Schweid says “the females unfertilized eggs will develop and hatch-always producing new females.”īetty Faber, the former staff entomologist for the New York Natural History Museum, says “Females go to bed-by which I mean disappear back to the harborage-at night earlier than males.” “The evolutionary strategy employed by cockroaches to reproduce is considerably more efficient than that employed by humans.” Oddly, there are certain species of cockroaches that can, at least for a generation or two, reproduce without any sperm. After sex, female cockroaches store the sperm and use them as needed. A sexually receptive female assumes a posture with her abdomen lowered and her wings raised and gives off a pheromone that attracts males.” If he finds a virgin female, a male cockroach after some antenna rubbing foreplay will turn away from the female and raise his wings, “an invitation to her to mount.”Copulation frequently lasts an hour. Schweid says “Pheromones, chemical signals of sexual readiness, operate between a male and female cockroach to initiate courtship and copulation. Schweid observes that “when a cockroach feels a breeze stirring the hairs on its cerci, it does not wait around to see what is going to happen next, but leaves off whatever it is doing and goes immediately into escape mode in something remarkably close to instantaneous fashion.” Studies show that a cockroach can respond in about 1/20th of a second, so “by the time a light comes on and human sight can register it, much less react by reaching for and hoisting something with which to squash it, a roach is already locomoting towards safety.”Ĭockroach blood is a pigments, clear substance circulating through the interior of its body, and what usually spurts out of a roach when its hard,, outer shell-its exoskeleton-is penetrated or squashed is a cream-colored substance resembling nothing so much as pus or smegma.Ĭockroaches have two brains-one inside their skulls, and a second, more primitive brain that is back near their abdomen. Why is it so hard to kill a cockroach with your shoe? They are, Schwied writes, “undeniably one of the pinnacles of evolution on this planet.” Wherever they live, they are masters at surviving. They are even found in the caves of Borneo and under the thorn bushes in arid stretches of Kenya. The roaches are not confined to any particular environment and live in a tremendous variety of places, from underneath woodpiles in Alaska to high in the jungle canopy in the tropics of Costa Rica. They are particularly fond of dried milk around a baby’s mouth. German cockroaches, Blattella germanica, the most common domestic roach in the United States, have been observed to live 45 days without food, and more than two weeks with neither food nor water.Ĭockroaches will eat almost anything including glue, feces, hair, decayed leaves, paper, leather, banana skins, other cockroaches, and dead or alive humans.
Cockroaches are built for survival no matter what the world throws at them. The Cockroach Papers by Richard Schwied is an interesting book if you are looking to learn more about biology or evolution.
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