Why Are Cockroaches So Hard to Kill? 🪳

Morning Roaches!

From stepping on them.

To spraying them with pesticide.

To dropping a nuclear warhead on them.

Cockroaches can weather just about anything.

And scuttle off just fine.

So, what makes cockroaches so damn hard to kill?

Well, first, cockroaches are really fricken quick.

As soon as their little antenna detects, even the tiniest change in air currents.

They can sprint away within a few milliseconds.

Reaching speeds of 50 body lengths per second.

That's like a human casually running like 200 mph.

And finding somewhere to scuttle off to and hide is also no problem.

They can squeeze into spaces less than a quarter of their original height.

But, even if you do manage to catch a cockroach lacking, and actually manage to get a hit on it.

They can survive IMMENSE forces.

A cockroach's exoskeleton is made up of a bunch of overlapping plates, connected by a stretchy membrane.

This allows them to flatten out, and absorb a ton of force by spreading it across its strong, but squishy body.

Also, here's my favorite cockroach fact.

A Cockroach can actually continue to live for WEEKS without its head.

Ye, really.

Cockroaches, like most insects, have multiple nervous centers.

Meaning if they lose their head, the rest of their body can operate just fine.

They also don’t need their head for breathing, because they actually breathe through little holes across their body.

Literally, the only reason they do end up dying with a severed head is because they don't have a mouth to eat or drink.

If they didn't have to eat or drink, a headless cockroach could literally survive indefinitely.

Pretty crazy…

Speaking of eating.

They can also pretty much survive off of any food.

You name it, they can live off it.

Ok, ok, but what about pesticides? Surely cockroaches can’t survive that?

Well, yes and no.

If you spray a non-resistant cockroach with an insecticide, yeah, it will die.

But the thing is, cockroaches reproduce so quickly, they swiftly gain genetic mutations which make them pesticide resistant.

If a new pesticide were to come out today, cockroach populations can evolve a resistance to it within just a few months.

As of today, they are already resistant to 43 different chemicals that used to kill them.

Contrary to popular belief, possibly the only thing that would actually kill them 100%, is a nuke.

Don’t get me wrong, cockroaches are as tough as they come, but even they would be vaporized if they were too close to a nuke going off.

They also aren’t that radiation resistant, so even quite far away from the impact point, they would also probably die.

So, yeah… perhaps the only way to kill all cockroaches is to wipe out humanity too… lol

Stay Cute,
Reece, Henry & Dylan 🌈

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