Cockroach Trivia
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49 free Cockroach trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cockroaches have a reputation problem: only about 30 of some 4,600 species ever come indoors, and the rest live quietly in leaf litter, caves, tree canopies and even underwater. This quiz starts with the animals themselves: where the word 'cockroach' comes from, why termites are technically cockroaches, which species is the heaviest and which the longest, how a roach can go 45 minutes without air, and what really happens when one loses its head. Then it gets to the roaches you know: the American cockroach that is actually African and can run 50 body lengths a second, the German cockroach that evolved a distaste for sugar to dodge poisoned bait, the oriental 'waterbug', and the Madagascar hissing cockroach that squeezes air through its spiracles. There are questions on the emerald wasp that turns roaches into zombies, on cockroach racing at a Brisbane pub, on Nadezhda the space cockroach, and on famous fictional roaches from archy the typing poet to WALL-E's pet Hal. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on cockroaches and the individual species and works, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Our Insects quiz covers the wider six-legged world.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cockroaches belong to which insect order?
Blattodea
Blattodea. Cockroaches were once filed with grasshoppers and crickets in the order Orthoptera before they were given an order of their own.
Q 02Of roughly 4,600 cockroach species, how many are associated with human homes?
Around 30
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.
Q 03The word 'cockroach' comes from a folk-etymology mangling of a word from which language?
Spanish
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.
Q 04The Romans' word for a cockroach, kept in its scientific names, described an insect that does what?
Shuns the light
Shuns the light. In his poem on beekeeping, Virgil warned of 'light-fleeing' pests that pile their nests inside the hives.
Q 05Cockroach-like 'roachoid' fossils date back to which geological period, about 320 million years ago?
Carboniferous
That is roughly 90 million years before the first dinosaurs; true modern cockroaches appear in the Late Jurassic.
Q 06Genetic studies show which insects are actually nested inside the cockroach family tree?
Termites
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.
Q 07The world's heaviest cockroach, the giant burrowing cockroach, comes from which country?
Australia
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.
Q 08Some of the world's smallest cockroaches, about 3.5 mm long, live in the nests of which insects?
Leaf-cutter ants
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.
Q 09What is the name for a cockroach's tough, protective front pair of wings?
Tegmina
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.
Q 10The Dubia roach, bred in huge numbers by hobbyists, is sold mainly as what?
Live food for pet reptiles
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.
Q 11German cockroaches guide each other to food and hiding places by following trails of what?
Faeces
Faeces. The droppings give off scents made with the help of gut bacteria, and roaches raised germ-free leave droppings that attract hardly anyone.
Q 12Cockroaches seem to choose shelters on two pieces of information: how many roaches are there, and what else?
How dark it is
How dark it is. Matchbox-sized robots scented like roaches settled under the brighter of two shelters, and the real cockroaches followed them there.
Q 13Which cockroach, first found in the US in 1986, is a strong flier drawn to porch lights at dusk?
The Asian cockroach
Q 21Allergy tests on people sensitised to cockroaches can also flag which food?
Shrimp
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.
Q 22Taxi drivers in Singapore and Malaysia are said to keep the leaves of which plant in their cabs to repel cockroaches?
Pandan
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.
Q 23A Purdue University study found common cockroaches can develop what against pesticides?
Cross resistance to multiple types
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.
Q 14What is the name for the egg case a female cockroach carries at the end of her abdomen?
Ootheca
Ootheca. Many species drop or glue the hardened case somewhere safe, but a German cockroach carries hers until the eggs are about to hatch.
Q 15Freshly moulted cockroaches are briefly what colour before their new shell hardens?
Bright white
Bright white. The usual brown returns within hours as the new shell hardens, but the ghostly stage is why people report finding 'albino' roaches.
Q 16Experiments on resting cockroaches suggest they hold their breath for minutes at a time to save what?
Water
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.
Q 17The cartoon cockroaches Joey, Dee Dee and Marky, tormentors of the cat Oggy, are named after members of which band?
The Ramones
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.
Q 18Which predatory insects are close relatives of cockroaches, grouped with them in the superorder Dictyoptera?
Praying mantises
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.
Q 19A cockroach's cells usually divide once per moult; why does that help it resist radiation?
Cells are most vulnerable while dividing
Cells are most vulnerable while dividing. Even so, the roach is no champion: fruit flies withstand far higher doses.
Q 20What is the name for an intense, irrational fear of cockroaches?
Katsaridaphobia
Katsaridaphobia. The fear often goes back to childhood, such as watching a parent scream at the sight of a roach.
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.
Q 24In which country do farms raise cockroaches by the billion for traditional medicine and cosmetics?
China
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.
Q 25A cockroach named Nadezhda made history by doing what?
Reproducing after a trip to space
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.
Q 26Which Roman writer passed on an ear remedy of cockroach fat and rose oil?
Pliny the Elder
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.
Q 27Despite its name, the American cockroach is native to where?
Africa and the Middle East
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.
Q 28A cockroach often bolts before a swat lands because fine hairs on its rear end detect what?
Moving air
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.
Q 29Which white powder, long sold as an eyewash ingredient, is a classic cockroach killer dusted into cracks and corners?
Boric acid
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.
Q 30The German cockroach's old nickname, the Croton bug, comes from a river that began supplying which city's taps in 1842?
New York
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.