Why we hate Cockroaches and why it’s justified!

Insects for Fun!

This week we look at some cockroaches and go into some facts about why they actually aren't great to have around. AND of course, a little myth-busting as well.

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Transcript:

Welcome back everyone to episode 61 of insects for fun! The weekly entomology podcast hosted by your not so local entomologist. Before we dive in, if you’re a fan of the podcast, make sure to rate it and leave a review if you can on whatever platform you listen! It’s real easy to do and the impact is incredible! We are almost at 50 ratings on Spotify and 20 ratings and reviews on apple which are the only ones I can really check to be honest, but the current goal is to get those numbers to 100! And if I’m being real, we could have done that a long time ago based on followers alone (sfx)

It’s spooky season and this week we are going to talk about roaches because why not! They’re totally spooky to many including myself, and there is a lot of information out there that most people just have no idea about. So this episode we are going to tackle all things roach and get to the bottom as to what’s scary about them and what isn’t!

Cockroaches belong to the order Blattodea of which there are 4,600 species! Yeah, that’s a lot, and they’re all pretty different. In fact humans only really come into contact without about 30 of those and if you happen to be a US citizen it’s much less, but simply telling you this isn’t gonna change how you feel so we’re gonna move along. Now when it comes to the roaches that we most often see and deal with, those would be the German roach and the brown banded roach. These are the only two domestic roaches, which means they live exclusively in our living quarters and they’ve actually been living with us since we were living in caves. Now fortunately or unfortunately, they are also on the smaller side so they don’t really make big flashy appearances. I’ll be putting the pictures up on the instagram page so you guys can see them.

Let’s start our episode with the german roach. This small light brown roach with dark bands on its head happens to be the most common roach and is found throughout the entire world. Its place of origin however is not Germany… You see this roach started its journey in Borneo, which is a tropical island in the south china sea. They were just doing their thing within caves for thousands of years when people started storing peppercorns for spice trades in the 1600s. I think you can probably guess what happened next.. Fast Forward to today and now we have these annoying critters everywhere, but it wasn’t just the food that was necessary for their survival. Their populations actually exploded only after plumbing got introduced around the world, and they happen to love kitchens and bathrooms. A german roach can actually last for 12 days without food and water but with access to water they can live up to 42 days without food. Of course german roaches do prefer having food and they mostly stay near it in kitchens or cupboards etc. These ones, like most indoor roaches, are active at night and early morning before sunrise. You might not see them often but one way to know you have them is if you see small pepper-like droppings around. Unfortunately German roaches are on the faster side when it comes to reproducing, and a female roach can lay up to 8 oothecas in her life with each one carrying up to 48 eggs. They actually carry these around too until right before they hatch. Now I know you want to know how to get rid of them, and I will tell you of course! But before that I want to share some information about the 2nd domestic roach.

The brown banded roach is another small roach that honestly looks pretty similar to the german roach, at least when it comes to males. The females have a different body shape with brown bands on the abdomen, and the nymphs also have these brown bands. These roaches used to be incredibly common but these days they aren’t so much. It’s believed that air conditions have sort of ruined housing for them by making the environment too cool because these guys prefer much warmer temperatures and are actually believed to come from Africa. They are now found across the world thanks to US troops from world war 2, but again they aren’t too common. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one, but I know for a fact I’ve seen german roaches, even here in Japan. Now unlike German roaches, the brown banded ones do not spend the majority of their time near food. In fact another name for these is furniture roach because they can be found anywhere with furniture such as living rooms, bedrooms, and even behind framed pictures on walls. The brown banded roach prefers to stay at higher elevations with their oothecas being found in the upper 3rd of wall spaces. A brown banded female can lay up to 13 of these in her life, but each one only has up to 18 eggs. Also yes, ootheca is also the term used for mantis egg cases! Turns out roaches and mantids aren’t actually that different, but I’m gonna tell you about that later.

So now I’ve mentioned the two domestic roaches and here’s why you don’t actually want them in your home. Roaches are actually a source of allergen and cause asthmatic symptoms or even asthma attacks in people who are sensitive. In fact according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, roach allergens are one of the most common! Yikes… you’d never notice them either because they just kinda sit still with dust until it gets stirred up when cleaning or moving furniture etc. What’s scarier is that 78% to 98% of urban homes within America have between 900 and 330,000 roaches. Yeah that’s a very wide spread but uh having 900 being the lower number is still terrifying! The problem with urban roaches is that they are not clean like farm raised roaches, and yes people definitely farm roaches for their pets. My younger brother has bins filled with dubia roaches which get fed fruits, vegetables and protein powder. Now I personally don’t fear those at all because I know where they came from and they aren’t disease ridden, but I wouldn’t trust any roach that comes crawling out of a drain or into your house from the streets because they’re able to live in the worst of environments. In fact roaches can carry and harbor E. coli, Strep throat bacteria, Pneumonia, Salmonella etc. But I think I’ve traumatized us all enough for the time being, so let’s look at what we can do to get rid of house roaches!

The first and easiest thing to do if you suspect to have or have seen roaches in your home is to clean! Make sure your floors don’t have crumbs which isn’t hard if you have a dog, keep your kitchen surfaces clean, don’t leave food in your sinks, and keep everything sealed tight. It’s also recommended to keep your indoor humidity levels low but I think most people are trying to do that anyway. Next it’s time to trap and vacuum any roaches you find, but to be honest I wouldn’t count vacuuming as the end all solution unless you filled your vacuum with bleach or alcohol because roaches are crafty creatures, and if there is a way out they will find it.

Now if you happen to have roaches in your home and you’re looking for a way to lure them out and trap them then have no fear! It’s totally possible to do so.

The first method would be to use Diatomaceous Earth which is a dehydrating powder created from fossilized algae. You basically wanna sprinkle this in areas with known roach activity and it will dehydrate them to death. The only downside is it's kind of messy and requires you to pick up dead roaches which could really die anywhere.

If you are more interested in knowing exactly where those roaches are then it might be a good idea to set up traps. One really good method for collecting roaches would be using boric acid or even baking soda. If you go the baking soda route you wanna take some food, like diced up onions or something else that roaches will want and cover it with baking soda. You wanna leave this out in areas where you suspect there are roaches, but this of course means you need to make sure your animals won’t try eating this either. I would keep your pets safely in another room the night you do this or place the trap in an area where your animals can’t access like under your sink in a cabinet or something.

Using boric acid is similar but instead you’ll want a paper plate with a lure in the center like peanut butter and then sprinkle the boric acid around the lure on the plate so the insects are guaranteed to touch it. Again I don’t recommend doing this in an open area accessible to pets like dogs or cats. Boric acid targets a roaches nervous system while baking soda makes them explode from the inside… lovely I know, but hey, that’s why I’m not in the pest control business.

Moving along to the non domestic roaches comes the most well known roach and that would be the American Cockroach. These are called peridomestic because they live around humans but don’t rely on them, but they don’t actually come from America. I don’t know who’s naming these things but they clearly don’t care about geography. American roaches actually come from Africa and were introduced into America via ships in the 1600s similar to the German Roaches. These ones usually invade our homes through pipes, or cracks in infrastructure. I’ve actually seen terrifying videos where swarms of American roaches come running out kitchen sinks. That’s definitely not normal though and it probably means there was a massive sewage break or flood nearby which was making them all flee the underground. Either way it's clearly a bad sign and you can expect something terrible. The american roaches are actually less likely to be in your home than they are in restaurants or other service industry places and the reason is simply that there is more accessible food around. When I worked at Gyu Kaku in Hawaii which is a Japanese chain for all-you-can eat meats, I would always see American roaches in the kitchen looking for scraps on the floor in dark corners or underneath storage bins while cleaning. You really can’t escape them in urban areas. That being said I should also mention that roaches in general do not like light so if you’re scared of seeing one or don’t want to risk having them near you at night you can simply leave a light on. It’s a waste of electricity but hey, it’ll give you some peace of mind I guess. Actually here’s a fun fact for you, the name cockroach comes from the spanish word for them “cucaracha” which was derived from the latin word blatta meaning insect that shuns the light!

So earlier I mentioned that roaches and mantids aren’t all that different and here’s why. The ancestors of roaches roamed the earth around 320 million years ago, placing them in the Carboniferous period. This time period is characterized by having swamps with large ferns, Fern trees, horsetail trees, fish, amphibians, and giant arthropods. The ancestor to cockroaches was actually 3 feet in length and that wasn’t anything extraordinary either. Now it just so happens that this ancestral roach also happens to be the common ancestor to Mantids and Termites as well. In fact all three of them are in the same super order Dictyoptera and mantids separated from roaches around 127 million years ago in the cretaceous period when a new proto-roach evolved with raptorial arms. Termites separated around this time as well. So yeah, you can thank cockroaches for the mantids and termites. And really, not all cockroaches are bad. There are plenty of cool ones out there as well like the madagascar hissing roaches, sky blue roaches in Guyana and Emerald roaches in Vietnam. I know for a fact that Hissing roaches and emerald roaches are sold and kept as pets with the emerald roaches fetching a high price, but I’m not sure about the sky blue ones.

Now Let’s get into the myths and facts regarding cockroaches because I think a lot of us have heard quite a few.

One of the most commonly spread rumors is that roaches can live without their heads, and this is actually true! To an extent, if a roach loses its head it can still walk around and breathe, but it’s not going to live a normal life. It’s going to starve to death because it now has no way of eating or drinking.

Another big myth is that roaches will release their babies if you step on them. This is not a given scenario at all, and if you do step on a pregnant one, you can be sure those eggs are now scrambled. HOWEVER if you only crush the upper half of the roach and an ootheca comes out then those might still be viable (bleck)

Here’s a fun one, Cockroaches can survive microwaves! And uh yeah they can! Actually cockroaches don’t go through nearly as many cell divisions as we do, and because the rate at which they do is slower, they can withstand up to 125% more radiation than other animals. Can they survive a nuclear bomb? No… but they’ll last longer than we would in the aftermath.

Okay here’s a good one, Roaches only live in dirty homes. This is false! You can have a home that is spotless and still have roaches living in it. They’ll even resort to eating bar soap if you have nothing else available.

This wraps up today’s topic, but we’re not quite finished! I’m going to share with you a piece of this month's bonus episode available on Patreon because it really is a different flavor from the mainline content, and I go into much broader topics. Here’s a clip.

There’s plenty more where that came from on Patreon.com/insects for fun. As always thank you for listening, and if you enjoyed the episode please make sure to rate and review the podcast. It’s easy to do and it really helps grow the show.