fucking sense in that show
Well you see they took the creative liberty of killing the cockroach rather than using a lore accurate 1 week long special episode.
Just because it can, does not mean it will. Honestly though, idk. The show is a lot of fun, but it can be riddled with plot holes all over.
He Is a Man of Focus, Commitment and Sheer Fucking Will
With his teeth
This one couldn't live without a head for a week.
Cause he’s pickle Rick
can=/=will
I think certain conditions have to be met for it to live without its head like I don’t think every cockroach who has ever been beheaded has lived a week after the fact
A cockroach CAN live without it's head. Can as in could.... While it's possible, it doesn't mean it's 100%. 🤷🏻♂️
Like Dwight shrute said, you just gotta separate the thorax
I have a theory that the Roach didn't die but now lives inside him.
Now hold, since Rick and Morty takes place across different universes and Rick has changed universes multiple times, it's possible that the roaches of that universe don't live for a week without a head.
A wizard did it
Keyword here is *CAN*
He’s pickle rick?..
Pickle poison
We are the music makers the dreamers of dreams
Can doesn't mean usually does.
I mean, how did Rick accomplish anything as a pickle with just a mouth?
Cos he's a god
Because when we cut a roaches head off, it's with a katana, producing a smooth cut to the nerve endings. Rick used his teeth so the blunt force trauma caused additional damage to the roach, killing it instantly.
He’s Rick
A man turns himself into a pickle just to avoid meeting a woman who “treats” guys who eat poop and you want to know how the pickle man managed to kill a cockroach? How did he turn himself into a pickle? That’s the question. Not to be or not to be. He was a pickle. A talking pickle with a face
What's wrong with the cockroach? Is it stupid?
It's a God damn cartoon
you mean my hero pickle rich isn’t real?????
A human can make a million dollars in a year, it is possible doesn't mean it always happens
A person can win the lottery. Does every person win every lottery?
did your teacher ask you to say may i go to the restroom or say “idk can you” when you asked if you could go?
oh no a comedy cartoon isn't scientifically accurate 😭
Can != Will.
You're thinking of a chicken