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Fun Facts about Cockroaches

Started by Friday, January 11, 2009, 06:33 PM NHFT

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Friday

Quote
Without a doubt, cockroaches are one of nature's ultimate self-reliant creatures and convey innate and uncanny guidance in teaching others the art of survival.  Their adaptability and talent for enduring hardships, in both town and country, is legendary.

There are nearly 4,000 known species of cockroaches whose existence dates back more than 400 million years.  Of these species, only a dozen or so are considered pests to people.

Cockroaches can live for a week without a head, dying only of dehydration because they lack a mouth to drink, as their brain is scattered throughout the body.  They can hold their breath for forty-five minutes, eat literally anything (they have a separate set of teeth inside their digestive system in case they need to eat on the run), run up to three miles an hour, and withstand an amount of radiation equivalent to that of a thermonuclear explosion -- between 90,000 and 105,000 rems for a German Cockroach!  (A lethal dose of radiation for a human is 800 rems or more.)

Cockroaches have one big nerve connecting their heads to their tails, similar to a motion detector, thus alerting them to danger from behind.  The claws on their feet enable them to climb walls, while their eyes, made from over 4,000 individual lenses, allow them to see in all directions at once.  When getting out of harm's way, their highly sensitive and specialized antennae, containing between 150 and 170 individually jointed sections, allow them to make up to twenty-five body turns per second -- the highest known rate in the animal kingdom -- and they do it all in pitch darkness.  They sense minute changes in air currents around their bodies -- like a foot about to squish them -- with the assistance of tiny hairs on two appendages that feed into a network of fourteen vital nerve cells that process the information.

The cockroach heart is a simple valved tube that pumps blood backward or forward within the body.  The roach can slow down or even stop its heart altogether without causing harm.  If it loses a leg while out on the prowl, unlike some insects which gradually regenerate a leg over several molting cycles, the cockroach will delay its next molt in order to regenerate its leg first, thereby assuring maximum get-out-of-dodge speed and agility.  The roach also excels at the ability to turn valuable nutrients into an energy source that helps it neutralize or lessen life-threatening chemicals.

Always wise to conserving calories, cockroaches spend 75 percent of their day lounging around.  Current research has shown that they possess certain complex behavior methods such as group-based decision-making when it comes to divvying up food resources.  Most cockroach species give birth to live young -- an anomaly in the insect world -- to prevent other critters from eating their eggs and if food gets tough to scrounge, the cockroach kids can live by eating their parents' poop.

-- excerpted from When All Hell Breaks Loose by Cody Lundin

Jim Johnson

 8)

But they didn't mention anything about being able to make bacon or beer.

Friday

Quote from: Facilitator to the Icon on January 11, 2009, 07:03 PM NHFT
8)

But they didn't mention anything about being able to make bacon or beer.
Are you asking if cockroaches practice animal husbandry and homebrewing?  Or are you wondering if one can make bacon and beer *out of* cockroaches?

FYI, the current world record for eating the most live cockroaches in the shortest amount of time goes to Ken Edwards of Derbyshire, England.  In 2001, Ken ate 36 hissing Madagascar roaches in one minute flat.   :D

Giggan

I f**king hate those bastards to no end.

Three appeared in my apartment on my birthday in November, before that I'd never had em, and I'd been living here since August.

Since then I've had 2 other sightings. They were always in the bathroom when I'd enter with the light off. Because of this, my bathroom light has remained on since December. I heard they're afraid of light but have never seen this validated, but since having my light on, I haven't seen one yet, knock on wood.

dalebert

I've gathered some information on cockroaches and insects in general from various shows and other sources and I'm skeptical of some of that information. For instance, if cockroaches have live births, it's not the common species most of us are familiar with because I know they lay eggs, about 40 in a batch.

Jim Johnson

Quote from: Giggan on January 11, 2009, 09:05 PM NHFT
I f**king hate those bastards to no end.

Three appeared in my apartment on my birthday in November, before that I'd never had em, and I'd been living here since August.

Since then I've had 2 other sightings. They were always in the bathroom when I'd enter with the light off. Because of this, my bathroom light has remained on since December. I heard they're afraid of light but have never seen this validated, but since having my light on, I haven't seen one yet, knock on wood.

Nothing to worry about... if you have a clean house you have clean Cockroaches.   :)  That's what they told me in CA.

dalebert

Quote from: Facilitator to the Icon on January 11, 2009, 10:25 PM NHFT
Nothing to worry about... if you have a clean house you have clean Cockroaches.   :)  That's what they told me in CA.

I've also heard that for every one you see, there are a thousand that you don't see. So he has a few thousand clean cockroaches. Sleep tight!

Friday

Quote from: dalebert on January 11, 2009, 09:28 PM NHFT
I've gathered some information on cockroaches and insects in general from various shows and other sources and I'm skeptical of some of that information. For instance, if cockroaches have live births, it's not the common species most of us are familiar with because I know they lay eggs, about 40 in a batch.
Hmmm, Wikipedia agrees with you.  I hope the rest of Cody's survival info is more accurate.  :-\

Raineyrocks

Friday,

This post was so funny because of how the subject line looked before entering!  ;D