Last month, the coronavirus pandemic prompted universities and museums around the world to dial down their operations, leaving scientists to make difficult decisions about the animals they work with. While some released or culled their specimens — or set up a visitation schedule — others decided to take theirs home, embarking on a different sort of relationship. We checked in with half a dozen scientists about how they’re making it work with their new roommates in this time of social distancing.

Rule #1: No cockroaches in the common area

As a postdoctoral fellow in a University of California, San Diego, lab that studies small-scale locomotion, Glenna Clifton is used to observing insects quite closely. But since the lab moved to remote work in March, she has forged a new intimacy with some of her research subjects: nine cockroaches that now live about two feet from her bed.

Dr. Clifton wanted to take the roaches home so she could continue working with them. (Plus, her supervisor has a cat with a taste for bugs.) But like many young academics, she shares housing, and her housemates were “a little hesitant,” she said. So she promised she would keep them in her bedroom.

Image Glenna Clifton with her cockroaches and her at-home lab assistant, Loona. Credit... Kathryn Ward

It’s Dr. Clifton’s first time studying cockroaches. So she was surprised when, around 9 p.m. on their first night together, her new boarders started “climbing all around their cages and clawing at the plastic edges” — behavior that continued until morning, she said.