I couldn't find any examples of this in a full-text book search, but besides some technical works about insects, and some material about noah's ark, I did find, from 1942:

> In the course of an experimental way, down in the depths of a science building, a beaker full of fermented sugar is left on a shelf. Sometime later one of the experimenters returned to the scene ... to find two cockroaches in the beaker, one of which had a family of about a dozen—the other had drowned itself in rum. AND WHO WOULDN'T IN THE FACE OF SUCH OVERWHELMING RESPONSIBILITIES.