Q 01/05

Cockroaches belong to which insect order?

A) Coleoptera

B) Lepidoptera

C) Odonata

D) Blattodea

Answer · why

D) Blattodea

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

Q 02/05

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

A) Around 30

B) Around 300

C) Around 1,000

D) Around 3,000

Answer · why

A) 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 ne...

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

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

Q 04/05

The Romans' word for a cockroach, kept in its 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

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

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.