Q 01/05

Cockroaches belong to which insect order?

A) Coleoptera

B) Orthoptera

C) Hemiptera

D) Blattodea

Answer · why

D) Blattodea

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

Q 02/05

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

A) Around 30

B) Around 4

C) Around 300

D) Around 1,000

Answer · why

A) Around 30

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

Q 03/05

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

A) Dutch

B) Portuguese

C) Arabic

D) Spanish

Answer · why

D) Spanish

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

Q 04/05

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

A) Eats books

B) Shuns the light

C) Lives in kitchens

D) Smells foul

Answer · why

B) Shuns the light

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

Q 05/05

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

A) Cretaceous

B) Carboniferous

C) Cambrian

D) Triassic

Answer · why

B) Carboniferous

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