49 Fun Facts About Cockroach

Cockroaches belong to which insect order?

Blattodea. Cockroaches were once filed with grasshoppers and crickets in the order Orthoptera before they were given an order of their own.

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

Around 30. Carried in ships' cargo and grocery boxes, the best known of them now live almost everywhere people do, while thousands of other species never leave the wild.

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

Spanish. English speakers of the 1620s bent 'cucaracha' into two words they already knew, 'cock' and 'roach', though the insect is neither bird nor fish.

The Romans' word for a cockroach, kept in its scientific names, described an insect that does what?

Shuns the light. In his poem on beekeeping, Virgil warned of 'light-fleeing' pests that pile their nests inside the hives.

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?

Termites. Some cockroaches are closer kin to them than to other roaches, which is why the old termite order, Isoptera, was folded into the cockroaches' own.

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

Australia. The giant burrowing cockroach digs about a metre down, hauls dry eucalyptus leaves into the burrow to feed its young, and can live for ten years.

Some of the world's smallest cockroaches, about 3.5 mm long, live in the nests of which insects?

Leaf-cutter ants. The tiny Attaphila roaches hitch rides on winged young queens as they set off on their mating flights, which is how they leave the home nest.

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

Tegmina. The leathery pair folds over the delicate hind wings as a shield and adds little power in flight; a beetle's harder wing covers are called elytra.

The Dubia roach, bred in huge numbers by hobbyists, is sold mainly as what?

Live food for pet reptiles. Lizard, frog and tarantula keepers favour it because it is slow, rarely flies and cannot climb smooth walls to escape.

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

Faeces. The droppings give off scents made with the help of gut bacteria, and roaches raised germ-free leave droppings that attract hardly anyone.

Cockroaches seem to choose shelters on two pieces of information: how many roaches are there, and what else?

How dark it is. Matchbox-sized robots scented like roaches settled under the brighter of two shelters, and the real cockroaches followed them there.

Which cockroach, first found in the US in 1986, is a strong flier drawn to porch lights at dusk?

The Asian cockroach. A pest controller noticed that these roaches flew readily and lived outdoors, quite unlike the indoor pest he had taken them for.

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

Ootheca. Many species drop or glue the hardened case somewhere safe, but a German cockroach carries hers until the eggs are about to hatch.

Freshly moulted cockroaches are briefly what colour before their new shell hardens?

Bright white. The usual brown returns within hours as the new shell hardens, but the ghostly stage is why people report finding 'albino' roaches.

Experiments on resting cockroaches suggest they hold their breath for minutes at a time to save what?

Water. Moisture escapes with every breath, and roaches kept in dry air opened their airways for shorter spells and lost less weight, though biologists still debate the habit.

The cartoon cockroaches Joey, Dee Dee and Marky, tormentors of the cat Oggy, are named after members of which band?

The Ramones. The French show's producer says its creators were punk fans, and the long-suffering cat got his own name from Iggy Pop and Ziggy Stardust.

Which predatory insects are close relatives of cockroaches, grouped with them in the superorder Dictyoptera?

Praying mantises. The kinship shows in the eggs: mantises and cockroaches both wrap theirs in a hardened case, a habit their early fossil relatives lacked.

A cockroach's cells usually divide once per moult; why does that help it resist radiation?

Cells are most vulnerable while dividing. Even so, the roach is no champion: fruit flies withstand far higher doses.

What is the name for an intense, irrational fear of cockroaches?

Katsaridaphobia. The fear often goes back to childhood, such as watching a parent scream at the sight of a roach.

Allergy tests on people sensitised to cockroaches can also flag which food?

Shrimp. Roaches, dust mites and shellfish carry closely matching versions of a protein called tropomyosin, so antibodies raised against one can latch onto the others.

Taxi drivers in Singapore and Malaysia are said to keep the leaves of which plant in their cabs to repel cockroaches?

Pandan. In a Singapore lab test the compound behind the leaf's sweet scent drove off most German cockroaches, though a crude extract of the whole leaf attracted them instead.

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

Cross resistance to multiple types. Survivors of one spray shrugged off other classes of poison too, and resistance rose four- to six-fold within a single generation.

In which country do farms raise cockroaches by the billion for traditional medicine and cosmetics?

China. One farm near Xichang was reported in 2018 to raise six billion roaches a year, and in 2013 about a million escaped when another farm was knocked down.

A cockroach named Nadezhda made history by doing what?

Reproducing after a trip to space. Voronezh medical students won a contest to fly roaches on a 2007 Foton satellite, and Nadezhda, 'Hope', bore 33 young conceived in orbit.

Which Roman writer passed on an ear remedy of cockroach fat and rose oil?

Pliny the Elder. He called the insect disgusting, and warned that the wool plug had to come out of the ear very soon, or the fat was said to turn into a small grub.

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

Africa and the Middle East. It crossed the oceans in the holds of trading ships from the 1600s on, which earned it another name, the ship cockroach.

A cockroach often bolts before a swat lands because fine hairs on its rear end detect what?

Moving air. The gust pushed ahead of a shoe trips nerve fibres wired straight to the leg muscles, so the roach is running before its brain has weighed in.

Which white powder, long sold as an eyewash ingredient, is a classic cockroach killer dusted into cracks and corners?

Boric acid. It poisons roaches that swallow it and its dry crystals also scratch their armour, so the dust works only where it stays dry.

The German cockroach's old nickname, the Croton bug, comes from a river that began supplying which city's taps in 1842?

New York. The Croton River was piped to the city in 1842, and the little roach that thrives near warm, damp plumbing was soon known by the river's name.

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

South or Southeast Asia. It probably took to human settlements in India or Myanmar about 2,100 years ago; the 'German' label only marks where Europeans first recorded it.

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

Glucose. Sweet poisoned baits killed off the sugar-lovers, and the survivors pay for it: females now walk away from males whose sugary courtship gift turns to glucose in the mouth.

Where in a building is the oriental cockroach most likely to be found?

Damp basements and drains. Its taste for wet places is why it is often called a waterbug, and it copes with cold well enough to live outdoors under sewer covers.

How does the Madagascar hissing cockroach produce its hiss?

Forcing air out through spiracles. Most noisy insects rub body parts together or vibrate a membrane; this one pushes its breath through a pair of modified breathing pores.

Unlike most cockroaches, the Madagascar hissing cockroach lacks what?

Wings. Neither the adults nor the young ever grow them, so with no way to fly from danger it answers a predator, or a human hand, with a loud hiss.

Male Madagascar hissing cockroaches use the horns behind their heads to do what?

Ram their rivals. Males shove and butt each other over territory, and the winner hisses more than the loser; females have only small bumps in place of horns.

In which 1997 film does a giant alien cockroach go about disguised in a dead farmer's skin?

Men in Black. Vincent D'Onofrio plays the bug lurching about in its ill-fitting 'Edgar suit' until the finale, when it sheds the skin and stands revealed as a giant cockroach.

Which city's Story Bridge Hotel began holding cockroach races in 1982?

Brisbane. The story goes that pub regulars argued over who had the fastest roaches and settled it in the hotel car park; the proceeds go to charity.

How does the emerald cockroach wasp get a stung roach too big to carry into its burrow?

Leads it by an antenna. A sting to the brain leaves the roach able to walk but with no urge to flee, so it trots after the wasp like a dog on a lead and is sealed in with her egg.

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

The Mexican Revolution. Partisans on every side made up new verses, and in one telling the cockroach that can no longer walk is the hard-drinking President Huerta.

Don Marquis's fictional cockroach archy wrote poems how?

By jumping on typewriter keys one at a time. He could not hold down the shift key, so his free verse came out without capitals, until the day he landed on the shift lock.

Gregor Samsa, often drawn as a giant cockroach, is the luckless hero of which work by Kafka?

The Metamorphosis. Kafka never names the insect, and Nabokov, a butterfly expert, told his students that the rounded, short-legged Gregor makes no sense as a roach and is a big beetle.

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

Hal. The name salutes silent-comedy producer Hal Roach and the computer HAL from 2001, and the insect's skittering is the sound of police handcuffs being clicked apart.

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

MTV Films. The channel stretched a short it had aired between music videos in 1992 into a movie whose roaches sing barbershop and stage aquatic numbers in a toilet bowl.

Ensign wasps turn up in houses with roaches because their grubs grow up inside what?

Cockroach egg cases. The wasp slips a single egg into each case and her grub eats the roach eggs inside; the adults sip nectar and are not known to sting people.

The Pacific beetle cockroach bears live young and feeds its embryos a protein-rich secretion scientists call what?

Milk. The mother's secretion sets into tiny protein crystals inside the embryo's gut, and researchers have mapped the crystals' structure atom by atom.

Which zoo's Valentine's Day fundraiser, Name a Roach, lets donors name a hissing cockroach after someone they love or loathe?

The Bronx Zoo. It has run the scheme since 2011 on the pitch that roaches are forever, and each donor gets a certificate bearing the chosen name.

In which Disney film do cockroaches, rats and pigeons answer a princess's call to help clean a Manhattan apartment?

Enchanted. Real rats and pigeons were filmed for the 'Happy Working Song' scene, but every cockroach scrubbing the bathtub was computer-generated.

A cockroach thought wiped out by shipwrecked rats was found alive in 2022, under a single banyan tree, on which island?

Lord Howe Island. A student lifted the first rock he tried and found a family of the wood-eating roaches, last seen on the island more than 80 years earlier.