50 free Cockroach trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cockroaches belong to which insect order?
Blattodea
Coleoptera are the beetles, Orthoptera the grasshoppers and crickets, and Hemiptera the true bugs.
Q 02Of roughly 4,600 cockroach species, how many are associated with human homes?
Around 30
Of those, just four species do most of the damage: the German, American, oriental and brown-banded cockroaches.
Q 03The word 'cockroach' comes from a folk-etymology mangling of a word from which language?
Spanish
English speakers in the 1620s heard 'cucaracha' and turned it into two familiar words, 'cock' and 'roach'.
Q 04The Latin word blatta, root of the scientific names, described an insect that does what?
Shuns the light
Virgil used a similar idea, calling the cockroach Lucifuga, 'one that avoids light'; classical Latin applied blatta to mantids too.
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
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.
Q 07The world's heaviest cockroach, the giant burrowing cockroach, comes from which country?
Australia
Macropanesthia rhinoceros reaches 8 cm and 35 grams, and is kept as a pet that can live for years.
Q 08The world's smallest cockroaches, about 3.5 mm long, live alongside which insects?
Leaf-cutter ants
Attaphila roaches ride on the ants and feed inside their fungus gardens.
Q 09What is the name for a cockroach's tough, protective front pair of wings?
Tegmina
They lie like a shield over the membranous hind wings; beetles' hardened forewings are elytra instead.
Q 10Aquatic cockroaches carrying an air bubble under the thorax can stay submerged for up to how long?
40 minutes
Most aquatic species instead poke the tip of the abdomen through the surface like a snorkel.
Q 11German cockroaches guide each other to food and hiding places by following trails of what?
Faeces
The fecal trails carry an odour gradient laid down partly by gut microbes, so a whole aggregation emerges from simple individual rules.
Q 12Cockroaches pick hiding places using two pieces of information: how many other roaches are there, and what else?
How dark it is
Scented roach-sized robots persuaded real roaches to accept a brightly lit shelter once a critical mass had gathered there.
Q 13Which exceptional Australian cockroach is attracted to bright light rather than fleeing it?
The Asian
It flies at night towards lit surfaces and pale colours, which is why it turns up on television screens and porch lights.
Q 21Which cockroach protein triggers allergies that can cross-react with dust mites and shrimp?
Tropomyosin
Cockroach allergens turn up in the dust of 20 to 48 percent of homes with no visible roaches, and are linked to asthma.
Q 22Taxi drivers in Singapore and Malaysia use the leaves of which plant to repel cockroaches?
Pandan
Bay, catnip, mint, cucumber and garlic have all been proposed as repellents too, with less tradition behind them.
Q 23A Purdue University study found common cockroaches can develop what against pesticides?
Cross resistance to multiple types
Q 14What is the name for the egg case a female cockroach carries at the end of her abdomen?
Ootheca
A German cockroach's case holds 30 to 40 eggs; the hatchlings break out by gulping air until the pressure splits it.
Q 15Freshly hatched or freshly moulted cockroaches are what colour, leading to claims of 'albino' roaches?
Bright white
They darken and harden within about four hours as the new cuticle sets.
Q 16Some cockroaches can survive without air for roughly how long?
45 minutes
They can also stay active for a month with no food and get by on the glue from the back of postage stamps.
Q 17Popular claims that headless cockroaches live for weeks are, according to Wikipedia, what?
Not based on published research
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.
Q 18A lethal radiation dose for a cockroach is roughly how many multiples of the human dose?
6 to 15
That sounds heroic but is unremarkable for an insect; fruit flies are tougher, so the nuclear-survivor legend is overstated.
Q 19A cockroach's tissue divides only once per moulting cycle; why does that help it resist radiation?
Cells are most vulnerable while dividing
Because not every roach moults at the same time, an acute burst of radiation would leave many untouched.
Q 20A 2014 study suggested humans fear cockroaches even more than which other pest?
Mosquitoes
The researchers put it down to an evolutionary aversion rather than any real danger.
The authors concluded that traps and sanitation, not just a wider spray cabinet, would be needed to control them.
Q 24Roughly how many cockroach farms operate in China, raising the insects for medicine and cosmetics?
About 100
Researchers there and in South Korea are testing cockroach extracts against baldness, AIDS and cancer.
Q 25A cockroach named Nadezhda made history by doing what?
Reproducing after a trip to space
She flew on a Russian Foton-M mission, mated in orbit and produced 33 offspring back on Earth.
Q 26Which Greek physician recorded grinding up cockroaches with oil as a remedy for earache?
Dioscorides
Pliny the Elder also listed 'Blatta' in medicines while calling the insect disgusting.
Q 27Which pop star said, 'I am a survivor. I am like a cockroach, you just can't get rid of me'?
Madonna
She said it decades into a career that has outlasted most of the critics who wrote her off.
Q 28Despite its name, the American cockroach is native to where?
Africa and the Middle East
It reached what is now the United States on ships as early as 1625 and is often called a palmetto bug in the South.
Q 29An American cockroach's record sprint of 5.4 km/h equals about how many body lengths per second?
50
Scaled up, that is a human running at about 330 km/h.
Q 30In 2018 the American cockroach had the second-largest sequenced insect genome after which?
The migratory locust
Its 522 taste receptors are the most found in any sequenced insect, which helps explain its indiscriminate diet.