50 Fun Facts About Cockroach

Cockroaches belong to which insect order?

Coleoptera are the beetles, Orthoptera the grasshoppers and crickets, and Hemiptera the true bugs.

Of roughly 4,600 cockroach species, how many are associated with human homes?

Of those, just four species do most of the damage: the German, American, oriental and brown-banded cockroaches.

The word 'cockroach' comes from a folk-etymology mangling of a word from which language?

English speakers in the 1620s heard 'cucaracha' and turned it into two familiar words, 'cock' and 'roach'.

The Latin word blatta, root of the scientific names, described an insect that does what?

Virgil used a similar idea, calling the cockroach Lucifuga, 'one that avoids light'; classical Latin applied blatta to mantids too.

Cockroach-like 'roachoid' fossils date back to which geological period, about 320 million years ago?

That is roughly 90 million years before the first dinosaurs; true modern cockroaches appear in the Late Jurassic.

Genetic studies show which insects are actually nested inside the cockroach family tree?

Some cockroaches are closer kin to them than to other cockroaches, which is why the old order Isoptera was abolished and merged into the roach order.

The world's heaviest cockroach, the giant burrowing cockroach, comes from which country?

Macropanesthia rhinoceros reaches 8 cm and 35 grams, and is kept as a pet that can live for years.

The world's smallest cockroaches, about 3.5 mm long, live alongside which insects?

Attaphila roaches ride on the ants and feed inside their fungus gardens.

What is the name for a cockroach's tough, protective front pair of wings?

They lie like a shield over the membranous hind wings; beetles' hardened forewings are elytra instead.

Aquatic cockroaches carrying an air bubble under the thorax can stay submerged for up to how long?

Most aquatic species instead poke the tip of the abdomen through the surface like a snorkel.

German cockroaches guide each other to food and hiding places by following trails of what?

The fecal trails carry an odour gradient laid down partly by gut microbes, so a whole aggregation emerges from simple individual rules.

Cockroaches pick hiding places using two pieces of information: how many other roaches are there, and what else?

Scented roach-sized robots persuaded real roaches to accept a brightly lit shelter once a critical mass had gathered there.

Which exceptional Australian cockroach is attracted to bright light rather than fleeing it?

It flies at night towards lit surfaces and pale colours, which is why it turns up on television screens and porch lights.

What is the name for the egg case a female cockroach carries at the end of her abdomen?

A German cockroach's case holds 30 to 40 eggs; the hatchlings break out by gulping air until the pressure splits it.

Freshly hatched or freshly moulted cockroaches are what colour, leading to claims of 'albino' roaches?

They darken and harden within about four hours as the new cuticle sets.

Some cockroaches can survive without air for roughly how long?

They can also stay active for a month with no food and get by on the glue from the back of postage stamps.

Popular claims that headless cockroaches live for weeks are, according to Wikipedia, what?

Decapitated roaches do keep reflexes like shock avoidance, and the severed head can wave its antennae for hours, but many other insects survive decapitation too.

A lethal radiation dose for a cockroach is roughly how many multiples of the human dose?

That sounds heroic but is unremarkable for an insect; fruit flies are tougher, so the nuclear-survivor legend is overstated.

A cockroach's tissue divides only once per moulting cycle; why does that help it resist radiation?

Because not every roach moults at the same time, an acute burst of radiation would leave many untouched.

A 2014 study suggested humans fear cockroaches even more than which other pest?

The researchers put it down to an evolutionary aversion rather than any real danger.

Which cockroach protein triggers allergies that can cross-react with dust mites and shrimp?

Cockroach allergens turn up in the dust of 20 to 48 percent of homes with no visible roaches, and are linked to asthma.

Taxi drivers in Singapore and Malaysia use the leaves of which plant to repel cockroaches?

Bay, catnip, mint, cucumber and garlic have all been proposed as repellents too, with less tradition behind them.

A Purdue University study found common cockroaches can develop what against pesticides?

The authors concluded that traps and sanitation, not just a wider spray cabinet, would be needed to control them.

Roughly how many cockroach farms operate in China, raising the insects for medicine and cosmetics?

Researchers there and in South Korea are testing cockroach extracts against baldness, AIDS and cancer.

A cockroach named Nadezhda made history by doing what?

She flew on a Russian Foton-M mission, mated in orbit and produced 33 offspring back on Earth.

Which Greek physician recorded grinding up cockroaches with oil as a remedy for earache?

Pliny the Elder also listed 'Blatta' in medicines while calling the insect disgusting.

Which pop star said, 'I am a survivor. I am like a cockroach, you just can't get rid of me'?

She said it decades into a career that has outlasted most of the critics who wrote her off.

Despite its name, the American cockroach is native to where?

It reached what is now the United States on ships as early as 1625 and is often called a palmetto bug in the South.

An American cockroach's record sprint of 5.4 km/h equals about how many body lengths per second?

Scaled up, that is a human running at about 330 km/h.

In 2018 the American cockroach had the second-largest sequenced insect genome after which?

Its 522 taste receptors are the most found in any sequenced insect, which helps explain its indiscriminate diet.

The German cockroach is known colloquially by which name?

It is only about 1.1 to 1.6 cm long, has wings but can barely fly, and cannot survive severe cold away from buildings.

A 2024 genetic study suggested the German cockroach actually originated where?

It diverged from the Asian cockroach a little over 2,000 years ago and spread with human trade.

A strain of German cockroach evolved to find which common bait ingredient distastefully bitter?

Poisoned sugar baits selected for roaches that refuse sugar, an evolutionary dodge documented since insecticide resistance first appeared with chlordane in 1952.

The oriental cockroach is often called a waterbug because it prefers what kind of habitat?

It turns up in drains, sewers, basements and mulch, and its mostly dark body also earns it the name black cockroach.

How does the Madagascar hissing cockroach produce its hiss?

The breathing holes on the fourth abdominal segment do most of the work; it is the only cockroach in its group that makes an audible sound.

Unlike most cockroaches, the Madagascar hissing cockroach lacks what?

Being flightless and 5 to 7.5 cm long, it relies on the hiss to startle predators.

Male hissing cockroaches can be told from females by their hairier antennae and pronounced bumps where?

Males use a distinct fighting hiss to settle territory disputes with each other; only males give the female-attracting hiss too.

On which show did host Joe Rogan eat a hissing cockroach to win a wager with a soap star?

Alison Sweeney of Days of Our Lives had what Rogan called the greatest freak-out in the show's history.

Cockroach racing as a pub gambling event began in 1982 in which city?

The Story Bridge Hotel still runs it on the last weekend of January; the first winner was called Soft Cocky.

How does the emerald cockroach wasp get its paralysed roach to its burrow, being too small to carry it?

A precise sting to the head ganglia switches off the roach's escape reflex; the wasp then chews off half of each antenna and drinks the roach's blood.

The folk song 'La Cucaracha' became hugely popular during which conflict?

Both rebel and government forces wrote political verses to it in the 1910s, though the tune is older and came from across the Atlantic.

Don Marquis's fictional cockroach archy wrote poems how?

He could not manage the shift key, so his verses appeared in lower case; his friend Mehitabel was an alley cat who believed she was Cleopatra reborn.

In which novella does Gregor Samsa wake up transformed into a 'monstrous vermin'?

Kafka's German 'ungeheueres Ungeziefer' never specifies the insect; Nabokov, an entomologist, argued it was a beetle.

What is the name of the pet cockroach who keeps WALL-E company on an abandoned Earth?

The name is a nod to Hal Roach, the producer of Laurel and Hardy comedies, as much as to the computer in 2001.

Joe's Apartment (1996), about a man sharing his flat with singing cockroaches, was which studio's first film?

It grew out of John Payson's 1992 short and was also the first film that animation house Blue Sky Studios worked on.

Roughly how many eggs does a German cockroach pack into a single ootheca?

A female can produce up to eight cases in her lifetime, and in good conditions 300 to 400 offspring; the case takes over five hours to lay.

Which cockroach genus is fully viviparous, giving birth to live young rather than laying eggs?

Most roaches drop or carry an egg case, and some are ovoviviparous, keeping eggs inside until they hatch.

Which wood-eating cockroach genus is thought to be more closely related to termites than to other roaches?

Its gut symbionts closely resemble those of termites, and current research strongly supports the link.

How long does development from egg to adult take in the German cockroach?

Cockroaches have incomplete metamorphosis, so nymphs look like small wingless adults, and most live about a year.

The Lord Howe Island wood-feeding cockroach is listed as endangered in which Australian state?

Rats, Rhodes grass and fires may have wiped it out on the island itself; only two roach species are on the IUCN Red List.