What If Cockroaches Went Extinct?

Being surprised by a roach in your kitchen (which is very clean, thank you) can be enough to wish the whole genus would just go away. But what would the world be like if there were no cockroaches?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hi, brain Stuff,
Lauren vocal bomb here. What if there were no cockroaches?
The question sounds like it's straight out of the marketing
materials from Paradise. Cockroaches spread bacteria like salmonella, they leave
droppings behind everywhere they walk, and they can exacerbate allergies

(00:22):
and asthma. All are good reasons to squash them all,
but not so fast. Only a few species of roaches
out of an estimated five to ten thousand, are commonly
found infesting homes. Most cockroaches live in warm, tropical climates,
happily minding their own business and staying out of humans business.
Some are even beautiful, no really, and glow in the dark.

(00:45):
But if you are still determined to play this game out,
then would better take a look at what would happen
if they all disappeared? Long story short, it's not good.
In tropical forests. Cockroaches feed on decaying wood and leaves,
and all those droppings they leave the hind well. They're
filled with organic debris and nutrients, including nitrogen, which are
added back into the soil. Nitrogen is essential to the

(01:07):
growth of trees, which are essential to forests and our
own lives, since we use wood products to shelter both
ourselves and the animals that we do actually like. Oh
and speaking of those animals that we like, especially small mammals, birds,
and reptiles, they feed on cockroaches. And since other animals
feed on these small mammals and reptiles, disrupting even this

(01:28):
one small skittering link in the food chain could have
a widespread effect on the world around us. So the
next time you're tempted to smash a cockroach before it
runs under your fridge, consider that it may be helping
to refuel a local forest when it isn't hanging around
your house. Or I mean, go ahead, but don't wish
death on the whole lot of them worldwide. Don't worry, though,

(01:49):
they are in no risk of going extinct anytime soon.
Cockroaches have been around since before the dinosaurs. Cockroach fossils
show that they've been around for at least three hundred
million years. That's some serious staying power. They really are
some of the hardiest creatures around, capable of withstanding radiation
and huge doses far more than a human could handle,

(02:10):
and going without food for up to a month. So
If you do squash one scurrying across your floor, you're
in no danger of having doomed these resourceful bugs to extinction.
Today's episode was written by Karen Kirkpatrick and produced by
Tyler Clang and Tristan McNeil. For more on this and

(02:30):
lots of other creepy Crawley topics, visit our home planet,
how Stuff works dot com