Surviving a cycle inside a dishwasher

Factual Questions
1

This question arises from having observed an ambitious but foolhardy housefly zipping into my dishwasher last night after I finished loading it and was closing the door to begin the wash cycle.

I briefly pondered how long the fly would survive, and speculated it would expire pretty quickly from the heat and the buffeting of the sprayers. Then I decided I didn’t want a dead bug bouncing around and ricocheting off my dishes, even a semi-sterilized bug, so I opened the door and waved the fly out (and squished it later the regular way, with a swatter).

But that got me to thinking. Are there any other hardier critters that have a chance at making it through the cycle?

Googling this question was unhelpful. I got a lot of results about cockroaches living under the dishwasher, which is a problem certainly but it’s not what I want to know.

However, cockroaches do have a reputation for being pretty hardy. While I couldn’t find anything that explicitly discussed their survival inside the dishwasher, some general reading on heat tolerance and such indicates that a short gentle cycle might just be survivable. The major obstacle is likely the soap; many commercial detergents include borax as an ingredient, which can be used as an insecticide. Basically, it seems that the chemical cleaning of the carapace could cause the bug to effectively dehydrate (ironically, inside a water appliance). Scorpions, too, have a reputation for hardiness; most generally prefer temperatures under 50C, but some can handle up to 65C for very brief periods, so as above they might be unhappy but alive at the end of a gentle lower-temperature wash cycle, again except for the soap.

Some further thought brings up the possibility of suffocation. By design a dishwasher is watertight. It’s not fully airtight, but it’s pretty close. The respiration of one cockroach or one scorpion probably wouldn’t use the volume of available oxygen inside the box over a two-hour wash, but maybe a lot of them would?

At the far end of the hardiness scale is the tardigrade. I think it’s pretty reasonable to expect them to survive a cycle in a domestic dishwasher, given the environmental extremes in which they’ve been tested.

So, short of the tardigrade, are there any critters that might have a plausible shot at making it through the wash? Feel free to exclude consideration of the soap as it seems to be a major complicating factor; I’m mostly thinking about the physical effects of the appliance itself here.

2

Leaving aside the puzzle of how they would get into your dishwasher, it seems like candidate organisms for survival might be those that live in, or in very close proximity to, hot springs - often chemically harsh*, hot, sometimes oxygen-poor environments.

Some of the various animals living around ocean hydrothermal vents can tolerate quite hot water (others can’t, and just live on the warm periphery, but some are OK with the heat).

Here’s a (rather old, but seems fairly rigorous) publication about fauna in hot springs on land: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/394272

*The chemistry of the dishwasher and the favoured conditions of the organism might not match; some hot springs are quite acidic, for example.

3

It’s not easy to drown an insect (for sciencey reasons I can’t remember). I remember seeing a video of a hornet being held underwater for a length of time that would have killed any human.

And when the guy let the hornet back out he was perfectly fine.

So my guess is there are a lot of insects that could survive it. But don’t ask me which specific ones.

4

The mixture of hot water and detergents is probably a problem for many critters. Detergents deal quickly with many bacteria and other unicellular organisms. The alkali nature of dishwasher detergents make life even nastier. The wetting nature of dishwasher detergents possibly aids in drowning creatures that might otherwise survive immersion. Larger critters are going to be danger of hyperthermising - if there is such a word.
Dishwashers are by design pretty inhospitable places.

5

The surface tension of water is much more significant at small scales. Something insect-sized can walk across a water surface. Surface irregularities and hairs will trap bubbles of air if an insect is submerged.

Detergents reduce the surface tension. Most insects will drown if you add detergent to the water.

6

Sounds like warm blooded critters (mammals & birds) will overheat and insects will probably drown assuming there’s detergent.

That leaves reptiles up to maybe 2-3 feet long. There are certainly lizards who’ll happily sit on a rock in the US southwest desert summer much of the day. I bet we could find a critter like that who could tolerate a dishwasher as long as the water wasn’t too, too hot.

It is hard to breath steam (hot water vapor actually). So our critter might need some sort of face mask or respirator to cool & mechanically dehumidify the air it inhales just a bit. Otherwise the lungs get scalded and that’s the end of that pretty quick.

I’ll suggest that a larger lizard will do better than a smaller one. The spray won’t be as violent on a large scale and there’s more thermal mass to heat up before the critter gets overheated to the point of damage.

I still bet the extra hot extra violent pots and pans cycle with sanitary extra high temp dry will kill damn near any macroscopic critter.

7

The charmingly dated journal article shared by Mangetout actually spends a couple of pages establishing “normal” survivability among ordinary terrestrial insects as a reference point for considering the additional hardiness of the critters that live in the hot springs. Most bugs, the article suggests, have difficulty when temps get into the 37-40C range, which is well below the normal wash temp of a dishwasher.

But the suggestion to consider arthropods and other animals that live in hot springs and around seafloor volcanic vents is a good one. That hadn’t occurred to me. I’ll look through the article again. Though I do wonder whether the pressure adaptations of deep-ocean organisms would make them unhappy in a sea-level dishwasher for other reasons.

Oh, and I’m unable to find “respirator face mask for monitor lizard” on Amazon. :smiley: I guess you can’t get absolutely anything on the internet.

8

Last summer after bringing the kids home from a camping trip, Mrs. solost immediately threw their camping clothes in the washer. When she brought them out after the cycle, she found a live tick still crawling around in the wet clothes :scream:

So, if a tick can survive a clothes washer cycle, probably a good bet it could survive the dishwasher.

9

This is the answer.

10

Hah! Good one.

I bet a miniature version of an ordinary surgical or N95 would work great. But lizards lacking ears, there’s nothing to loop the elastic around. I suppose something more like a muzzle or feed bag could be fashioned with elastics that go behind the front legs.

Installation of same on a 3’ monitor lizard is left as an exercise for the reader. :slight_smile:

11

Clothes washers aren’t going to run at more than your hot water heater temperature (~130°F), assuming its on the hot cycle, which is about the minimum temperature required to effectively kill ticks. Dishwashers typically have an extra heating element that can get the water to 150°F or higher.

12

In the US, yes, but FYI, European clothes washers commonly have their own internal water heater and take water only from the single cold-water tap. When I run a load, I must explicitly set the heat level from “none” (i.e. straight from the wall, as-is) all the way up to 90C (which I use in combination with bleach on white pillowcases and t-shirts to blast out sweat stains).

13

As I understand, most dishwasher soap pods include a very mild abrasive powder - small plastic particles or something. This is what helps blast away hard dried food from the dishes; it’s also why some fancier kitchen stuff is not recommended for dishwashers - fine decorative elements on them may not be hardy enough for the wash cycle. (Gold leaf decoration especially, or some non-stick coatings) Then there’s drying. Most dishwashers include a heating element - #2 reason for not putting somethings plastic in the dishwasher unless specifically “dishwasher-safe”. I had at least one item where water pressure dislodged it, the plastic handle fell across the elements, and it was melted in 2 pieces. When you open the washer, hot steam comes out. It gets a lot hotter than hot-water-tank hot (135°F or so).

(Same with the glass stovetop cleaner - it includes microplastic abrasives hard enough to grind away burnt food, but not damage glass. Kitchen cleaners are judged by how they do with the tough, burnt-on mess)

MY fancy front-load clothes washer has an “extra hot” cycle where it will heat the water during the wash, but generally washing machines use the water at whatever temperature it comes out of the tap. There’s the fact that even on “hot” there’s a early run of cold until the hot water gets there from the tank, so even hot will be dilted somewhat. And laundry detergent, obviously, is not abrasive.

Considering that insects can hibernate over wintier, I wonder how much air they need if inactive for an hour. It may take longer than that to kill them with simple immersion. And even if they are still mobile, does not mean they are irreparably injured.

14

But if you search for porn involving a monitor lizard wearing a respirator face mask you will probably find something.

15

You actually CAN get masks for lizards, but they aren’t respirators. Nor would they be much help in a dishwasher.

For the record though, a 3’ monitor covers a huge variety of actual sizes. A 3’ Mangrove is small bodied, whippy, and more likely to have an issue than a stocky 3’ Savannah, who is heavy and bulky enough to possibly stop the bottom arm from spinning.

And I’ve had black throat monitors (a more medium-large sized monitor, but smaller than the Nile option that are IMHO a bad idea as a pet) which grow up to 7 feet and 60lbs, although ours was more like 5.5 and 45lbs. Still probably big enough to prevent a lot of dishwasher function.

And I’ve had my late savannah sit at the bottom of a tub filled with scalding-to-me hot water fully submerged for 10 minutes at a time, and much longer if they just had the nostrils above the waterline. Most of my monitors in fact loved a tub of water more than anything short of a fresh meal! They could very well like a dishwasher if it were a bit cooler and detergent free, although I’d never consider it.

Sadly the household is lizard free right now, just cats (most of the house) and snakes (in the snake/lizard room).

16

You meet the most interesting folks on the Dope. I had no idea you were a lizard aficionado. A herpephile. :slight_smile:

IANA herpe-anything, but iguanas are common as pigeons around here = South Florida. 5-footers are a minority, but still plentiful. 6-footers are quite rare. There doesn’t seem to be an upper limit on air or surface temperature for them. 95F, a bit humid, blazing clear sun and they’re happily laying on a concrete or brick surface for hours.

17

Don’t know the answer, but a snake was in my dishwasher once.

He was alive. We don’t know how he got in the house much less the dishwasher.

And, I personally don’t know or want to know how he was removed.

I’m pretty sure he wasn’t washed.

18

I had the advantage of a fun honorary uncle growing up who kept snakes, and the wife was always a fan of exotic pets, including hermit crabs. While we were living together in apartments, many that wouldn’t allow pets made exceptions for ones that lived in aquariums, so we had small lizards and snakes for years. Once we moved into a house, well, more room, so larger enclosures were available, and the collection grew in size and quantity. But while fun, they have their own challenges, and with the exception of our first savannah and (most of) the bearded dragons, they aren’t all that cuddly.

So as they aged onto the rainbow bridge, we didn’t replace them, and the wife brought home a cat one day from our lizard vet, and then, well, you have to get another cat to keep the first cat company… So far we’ve held the line at 2 though. Still have three snakes, but they’re getting quite elderly.

19

As wild critters I find reptiles much more interesting than mammals. Although as pets their behavior repertoire always seemed real limited.

As I wrote elsewhere today by coincidence, I have no interest in owning a pet and haven’t ever had one on my own. There are, or should be, wild animals and food animals. The other uses seem somewhere in the range of silly to inappropriate / unethical to me. I’m certainly not militant about it. Diffrent strokes and all that. I just can’t see the attraction.

20

But did she use hot water?

Another thing I have noticed is that flying insects don’t seem to be fazed by the heat in a closed-up car, either.