March 10, 2018 • 44 mins
You've seen them in your home and probably squealed in terror, but now it's time to learn all about cockroaches. From their ability to run incredibly fast to the appendage that alerts them when you're about to whack them with your shoe, cockroaches are fascinating creatures that deserve your respect.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M how do you everybody? This is Chuck and welcome
to this weekend Stuff You Should Know Selects episode. Uh.
This week, I'm picking how Cockroaches Work from August. You
have heard Josh and I debate over the years about cockroaches,
the fact that they are one of the few insects
that I will stomp and kill with great enthusiasm, whereas
(00:22):
I believe Josh is on the record as saying he
will not and he will try and relocate them. Crazy
talk to me. That cock roach will do nothing but
spend the rest of his life trying to get back
in your home to poop all over your stuff. So
this is a good episode though, How cock Roaches Work.
Enjoy it right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know
(00:54):
from How Stuff Works dots dot com. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck
Bryant is with me. He's got his glasses on, he's
got his hair shorn, his fingernails are chewed down to
the quick. He's ready to go. I was hoping we
could open the show with Lakukaracha playing in the background. Well,
(01:17):
oh yeah, we can't. I don't know if we can
or not. I can't know. There's no way we can't. Well,
hold on, let's let's humme it. We could probably do that, right,
that's lane. People just imagine in your heads that you're
sipping a margharita and some mariachi bands playing lukukaracha right now.
Not to be confused with tequila no, which is similar. Now.
I always confused it too, really well, not want to
(01:40):
hear him, but like if I think of la kukaracha
like I often think of peewee dancing on the bar,
then I'm like, oh, yeah, this tequila right. But you
know what Luca lookukarat is about. I assumed cockroaches, but
probably not. No, a cockroach who's lost one of his
legs and is having a hard time. I just found
that out today. I did not know that. Look at me.
(02:01):
I didn't either until like just a few hours ago. Chuck,
I was once like, you naive to the way of alright,
so we talked about lakukarata as you'd hoped you feel good. Yeah,
have you ever seen the X Files episode with the cockroaches?
I don't know. Oh, it is perfect. It's one of
(02:23):
the top five, and it's not even like a part
of the part of the big, bigger picture. Once it's
like its own thing. Yeah, they have the name for
those episodes. I can't remember what it's called. But like
when it's just about a shape shift or and it
has nothing to do with the overarching conspiracy, Yeah, it's
one of those, and it's just about cockroaches and a
(02:43):
cockroach infestation that may or may not exist. But at
one point, like it's getting really like the cockroaches are
everywhere and like everybody's starting to go a little crazy
and all that, and they um digitized cockroach like crawling
across your TV screen like obviously not part of the scene,
and it looks like it was on your screen, so
(03:03):
like you're it looks like there's a cockroach in your house.
It was, it was. It's a good episode. Yeah, I
was late on the X Files. I didn't watch it
when it was out, And then when I moved to
New Jersey they started doing reruns and Justin I was
living at the time, was like you never watched X Files.
It was like no, And then it was on every night.
I watched the crap out of it. That did you
(03:25):
see the Charles Nelson Riley one where he's like an
art it's Jose Chunks from outer Space. I remember where, Like,
could Jessie the Body Venture and Alex Trebecker in it? Really,
I didn't know. I must not have seen them all
because I was catching them on reruns. You didn't see
like some of the best ones. Go see go watch
those two. I know you have access to them. All right, Okay,
done so. Um, we're talking cockroaches here and apparently also
(03:50):
Jessie the Body Ventura. Um, did you know, Chuck? The
cockroaches are extremely clean insects. Well always said the same
thing about vultures. They are personally clean. Apparently they do
track a lot of germs spread disease. They apparently leave
(04:12):
a trail of fecal material everywhere they go because it's
like a bit of bread crumbs for them to follow back.
They spread bacteria of course in that fecal material. Um,
there are proteins that set off up to six of
allergy sufferers allergies. They'll eat garbage and waste, They'll they'll
crawl on poop that your dog laid down in the
(04:34):
yard and eat it if your dog doesn't need it first.
And yet a cockroach itself is very clean because they're
extremely um intense groomers. First of all, they keep their
antenna clean because they have a fatty secretion or some
sort of secretion that if they don't clean it off,
(04:55):
we'll block their antenna from sensing things. So they constantly
clean their antenna. But apparent only they also cleaned their
feet and everything. And I read about a study. It
was just pretty almost anecdotal. It was so outside of
the scientific method. But um, they took a swab from
a guy's hands who hadn't washed his hands for two hours,
(05:16):
and they took a swab off of the foot or tarsus,
i should say, of a cockroach who had been walking
through garbage. And then two hours later they took a
swab and um, they put it in culture and the
guy grew way more bacteria than the cockroaches culture did
I don't care, which means that that man is dirt
(05:37):
year than a cockroach. They proved it. I would still
smash the cockroach with my flip flop. See, I don't
believe there's a there's a sect out there, and I
don't know if it's Hinduism or Jainism. It's one of
those two where the the monks of this sect um
carry little brooms hand brooms to kind of brush everything
(05:59):
off wherever they sit so they don't accidentally kill even
the tiniest Think that's great, and I kind of agree
with that. I think everything is a right to life. Now,
you have been on record on this very show talking
about killing cockroaches because the way they skitter. No, no, no,
not cockroaches. I am down with killing mosquitoes and ticks. No,
(06:24):
you talked about the cockroaches. I don't kill cockroaches. You
talked very much about how fast they are and how
they skitter and how that freaks you out. I don't
kill them. No, I don't kill roaches. I'm telling you,
like I defy you to find the time stamp. All right,
somebody please help me. Okay, Um, I will kill the
crap out of a mosquito, a cockroach, and um I
(06:47):
will generally shoe a fly. Now, I'll kill flies. I
generally won't kill a fly because they're not a big problem.
But you don't have flies around you all the time now,
But mosquitoes and cockroaches I will kill. And that's about it. Yeah,
everything else right to life. Cockroaches, you must die. So
(07:08):
cockroaches are Um, I guess they understand that Chuck wants
them to die. Many people do. They're very disliked, right,
which has possibly accounted for them evolving to be really
difficult to kill. For one, they're nocturnal, so they're hiding
away from us when we're up because we're diurnal, which
(07:29):
is the opposite of nocturnal. Yeah. Um, they have sensors,
little sensors in there. Um, we'll get to that spoiler.
They run really fast, they do. They reproduce extremely quickly.
And there's more than four thousand species of cockroach. So
you would think the whole rule would be infested with cockroaches,
(07:50):
but not true. It's actually mainly just one species, the
German cockroach, that is uh accountable for most infestations in
homes around the world. That's right. That is one of
the four main species that you might see, the German,
The American a k. A. Palmetto bug, which are they
can get big. Oh yeah, man creepy. There's one man
(08:13):
that like in South America. It's like as big as
your hand, six inches launch one foot wing diameters. The
brown banded cocka roach and the Oriental cocka roach um
are the four that you're likely to come across in
your life. And the German cockroach an American are the
ones you're gonna see here in the United States. And
(08:33):
they have been brought here by you because they get
that you know, they're not obviously gonna fly from continent.
In the continent, they hit trides on airplanes and boats
and getting chipping containers and in your mouth, moving boxes
and ghosery bags, and they are ubiquitous, and they, like
all insects, are most insects, they do a service. Most
(08:56):
of them are going to be out in the woods
like chewing stuff and pooping it out and being a
part of the ecosystem. Um. But it's the ones in
the home that really freaked people out right. And Chuck,
I think one of the more fascinating things. And by
the way, Rod just turned out to be pretty fascinating,
even more than I expect him. I just thought there
were a few things that were fascinating where you creeped out,
(09:17):
like reading this or do so it's not like that
you just hate them, Yeah, I mean there, it's like
you previously talked about that you deny it's The way
they move and how fast they are is what creeps
me out. And like, there's no greater fear than laying
in bed and seeing one on the ceiling above you,
just waiting for it to fall into your mouth. Yeah,
(09:39):
but apparently they are pretty good at not falling off
of the ceiling. That's true. Um, And they've had a
long time to practice this kind of stuff. They've been
around for about three twenty million years, longer than dinosaurs,
way longer than dinosats they survived that extinction event they did,
and well, well let's talk about it, tuck. Just how
(10:01):
much of an extinction event can a cockroach survive? Can
they survive a nuclear fallout? A nuclear war that would
kill all humans? Could a cockroach survive as they are
rumored to? Uh? Maybe that's sadly, it's like, we don't
know because that hasn't happened. Not sadly, thankfully that hasn't happened.
(10:24):
But um, the answer is some people say maybe, some
people say maybe not. Um. What we definitely know is
they probably could not survive the nuclear winter because they
like warm, moist places, right, and the nuclear winter would
not be good for cockroaches. Apparently, they're less susceptible the
radiation poisoning and humans are, but more than most insects.
(10:47):
So as far as insects goes, they might not be
the best candidate, right, Uh yeah, so maybe, but probably not.
I'm kind of on that side that they probably wouldn't
survive a nuclear war, so we're time at radiation though
not like the blast obviously that would kill everything, you know. Um, alright,
so they survived the dinosaurs extinction event. They have been
(11:11):
around for three million years. They are very hearty little insects.
Let's talk a little bit about their bodies. They're creepy,
little crunchy bodies. So um, most of them are between
two inch half an inch and two inches long. They're
brown or black usually, and that length is minus their
intended This is just their bodies, you don't. And their
(11:33):
heads point downward, like, as Tracy Wilson, who wrote this
article points out, almost as if they're built for ramming. Yeah,
or just searching for stuff, you know, it's another way
to look at it. The males are the ones that
have wings. Females may have wings, but their vestigial wings
they can't fly with them. Males can fly not very
well though, which makes them even more horrific when the
(11:54):
palmetto bug a big ones flying at your face because
you know he has no control exactly. Yeah, man, it's
sort of like the cicada. Like they're I don't think
their wind wings were made for flying, but if they
jump off of something high, they can help them a
little bit uh to glide perhaps and not like hit
the ground is hard um short distances basically, and their
(12:15):
their insects, which means that they have three main body regions,
the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. They have an
exo skeleton that they mold as they grow, and they
mold a number of times, depending on the cockroach species,
over the course of a couple of weeks or over
the course of a couple of years, and their lifespans
also are um uh in step with that molting schedule. Um.
(12:38):
But they cockroache will mold several times over its life
before it becomes an adult. Yes, and when they molt, um,
it's the same thing as when they're born. They're gonna
look white and um that's probably kind of creepy looking.
I've never seen a molted cockroach like a skinless cockroach
it's like the Lady and Hell Raiser before she fully
gets all of her skin, right. Uh, and uh, they're
(12:59):
they're pretty uptible two injury and death obviously when but
when after they've molted before bursicon, which is a hormone,
makes their exoskeleton hard and dark once again. Then they
have their little armor um, which is no match for
a flip flop. Uh. They can regrow lost limbs when
it molts, which is pretty cool, and they can even
(13:20):
put molting off for a little while in order to
regrow a lost limb um in their head. Let's go
over their head. They have eyes and their antenna, which
we've talked about, which we'll get into more specifically. And
there Tracy loves saying mouth parts. She writes a lot
of these articles. Yeah, she she will never just say mouths. Yeah,
(13:41):
it's not a true mouth apparently, it's yeah, a mouth part. Yeah.
They do have brains, by the way, and they are.
The brain is in the head. But the brain is
not like a human or a mammal brain. It's not
doing It's like it's not connected to a big central
nervous system or anything like that. Right, there is a
central nervous system that it's not in the head. There's
a h it's some sort of ganglia um that allows
(14:06):
the roach to continue living for up to a week
after it loses its head. Yeah, this is a pretty
good roach fact. Okay, I think, okay, um. So you
can cut a roach his head off and it will
live for a week and do all the normal things
that a roach does for a week, and then when
it finally dies, it dies because of thirst. Yeah. Yeah,
because they they actually breathe. They don't breathe through the
(14:28):
nose and mouth. They breathe through their sides. There's little
holes in their side called spiricles and trachea tubes deliver
the oxygen to the organs and tissues through their sides.
So there's you know, cut off the head and it
just dies of thirst. Yeah, which is my new favorite game.
Actually that's not true, because that's like future serial killer stuff.
(14:49):
It is like you torture cockroaches, and you torture animals,
and you torture humans. Once you've moved down to the chipmunks,
it's probably beyond the point of no return. You're a
bad person. Jeffrey Dahmer orchard animals. He would lay down
and Uh, like he would come across the dead deer
in the forest and like lay down with it and
spoon with it. It's like a Johnny Depp and Dead Man.
(15:11):
Did he do that? Did the exact same thing? Well,
maybe he was a serial killer. I don't think he was.
He was a killer, but not a serial killer. That
just shows how messed up Dahmer was that man. Yeah,
to like that was a connection to him was like
holding this dead animal, all right, like the cockroaches. Um,
(16:02):
so that's the head. Yeah, let's talk about their eyes.
Their eyes are compound eyes. Um so they see the
world in a mosaic like a fly. Like a fly,
all right, So we talked about their eyes. I actually
asked Tracy today, I was like, you, you wrote a
bunch of insect articles. Didn't you ever get sick about
(16:24):
talking about the head, the abdomen, the thorax, mouthparts, the legs.
They're all the same for insections, No they're not. They
all have these they're all the same, but they all
have different little adaptations that make them different. I was like,
how did you not get tired of it? She said,
she was fascinated the whole time. She said, san x
(16:44):
that's trable. Nit, that's tracy of stuff you miss in
history class, by the way, plug plug. Um. So we
talked about the antenna. They are movable and they are
known as antennal flagella, and uh, they're actually tiny, tiny
little hair covered segments and like it's it's thicker where
(17:04):
it attaches at the head, and it gets thinner and
thinner and thinner until it's just like a human hair
almost at the end. And these things since, um, they
smell sort of right, Yeah, they basically I guess, uh
sense pheromones. Yeah, the there you have it. They sense pheromones,
they pick up odors. I think they they're pretty finally
(17:26):
attuned to the environment. Yeah, but that's like really how
they're getting around, right, Like, even though they have eyes,
isn't the antenna really the secret? I believe? So okay, um, chuck,
you want to talk about mouthparts? Yes, Um, they are
a lot different than mammals, as Tracy points out, Um,
but they do have parts that sort of are akin
(17:48):
to how mammals mouths work. For instance, there's a laborum
and labium and they form the lips right uh, mandibles,
there's two of those and they cut and grind things
like your teeth might, which is very important because roaches
eat literally anything. Yeah, and sometimes that's like wood and
other stuff like they shouldn't be able to eat, but
(18:10):
they can. It's right, go ahead, thanks to the mandibles
and some other things that we'll get to. And then
they have to stop. And then there's a couple of
maxilla and they basically manipulate the food chewing. Yeah, like
a squirrel, yeah, squirrels arms or hands, yeah, or a
dung beetle. Yeah. The thorax, which is one of the
(18:34):
body parts that one of the three pieces of the
body um and that has the three pairs of legs
and the wings, and the legs are so named after
the part of the thorax that they're attached to. Right,
So you get the pro, the mezzo, and the meta.
So the pro is closest to the head. Mezzo middle Yeah,
(18:55):
the pro or like the brakes apparently and the yeah,
the pro Yeah, that's the just do stopping. Yeah. The
middle ones can make the roach go forward or backward.
And then so that's the mesothoracic legs. Then the metathoracic legs.
The ones in the rear are the ones that propel
the roach forward. And here's another good roach fact. Do
you take this one? Man, is awesome. Uh. They can
(19:17):
move about fifty body links in a second, which is
up to three miles an hour. Sounds very slow to us,
but think about this in roach terms. That's right. If
that were a human being, Uh, that would mean we
would be running two hundred miles an hour. Yeah, that's
why they look so fast. It's because they are. They
are fast. Now, like to us, three miles an hour
is not that much but very slow walk. That equals
(19:39):
two hundred miles an hour in reality for us. Yeah,
and part two of that roach fact, which I think
is just horrifying. When a roach runs really really fast,
sometimes it it gets air and just is basically running
on its back legs only, but the front the other
legs are still moving. So that's just like my worst nightmare.
(19:59):
They're then after you, exactly, man. So they the three
pairs are all built the exact same. They all have
the same parts, but they are different lengths. They function
slightly differently. Um, but they all moved the same way.
It just depends on, you know, what the roach wants
to do. Like we said, the pro thorastic legs active breaks.
(20:22):
The mesothorastic um can move it forward or back, and
then the meta push it forward and they apparently move
like poco sticks and then back and forth too, and
they work in conjunction to allow the roach to kind
of walk over just about anything. So um, when the
(20:42):
the pro and meta thoracic legs on one side are moving,
the mesothoractic leg the middle one on the other side
is moving, so that's how they move, which apparently it's
like a four by four yea uh. She also points
out that there are um the parts of the leg
(21:05):
you can sort of approximate as if it were a human.
They have a trick canter that's like our knees uh.
Femur and tibia um resemble arthai and shins, and then
they have the tarsus which is the ankle and foot
right and the tarsus is hooked in a roach, which
allows it to walk on the ceiling over your head
(21:26):
most frightening thing ever, and on walls. And when a
roaches on the ground, it runs very quickly, but when
it's on a ceiling it moves much more methodically because
it doesn't want to follow them. Upside down. If three
miles an hour equals two an hour to us, Yeah,
imagine what a ten ft drop equals to a poor
(21:47):
little roach. Well, not enough, because it lands, flips itself over,
and then runs away again. But it's humiliated, that's true. Uh,
twenty seven times per second. These legs can move back
and forth. So these are fast little boogers, which is
why you previously talked about hating them because they were
so fast. I really I don't I'm gonna find it. Okay,
(22:09):
I'll bet I didn't say i'd kill him. I've long
advocated for road to his rights. All right, So now
we're the abdomen um. They do have a heart. It
is a too black instructure and does move blood along,
but it does not carry um oxygen around, so A
(22:29):
the blood is not red, and B they move oxygen
and blood around in other ways through basically empty spaces
called hemo hemo coles. Yeah, it's pretty much the absence
of a fact there. Yeah. Well it's a the a
word to carries blood around to the organs. But yeah,
she says, the blood just travels through these spaces essentially,
(22:50):
and then rather than having to worry about like a
spare tire or something like that. I like a fat belly, right,
They have a actual fat body, and it's just this
little area where they store all the fat in their body.
Very smart. I have that same place. It's between my
chin and my waist. Yeah. I guess they do have
to worry about a spare tire, but it's a very
(23:12):
specific one. Yeah, that's true, you know. Okay, So let's
talk about digestion. Um. The the digestive system is in
the abdomen, and it's really not super unlike it's just
like a simplified version of our own or any mammals
digestive system. But like you said, they can eat things
like in digestings like wood and cellulose, so they do
(23:34):
need some help from specialized parts, one of which is
called a crop. Right, that's um. It basically holds the
food while apart behind it um a toothy section in
the digestive so that it is gross and it's equal
to like a an octopus having a beak, crushing beak.
(23:58):
They're squishy, they're not supposed to have a hard beak
in the middle. It's crazy. Yeah, it's called a probe
and triculus on the roach and that just pulverizes the
stuff like wood or whatever it's tough to digest, and
then and then it pushes it back. This this pulverized
part to the gastric cassilla, which houses enzymes, microbes, things
that break it down even further. And all this is
(24:19):
just the preliminary stuff. This is like what we do
in our mouth. Um. All this is going through this
process in a roach before it even gets to the
part where it starts to digest. This this is sort
of gross, like the digestion when was we haven't said
the word bolus yet, Well, we just did. Uh. And
(24:39):
then the searcy that we talked about earlier. These are
the uh. It sort of looks like short little antenna
sticking out from the butt area on each side. And
this is what allows the roach to not get Like
whenever you go to get that flip flop and you
rare back and go to hit the roach and as
you're coming it, it just like it could darts out
(25:00):
of the way. You're like, how did it know? How
did it know? It's because the searcy they pick up
on air flow and they can actually feel and since
that shoe coming, so if you're if you're unto killing
roaches like me, you have to be swift and and stealthy,
come at it hard and with vigor and with a
I guess a paddle that has holes in it down air? Hey?
(25:22):
Maybe so drag you might be honest something there. Oh no,
you invented sharknado. So the roach paddle? Um? So, I guess,
so that's a roach. That's the roach's body. Let's talk
about reproduction, because they do reproduce depending on the species. Um.
(25:46):
I believe the German roach uh can produce something in
the order of like eighty thou offspring? Is that correct? No?
Way more than that. The German produces. The German cockroach
and it's offspring will eventually produce about three hundred thousand
per year. So a mother and her her kids, yeah,
(26:10):
like that, the family tree from that one cockroach will
eventually number three hundred thousand in a year. Right, But
think about this, Then one of those kids and then
her offspring will be another three hundred thousand. Now I
think that counts. I think that's the whole Okay, Well,
then one of those three hundred thousand, we'll have more
(26:33):
kids and another three hundred thousands. It goes exponentially kicks
in somewhere. Exponentiality kicks in at some point. Yeah, an
American cockroaches only produce about eight hundred babies a year.
So I got something from Believe It or Not. The
orcan website has a lot of really good scientific information
that uh did you go and look at it? Uh?
(26:54):
And they talked about female courtship. Um, they begin courtship,
it says, by raising their wings and exposing their internal
membranes and expanding their genital chamber. Hey, boys, check out
my internal membrane exactly. My genital chamber is wide open
and ready. I'm gonna release a pheromone. Hey man, this
(27:16):
is science. This is science. They released the pheromones to
attract males, and um, that's the calling position. And then
the males that that pick up on these pheromones approached
the female, they flap their wings a little bit to say, hey,
I like what you got cooking there, and then mating commences.
It says when a male cockroach backs into a female
(27:38):
cockroach and deposits sperm so little, a little like you know,
it's from the rear to the rear. You know what
I'm saying, let's go back to reproduction. Yeah, we used
to be really good at stuff like this. And by
the way, wasps, well, actually this is just a side note.
(27:59):
Wasps will actually sting cockroaches and lay eggs inside of
a cockroach. Like baby Wasps can be borne out of
a cockroach body. Right, They incubate in the roach and
I guess probably eat it alive from the inside out.
There's a movie. I'm just gonna start saying that about everything.
So there's a couple of ways that a mother roach,
(28:19):
once her eggs are fertilized, can produce offspring um and
a couple of them involves something with one of the
worst words ever in my opinion, the oothica. Oh th
h e c a. Yeah, the otha. You've never been
to outhca. It's nice. I prefer oothica UPSTATEA. So that's
(28:42):
basically just like an egg sac that the eggs develop in,
and it can either be inside the mom which makes
her oh vove of a Paris ovovie of a Paris. Seriously,
that's the word porous Paris, or it can be on
the outside of her, which makes her over Paris. And
(29:02):
if it's over Paris, then she can just kind of
like abandon the sack, cover it up with some newspaper
or something like that. Sometimes say good luck or some
of them. It depends on the species carry that around
with them and then actually care for the young after
they're born like a good mom should. And then there's viviparis,
which is basically like eggs developing in fluid like in
(29:26):
a human in and in ovovivi Paris and ovivi Paris.
I'm sorry viviparis. Yeah you confused yet imagine following along
with just your ears. I'm looking at words. So it helps, Um,
the eggs are born or the young come out live. Yeah,
they actually give birth to little baby cockroaches. So, like
(29:49):
we said, the German cockroach can produce three hundred thousand offspring.
The German cockroach and her offspring can produce three thousand
cockroaches in a year. Um, and the Americans it's not many.
And we talked about nymphs. Apparently the nymph when it's
(30:09):
born is fleck of dust size maybe very very small. Um.
And there's a bunch of them, don't forget. Yeah, so uh,
and they're white, they're waiting to molt. They're very um.
Easy to kill. Yes, and if you're a common centipede,
you love to eat these things. Imagine seeing that on
(30:31):
a microscopic level, centipede eating baby cockroaches. There's a movie
for you. Um. Also, here's another good roach fact is
some mothers that care for their offspring after birth. Some
of them just you know, either dump the utica or
they just have the babies and leave, but some actually
(30:52):
raise their little babies, and scientists believe that they the
offspring actually recognized the mother. Yeah, I don't understand why
that's so hard to believe. Well, because it's an insect. Man,
it just seems like a very mammalion. They're not even ammalion.
Just like it doesn't seem like something from the insect
world like gives them a heart that I previously didn't believe.
(31:14):
I know, I know up with cockroaches, I don't know.
It just puts a face on them that I never
really considered as I smashed them, because you can't see
their face. That's right, um, And cockroaches, if you want
to make them a little more um humanlike a little
more personable, getting that the little hat and a cane
(31:35):
their social Oh yeah, they're they're not they're they're related
to termites, it turns out. And actually, I've read a
fascinating fact. I read one of the best magazine articles
I've ever read in my life, and I've read a
lot of magazine articles in the most recent issue I
believe it was of Harper's and it's about ten Ways
to Satisfy your Man. No, it's early. It's an article
(31:56):
about the early mycologists who discovered westerners, i should say,
who discovered making air quotes like magic mushrooms, and in
between that time and the time they became outlawed, and
then what happened after they became outlawed, and how they
are all these outlaw like fungal experts who all had
like PhDs and doctorates, but we're also like, might as
(32:19):
well have just been bikers growing these huge crops of mushrooms. Um,
and there's a murder involved in all that. But there's
this it's an awesome article. Check it out. But um,
there's this one fact in there that there's a type
of fungus that has evolved to mimic termite eggs so
perfectly that it can fool the termite into thinking it's
(32:40):
her own eggs and termites um salivate on their eggs,
they keep them moist constantly. Um, and this fungus needs
to be kept moist, so it'll be kept moist by
a termite that thinks this fungus is one of her eggs.
Does that fungus then later on kill the termite? Probably? Okay,
because that would be I believe that's irony, even though
(33:00):
we've been told we misused that bird. Thanks for the ride, lady, um, Wow,
we should do one of termites. Okay? Well I say
that because apparently road eggs need to be kept moist
as well. Yes they do. I don't know do they
regurgitate on them to do so? Them? Well, another way
they're related to termites are they like to hang out together.
(33:21):
They like to live in groups where they differ as
termites actually have sort of like bees, to have very
specific roles in their colonies and a social structure that's
very organized. Cockroaches ain't like that. They ain't like that,
but they still like to hang out with one another.
And um, they actually make decisions like collectively together on
where they want to roost, you know, which is an
(33:44):
emergent system, right, I think? So? Is that what that's called. Yeah,
they've done studies where they found, um, like big large
numbers of cockroaches, if they don't have enough space, actually
divide up evenly, Yeah, into like the small this number
of spaces. They can go like, well, there's two hundred
of us, so let's divide up into three groups and
(34:06):
go to three different places and you go, you guys
go there, We'll go there, and we'll go here, right,
and there's always one dude cockroach out. It's like, what
about me? It would be a Pixar movie. Yeah, that's
a good one. Um. They're they're also social and that
they follow one another, although not necessarily a leader, but
(34:27):
I guess whoever they think has the best idea. That's
a collective conscious. Yes. And there was a group of
scientists that created something called in Spot and it is
a robotic cockroach and they coated it with cockroach pheromones
and introduced it to a colony of roaches that accepted it,
(34:47):
and then they started to mess with the roaches. Of course,
they had um in spot lead them out into daylight
so that they abandoned their nocturnality. Um, they would wander
out in the open following this thing. He got him
to move um and he brought them fire. Oh really, man,
(35:09):
I was like, this is getting good. That reminds me
of the I know I talked about Errol Morris at nausea.
But fast, cheap and out of control is uh. The
robot scientists makes robots that mimic cockroaches, another small bugs
that's really neat. And he said, one potential application one
day is to have like to imagine like thousands of
these that clean things, like these robot bugs that you own. Well,
(35:32):
you just like hit a button and like two hundred
of them dust your television and then go back to
their little places. Pretty neat. It's like scrubbing bubbles, yeah,
or like the X Files when it when across the TV. Yeah,
everys wasn't cleaning anything though. What's scrubbing bubbles? It's like
a type of cleaner it is. Yeah, all right, is
that a plug? I don't think so. Okay, it was
(35:54):
just a free association, all right. So let's get to
let's say you're like me and not like Josh, and
you don't want roaches in your home. I don't want
roaches in my home. It's just when I see a roach,
I will I will gingerly pick it up with a
paper towel and toss it outside. I'm sure that doesn't
injured at all. It doesn't, okay, No, no, I don't
(36:16):
squeeze it at all. I just very gently like, al right,
what happens if that roach like gets free and crawls
up your arm? Up your Okay, but I hopefully I'm
doing it outside, all right, I just want to see
where it stops. I'm trying to get a feel out
your position fully. Um yeah, if if it's injured, if
(36:37):
I accidentally injure it, I'll go ahead and kill it. Okay,
Well that's really you're quite the humanitarian or insectarian insectaria.
So let's say you don't want roaches in your house,
which is pretty much everybody. They say, the first thing
to do is try and seal it off. Good luck
with that, because roaches can fit into cracks that are
(36:57):
as small as one six of an inch one point
five millimeters. And just show me a house that doesn't
have or at least maybe some new houses, you might
have some luck. But if you live in an old
house like me, there's there's always cracks like animals can
get through these cracks. So if you realize you've got
a bunch of cracks, seal them up as best you can. Yeah.
(37:19):
But if that's still not doing the trick. Um, they
say that you want to go with a bait trap, yeah,
rather than a spray, because you when you use a
bait trap, you become like a pioneer tracker. Um. You
can put the trap somewhere and if it's not attracting roaches,
even though you know you have roaches, Um, then you
(37:41):
need to move your trap. And when you move your
trap and start of tracking roaches, then you can tell
where they're coming from. Then you can seal up those cracks.
That's right. You you come to know the roaches using
the traps with a spray, it's just like you're just
spraying blindly. Can we do one in fleas or just ticks?
Just ticks? We need to do fleas too because I
have bad please. Um. They say, don't use like, don't
(38:03):
waste your money on those sound devices. They say that
don't work that emit like some like sound that only
a roach can hear. Um. You want to keep your
house clean, Yeah, keep your house clean anyway, Tracy, Uh,
if you've ever seen The Simpsons where margin Homer lose
the kids and have to go take a parenting class.
(38:24):
That's what this paragraph reminds me of about you. Lop
up after every meal exactly, clean and seal all of
your food, or cover and seal it. Wipe down counters
and tables after eating. Sweeper mop your floor after cooking.
Eat only in your dining area. I guess if you
eat over your sink, run the water afterwards to clean
(38:44):
out any crumbs that may have dropped out of your mouth. Yeah. Um,
and as a last resort, you could use poisons, but
I would never recommend that putting poisons in your household. Um.
You can always call your friendly neighborhood exterminator and they'll
take care of it for you, sure you know, Or
(39:07):
you can call an in spot and he can lead
all the concerts. Is out like the pie piper. There
are a few natural things though, Yeah, some things have
been shown to work. Nepa talec tone. It's in two
forms of catting up, so if you have a cat,
you might just kill two birds with one stone. Here.
(39:29):
Um A sineole sine ala um also known as eucalyptole,
and that is in bay leaf and then ossage orange
oil and they don't know what in that is the
magic potion, but apparently that works. So if you're into
natural you could try some of those things. Just put
bay leaves and cat and up all over the place.
See what happens in orange oil, and you'll never have
(39:52):
a roach again. Or you can just clean up your house.
I don't see many roaches. It's good. I mean, I'm
surprised with the amount of moisture and how all my
house is. How like the fact that I eat all
over my house and spill things everywhere, you know, garbage
laying around, it's like gum stick to your FLOORI yeah,
but I don't see roaches much. When I do, I
(40:12):
have my friend in the foot flop I'm sure you do,
and coming soon the roach paddle. Yeah, I see. I
don't feel as bad because, especially after I saw those
reproductive figures, I'm not putting a dent in the roach population. Yeah,
I can tell you the ones that you're killing. Care
I don't, I don't know. I'm sorry to tell. With
their brains since smashed on the bottom of your man. Well,
(40:34):
if you want to learn more about cockroaches, you can
type that word into the search bar how stuff works
dot com, and it'll bring up this fine article. And
I said, a search bar, which means it's time for
message break. This is from an Englishman who went up
(40:58):
a hill and came down a mount. That's not true
self experimenter though when I was a kid. Guy's about
eighteen actually, And notice that when you get water up
your nose, the effect is all consuming. Can't seem to
think about anything, feel anything, or do anything except think
about that water that you just sniffed up your footer.
(41:20):
He's English. At a similar thought about what happens to you,
both psychologically and physically, when you get soap in your eye,
Because that stinging sensation and the resulting fevered knuckling of
the optic cavity for is for a short time, the
only thing in the universe. So while it's slaying in
the bathtub with the reflected sunlight sparkling through the red
(41:40):
tint of my closed eyes, contemplating this phenomena, I decided
to run my own experiment. I want to know which
of these all powerful sensations would eclipse the other. So
I got a nice big chunk of soap on one
finger and simultaneously rubbed it vigorously into my eye and
ducked under the water, sniffing in deeply. The result was,
(42:03):
as you can imagine, quite horrific. I must have looked
like I was being fatally electrocuted. I thrashed and rubbed
and coughed and cried. My final conclusion, are you dying
to know what happened? Was that unbelievably both experiences behaved
in some sort of quantum mechanical way where I was
all consumed by two separate, all consuming events at the
(42:24):
same time. So basically it sucked really bad. If you
share this information with the world. However, no one else
will ever have to suffer this hitherto undocumented facet of reality, right,
because they're going through that kind regards James Holmes, not
the maniac version. Did he say that? Erneth he the
(42:45):
signature that was parenthetical? Yeah, from Manchester, England. So James,
I don't know why you do such a thing, sir,
but I raised a pint to you, okay and thanks? Yeah. Um,
isn't there like a whole movement like M plus one
or any equals one, the an equals one movement. It's
like self experimentation, and is the study population, and so
(43:07):
if an equals one, there's just one person yourself. Yeah.
I don't know about sniffing water and putting soup in
your eyes. But he was a kid. He was only eighteen, right, James, Right, yeah, James,
not the maniac version. Thanks James. If you, uh, anyone
else out there have a cool self experiment that you've done,
we want to hear about that all the time. Cockrade
(43:30):
story too. Sure, let us know. I agreed. Um. You
can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook, dot com slash stuff
you Should Know, and you can join us at our
home on the web, our website Stuff you should Know
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(43:52):
Does it how stuff works dot com
M how do you everybody? This is Chuck and welcome
to this weekend Stuff You Should Know Selects episode. Uh.
This week, I'm picking how Cockroaches Work from August. You
have heard Josh and I debate over the years about cockroaches,
the fact that they are one of the few insects
that I will stomp and kill with great enthusiasm, whereas
(00:22):
I believe Josh is on the record as saying he
will not and he will try and relocate them. Crazy
talk to me. That cock roach will do nothing but
spend the rest of his life trying to get back
in your home to poop all over your stuff. So
this is a good episode though, How cock Roaches Work.
Enjoy it right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know
(00:54):
from How Stuff Works dots dot com. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck
Bryant is with me. He's got his glasses on, he's
got his hair shorn, his fingernails are chewed down to
the quick. He's ready to go. I was hoping we
could open the show with Lakukaracha playing in the background. Well,
(01:17):
oh yeah, we can't. I don't know if we can
or not. I can't know. There's no way we can't. Well,
hold on, let's let's humme it. We could probably do that, right,
that's lane. People just imagine in your heads that you're
sipping a margharita and some mariachi bands playing lukukaracha right now.
Not to be confused with tequila no, which is similar. Now.
I always confused it too, really well, not want to
(01:40):
hear him, but like if I think of la kukaracha
like I often think of peewee dancing on the bar,
then I'm like, oh, yeah, this tequila right. But you
know what Luca lookukarat is about. I assumed cockroaches, but
probably not. No, a cockroach who's lost one of his
legs and is having a hard time. I just found
that out today. I did not know that. Look at me.
(02:01):
I didn't either until like just a few hours ago. Chuck,
I was once like, you naive to the way of alright,
so we talked about lakukarata as you'd hoped you feel good. Yeah,
have you ever seen the X Files episode with the cockroaches?
I don't know. Oh, it is perfect. It's one of
(02:23):
the top five, and it's not even like a part
of the part of the big, bigger picture. Once it's
like its own thing. Yeah, they have the name for
those episodes. I can't remember what it's called. But like
when it's just about a shape shift or and it
has nothing to do with the overarching conspiracy, Yeah, it's
one of those, and it's just about cockroaches and a
(02:43):
cockroach infestation that may or may not exist. But at
one point, like it's getting really like the cockroaches are
everywhere and like everybody's starting to go a little crazy
and all that, and they um digitized cockroach like crawling
across your TV screen like obviously not part of the scene,
and it looks like it was on your screen, so
(03:03):
like you're it looks like there's a cockroach in your house.
It was, it was. It's a good episode. Yeah, I
was late on the X Files. I didn't watch it
when it was out, And then when I moved to
New Jersey they started doing reruns and Justin I was
living at the time, was like you never watched X Files.
It was like no, And then it was on every night.
I watched the crap out of it. That did you
(03:25):
see the Charles Nelson Riley one where he's like an
art it's Jose Chunks from outer Space. I remember where, Like,
could Jessie the Body Venture and Alex Trebecker in it? Really,
I didn't know. I must not have seen them all
because I was catching them on reruns. You didn't see
like some of the best ones. Go see go watch
those two. I know you have access to them. All right, Okay,
done so. Um, we're talking cockroaches here and apparently also
(03:50):
Jessie the Body Ventura. Um, did you know, Chuck? The
cockroaches are extremely clean insects. Well always said the same
thing about vultures. They are personally clean. Apparently they do
track a lot of germs spread disease. They apparently leave
(04:12):
a trail of fecal material everywhere they go because it's
like a bit of bread crumbs for them to follow back.
They spread bacteria of course in that fecal material. Um,
there are proteins that set off up to six of
allergy sufferers allergies. They'll eat garbage and waste, They'll they'll
crawl on poop that your dog laid down in the
(04:34):
yard and eat it if your dog doesn't need it first.
And yet a cockroach itself is very clean because they're
extremely um intense groomers. First of all, they keep their
antenna clean because they have a fatty secretion or some
sort of secretion that if they don't clean it off,
(04:55):
we'll block their antenna from sensing things. So they constantly
clean their antenna. But apparent only they also cleaned their
feet and everything. And I read about a study. It
was just pretty almost anecdotal. It was so outside of
the scientific method. But um, they took a swab from
a guy's hands who hadn't washed his hands for two hours,
(05:16):
and they took a swab off of the foot or tarsus,
i should say, of a cockroach who had been walking
through garbage. And then two hours later they took a
swab and um, they put it in culture and the
guy grew way more bacteria than the cockroaches culture did
I don't care, which means that that man is dirt
(05:37):
year than a cockroach. They proved it. I would still
smash the cockroach with my flip flop. See, I don't
believe there's a there's a sect out there, and I
don't know if it's Hinduism or Jainism. It's one of
those two where the the monks of this sect um
carry little brooms hand brooms to kind of brush everything
(05:59):
off wherever they sit so they don't accidentally kill even
the tiniest Think that's great, and I kind of agree
with that. I think everything is a right to life. Now,
you have been on record on this very show talking
about killing cockroaches because the way they skitter. No, no, no,
not cockroaches. I am down with killing mosquitoes and ticks. No,
(06:24):
you talked about the cockroaches. I don't kill cockroaches. You
talked very much about how fast they are and how
they skitter and how that freaks you out. I don't
kill them. No, I don't kill roaches. I'm telling you,
like I defy you to find the time stamp. All right,
somebody please help me. Okay, Um, I will kill the
crap out of a mosquito, a cockroach, and um I
(06:47):
will generally shoe a fly. Now, I'll kill flies. I
generally won't kill a fly because they're not a big problem.
But you don't have flies around you all the time now,
But mosquitoes and cockroaches I will kill. And that's about it. Yeah,
everything else right to life. Cockroaches, you must die. So
(07:08):
cockroaches are Um, I guess they understand that Chuck wants
them to die. Many people do. They're very disliked, right,
which has possibly accounted for them evolving to be really
difficult to kill. For one, they're nocturnal, so they're hiding
away from us when we're up because we're diurnal, which
(07:29):
is the opposite of nocturnal. Yeah. Um, they have sensors,
little sensors in there. Um, we'll get to that spoiler.
They run really fast, they do. They reproduce extremely quickly.
And there's more than four thousand species of cockroach. So
you would think the whole rule would be infested with cockroaches,
(07:50):
but not true. It's actually mainly just one species, the
German cockroach, that is uh accountable for most infestations in
homes around the world. That's right. That is one of
the four main species that you might see, the German,
The American a k. A. Palmetto bug, which are they
can get big. Oh yeah, man creepy. There's one man
(08:13):
that like in South America. It's like as big as
your hand, six inches launch one foot wing diameters. The
brown banded cocka roach and the Oriental cocka roach um
are the four that you're likely to come across in
your life. And the German cockroach an American are the
ones you're gonna see here in the United States. And
(08:33):
they have been brought here by you because they get
that you know, they're not obviously gonna fly from continent.
In the continent, they hit trides on airplanes and boats
and getting chipping containers and in your mouth, moving boxes
and ghosery bags, and they are ubiquitous, and they, like
all insects, are most insects, they do a service. Most
(08:56):
of them are going to be out in the woods
like chewing stuff and pooping it out and being a
part of the ecosystem. Um. But it's the ones in
the home that really freaked people out right. And Chuck,
I think one of the more fascinating things. And by
the way, Rod just turned out to be pretty fascinating,
even more than I expect him. I just thought there
were a few things that were fascinating where you creeped out,
(09:17):
like reading this or do so it's not like that
you just hate them, Yeah, I mean there, it's like
you previously talked about that you deny it's The way
they move and how fast they are is what creeps
me out. And like, there's no greater fear than laying
in bed and seeing one on the ceiling above you,
just waiting for it to fall into your mouth. Yeah,
(09:39):
but apparently they are pretty good at not falling off
of the ceiling. That's true. Um, And they've had a
long time to practice this kind of stuff. They've been
around for about three twenty million years, longer than dinosaurs,
way longer than dinosats they survived that extinction event they did,
and well, well let's talk about it, tuck. Just how
(10:01):
much of an extinction event can a cockroach survive? Can
they survive a nuclear fallout? A nuclear war that would
kill all humans? Could a cockroach survive as they are
rumored to? Uh? Maybe that's sadly, it's like, we don't
know because that hasn't happened. Not sadly, thankfully that hasn't happened.
(10:24):
But um, the answer is some people say maybe, some
people say maybe not. Um. What we definitely know is
they probably could not survive the nuclear winter because they
like warm, moist places, right, and the nuclear winter would
not be good for cockroaches. Apparently, they're less susceptible the
radiation poisoning and humans are, but more than most insects.
(10:47):
So as far as insects goes, they might not be
the best candidate, right, Uh yeah, so maybe, but probably not.
I'm kind of on that side that they probably wouldn't
survive a nuclear war, so we're time at radiation though
not like the blast obviously that would kill everything, you know. Um, alright,
so they survived the dinosaurs extinction event. They have been
(11:11):
around for three million years. They are very hearty little insects.
Let's talk a little bit about their bodies. They're creepy,
little crunchy bodies. So um, most of them are between
two inch half an inch and two inches long. They're
brown or black usually, and that length is minus their
intended This is just their bodies, you don't. And their
(11:33):
heads point downward, like, as Tracy Wilson, who wrote this
article points out, almost as if they're built for ramming. Yeah,
or just searching for stuff, you know, it's another way
to look at it. The males are the ones that
have wings. Females may have wings, but their vestigial wings
they can't fly with them. Males can fly not very
well though, which makes them even more horrific when the
(11:54):
palmetto bug a big ones flying at your face because
you know he has no control exactly. Yeah, man, it's
sort of like the cicada. Like they're I don't think
their wind wings were made for flying, but if they
jump off of something high, they can help them a
little bit uh to glide perhaps and not like hit
the ground is hard um short distances basically, and their
(12:15):
their insects, which means that they have three main body regions,
the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. They have an
exo skeleton that they mold as they grow, and they
mold a number of times, depending on the cockroach species,
over the course of a couple of weeks or over
the course of a couple of years, and their lifespans
also are um uh in step with that molting schedule. Um.
(12:38):
But they cockroache will mold several times over its life
before it becomes an adult. Yes, and when they molt, um,
it's the same thing as when they're born. They're gonna
look white and um that's probably kind of creepy looking.
I've never seen a molted cockroach like a skinless cockroach
it's like the Lady and Hell Raiser before she fully
gets all of her skin, right. Uh, and uh, they're
(12:59):
they're pretty uptible two injury and death obviously when but
when after they've molted before bursicon, which is a hormone,
makes their exoskeleton hard and dark once again. Then they
have their little armor um, which is no match for
a flip flop. Uh. They can regrow lost limbs when
it molts, which is pretty cool, and they can even
(13:20):
put molting off for a little while in order to
regrow a lost limb um in their head. Let's go
over their head. They have eyes and their antenna, which
we've talked about, which we'll get into more specifically. And
there Tracy loves saying mouth parts. She writes a lot
of these articles. Yeah, she she will never just say mouths. Yeah,
(13:41):
it's not a true mouth apparently, it's yeah, a mouth part. Yeah.
They do have brains, by the way, and they are.
The brain is in the head. But the brain is
not like a human or a mammal brain. It's not
doing It's like it's not connected to a big central
nervous system or anything like that. Right, there is a
central nervous system that it's not in the head. There's
a h it's some sort of ganglia um that allows
(14:06):
the roach to continue living for up to a week
after it loses its head. Yeah, this is a pretty
good roach fact. Okay, I think, okay, um. So you
can cut a roach his head off and it will
live for a week and do all the normal things
that a roach does for a week, and then when
it finally dies, it dies because of thirst. Yeah. Yeah,
because they they actually breathe. They don't breathe through the
(14:28):
nose and mouth. They breathe through their sides. There's little
holes in their side called spiricles and trachea tubes deliver
the oxygen to the organs and tissues through their sides.
So there's you know, cut off the head and it
just dies of thirst. Yeah, which is my new favorite game.
Actually that's not true, because that's like future serial killer stuff.
(14:49):
It is like you torture cockroaches, and you torture animals,
and you torture humans. Once you've moved down to the chipmunks,
it's probably beyond the point of no return. You're a
bad person. Jeffrey Dahmer orchard animals. He would lay down
and Uh, like he would come across the dead deer
in the forest and like lay down with it and
spoon with it. It's like a Johnny Depp and Dead Man.
(15:11):
Did he do that? Did the exact same thing? Well,
maybe he was a serial killer. I don't think he was.
He was a killer, but not a serial killer. That
just shows how messed up Dahmer was that man. Yeah,
to like that was a connection to him was like
holding this dead animal, all right, like the cockroaches. Um,
(16:02):
so that's the head. Yeah, let's talk about their eyes.
Their eyes are compound eyes. Um so they see the
world in a mosaic like a fly. Like a fly,
all right, So we talked about their eyes. I actually
asked Tracy today, I was like, you, you wrote a
bunch of insect articles. Didn't you ever get sick about
(16:24):
talking about the head, the abdomen, the thorax, mouthparts, the legs.
They're all the same for insections, No they're not. They
all have these they're all the same, but they all
have different little adaptations that make them different. I was like,
how did you not get tired of it? She said,
she was fascinated the whole time. She said, san x
(16:44):
that's trable. Nit, that's tracy of stuff you miss in
history class, by the way, plug plug. Um. So we
talked about the antenna. They are movable and they are
known as antennal flagella, and uh, they're actually tiny, tiny
little hair covered segments and like it's it's thicker where
(17:04):
it attaches at the head, and it gets thinner and
thinner and thinner until it's just like a human hair
almost at the end. And these things since, um, they
smell sort of right, Yeah, they basically I guess, uh
sense pheromones. Yeah, the there you have it. They sense pheromones,
they pick up odors. I think they they're pretty finally
(17:26):
attuned to the environment. Yeah, but that's like really how
they're getting around, right, Like, even though they have eyes,
isn't the antenna really the secret? I believe? So okay, um, chuck,
you want to talk about mouthparts? Yes, Um, they are
a lot different than mammals, as Tracy points out, Um,
but they do have parts that sort of are akin
(17:48):
to how mammals mouths work. For instance, there's a laborum
and labium and they form the lips right uh, mandibles,
there's two of those and they cut and grind things
like your teeth might, which is very important because roaches
eat literally anything. Yeah, and sometimes that's like wood and
other stuff like they shouldn't be able to eat, but
(18:10):
they can. It's right, go ahead, thanks to the mandibles
and some other things that we'll get to. And then
they have to stop. And then there's a couple of
maxilla and they basically manipulate the food chewing. Yeah, like
a squirrel, yeah, squirrels arms or hands, yeah, or a
dung beetle. Yeah. The thorax, which is one of the
(18:34):
body parts that one of the three pieces of the
body um and that has the three pairs of legs
and the wings, and the legs are so named after
the part of the thorax that they're attached to. Right,
So you get the pro, the mezzo, and the meta.
So the pro is closest to the head. Mezzo middle Yeah,
(18:55):
the pro or like the brakes apparently and the yeah,
the pro Yeah, that's the just do stopping. Yeah. The
middle ones can make the roach go forward or backward.
And then so that's the mesothoracic legs. Then the metathoracic legs.
The ones in the rear are the ones that propel
the roach forward. And here's another good roach fact. Do
you take this one? Man, is awesome. Uh. They can
(19:17):
move about fifty body links in a second, which is
up to three miles an hour. Sounds very slow to us,
but think about this in roach terms. That's right. If
that were a human being, Uh, that would mean we
would be running two hundred miles an hour. Yeah, that's
why they look so fast. It's because they are. They
are fast. Now, like to us, three miles an hour
is not that much but very slow walk. That equals
(19:39):
two hundred miles an hour in reality for us. Yeah,
and part two of that roach fact, which I think
is just horrifying. When a roach runs really really fast,
sometimes it it gets air and just is basically running
on its back legs only, but the front the other
legs are still moving. So that's just like my worst nightmare.
(19:59):
They're then after you, exactly, man. So they the three
pairs are all built the exact same. They all have
the same parts, but they are different lengths. They function
slightly differently. Um, but they all moved the same way.
It just depends on, you know, what the roach wants
to do. Like we said, the pro thorastic legs active breaks.
(20:22):
The mesothorastic um can move it forward or back, and
then the meta push it forward and they apparently move
like poco sticks and then back and forth too, and
they work in conjunction to allow the roach to kind
of walk over just about anything. So um, when the
(20:42):
the pro and meta thoracic legs on one side are moving,
the mesothoractic leg the middle one on the other side
is moving, so that's how they move, which apparently it's
like a four by four yea uh. She also points
out that there are um the parts of the leg
(21:05):
you can sort of approximate as if it were a human.
They have a trick canter that's like our knees uh.
Femur and tibia um resemble arthai and shins, and then
they have the tarsus which is the ankle and foot
right and the tarsus is hooked in a roach, which
allows it to walk on the ceiling over your head
(21:26):
most frightening thing ever, and on walls. And when a
roaches on the ground, it runs very quickly, but when
it's on a ceiling it moves much more methodically because
it doesn't want to follow them. Upside down. If three
miles an hour equals two an hour to us, Yeah,
imagine what a ten ft drop equals to a poor
(21:47):
little roach. Well, not enough, because it lands, flips itself over,
and then runs away again. But it's humiliated, that's true. Uh,
twenty seven times per second. These legs can move back
and forth. So these are fast little boogers, which is
why you previously talked about hating them because they were
so fast. I really I don't I'm gonna find it. Okay,
(22:09):
I'll bet I didn't say i'd kill him. I've long
advocated for road to his rights. All right, So now
we're the abdomen um. They do have a heart. It
is a too black instructure and does move blood along,
but it does not carry um oxygen around, so A
(22:29):
the blood is not red, and B they move oxygen
and blood around in other ways through basically empty spaces
called hemo hemo coles. Yeah, it's pretty much the absence
of a fact there. Yeah. Well it's a the a
word to carries blood around to the organs. But yeah,
she says, the blood just travels through these spaces essentially,
(22:50):
and then rather than having to worry about like a
spare tire or something like that. I like a fat belly, right,
They have a actual fat body, and it's just this
little area where they store all the fat in their body.
Very smart. I have that same place. It's between my
chin and my waist. Yeah. I guess they do have
to worry about a spare tire, but it's a very
(23:12):
specific one. Yeah, that's true, you know. Okay, So let's
talk about digestion. Um. The the digestive system is in
the abdomen, and it's really not super unlike it's just
like a simplified version of our own or any mammals
digestive system. But like you said, they can eat things
like in digestings like wood and cellulose, so they do
(23:34):
need some help from specialized parts, one of which is
called a crop. Right, that's um. It basically holds the
food while apart behind it um a toothy section in
the digestive so that it is gross and it's equal
to like a an octopus having a beak, crushing beak.
(23:58):
They're squishy, they're not supposed to have a hard beak
in the middle. It's crazy. Yeah, it's called a probe
and triculus on the roach and that just pulverizes the
stuff like wood or whatever it's tough to digest, and
then and then it pushes it back. This this pulverized
part to the gastric cassilla, which houses enzymes, microbes, things
that break it down even further. And all this is
(24:19):
just the preliminary stuff. This is like what we do
in our mouth. Um. All this is going through this
process in a roach before it even gets to the
part where it starts to digest. This this is sort
of gross, like the digestion when was we haven't said
the word bolus yet, Well, we just did. Uh. And
(24:39):
then the searcy that we talked about earlier. These are
the uh. It sort of looks like short little antenna
sticking out from the butt area on each side. And
this is what allows the roach to not get Like
whenever you go to get that flip flop and you
rare back and go to hit the roach and as
you're coming it, it just like it could darts out
(25:00):
of the way. You're like, how did it know? How
did it know? It's because the searcy they pick up
on air flow and they can actually feel and since
that shoe coming, so if you're if you're unto killing
roaches like me, you have to be swift and and stealthy,
come at it hard and with vigor and with a
I guess a paddle that has holes in it down air? Hey?
(25:22):
Maybe so drag you might be honest something there. Oh no,
you invented sharknado. So the roach paddle? Um? So, I guess,
so that's a roach. That's the roach's body. Let's talk
about reproduction, because they do reproduce depending on the species. Um.
(25:46):
I believe the German roach uh can produce something in
the order of like eighty thou offspring? Is that correct? No?
Way more than that. The German produces. The German cockroach
and it's offspring will eventually produce about three hundred thousand
per year. So a mother and her her kids, yeah,
(26:10):
like that, the family tree from that one cockroach will
eventually number three hundred thousand in a year. Right, But
think about this, Then one of those kids and then
her offspring will be another three hundred thousand. Now I
think that counts. I think that's the whole Okay, Well,
then one of those three hundred thousand, we'll have more
(26:33):
kids and another three hundred thousands. It goes exponentially kicks
in somewhere. Exponentiality kicks in at some point. Yeah, an
American cockroaches only produce about eight hundred babies a year.
So I got something from Believe It or Not. The
orcan website has a lot of really good scientific information
that uh did you go and look at it? Uh?
(26:54):
And they talked about female courtship. Um, they begin courtship,
it says, by raising their wings and exposing their internal
membranes and expanding their genital chamber. Hey, boys, check out
my internal membrane exactly. My genital chamber is wide open
and ready. I'm gonna release a pheromone. Hey man, this
(27:16):
is science. This is science. They released the pheromones to
attract males, and um, that's the calling position. And then
the males that that pick up on these pheromones approached
the female, they flap their wings a little bit to say, hey,
I like what you got cooking there, and then mating commences.
It says when a male cockroach backs into a female
(27:38):
cockroach and deposits sperm so little, a little like you know,
it's from the rear to the rear. You know what
I'm saying, let's go back to reproduction. Yeah, we used
to be really good at stuff like this. And by
the way, wasps, well, actually this is just a side note.
(27:59):
Wasps will actually sting cockroaches and lay eggs inside of
a cockroach. Like baby Wasps can be borne out of
a cockroach body. Right, They incubate in the roach and
I guess probably eat it alive from the inside out.
There's a movie. I'm just gonna start saying that about everything.
So there's a couple of ways that a mother roach,
(28:19):
once her eggs are fertilized, can produce offspring um and
a couple of them involves something with one of the
worst words ever in my opinion, the oothica. Oh th
h e c a. Yeah, the otha. You've never been
to outhca. It's nice. I prefer oothica UPSTATEA. So that's
(28:42):
basically just like an egg sac that the eggs develop in,
and it can either be inside the mom which makes
her oh vove of a Paris ovovie of a Paris. Seriously,
that's the word porous Paris, or it can be on
the outside of her, which makes her over Paris. And
(29:02):
if it's over Paris, then she can just kind of
like abandon the sack, cover it up with some newspaper
or something like that. Sometimes say good luck or some
of them. It depends on the species carry that around
with them and then actually care for the young after
they're born like a good mom should. And then there's viviparis,
which is basically like eggs developing in fluid like in
(29:26):
a human in and in ovovivi Paris and ovivi Paris.
I'm sorry viviparis. Yeah you confused yet imagine following along
with just your ears. I'm looking at words. So it helps, Um,
the eggs are born or the young come out live. Yeah,
they actually give birth to little baby cockroaches. So, like
(29:49):
we said, the German cockroach can produce three hundred thousand offspring.
The German cockroach and her offspring can produce three thousand
cockroaches in a year. Um, and the Americans it's not many.
And we talked about nymphs. Apparently the nymph when it's
(30:09):
born is fleck of dust size maybe very very small. Um.
And there's a bunch of them, don't forget. Yeah, so uh,
and they're white, they're waiting to molt. They're very um.
Easy to kill. Yes, and if you're a common centipede,
you love to eat these things. Imagine seeing that on
(30:31):
a microscopic level, centipede eating baby cockroaches. There's a movie
for you. Um. Also, here's another good roach fact is
some mothers that care for their offspring after birth. Some
of them just you know, either dump the utica or
they just have the babies and leave, but some actually
(30:52):
raise their little babies, and scientists believe that they the
offspring actually recognized the mother. Yeah, I don't understand why
that's so hard to believe. Well, because it's an insect. Man,
it just seems like a very mammalion. They're not even ammalion.
Just like it doesn't seem like something from the insect
world like gives them a heart that I previously didn't believe.
(31:14):
I know, I know up with cockroaches, I don't know.
It just puts a face on them that I never
really considered as I smashed them, because you can't see
their face. That's right, um, And cockroaches, if you want
to make them a little more um humanlike a little
more personable, getting that the little hat and a cane
(31:35):
their social Oh yeah, they're they're not they're they're related
to termites, it turns out. And actually, I've read a
fascinating fact. I read one of the best magazine articles
I've ever read in my life, and I've read a
lot of magazine articles in the most recent issue I
believe it was of Harper's and it's about ten Ways
to Satisfy your Man. No, it's early. It's an article
(31:56):
about the early mycologists who discovered westerners, i should say,
who discovered making air quotes like magic mushrooms, and in
between that time and the time they became outlawed, and
then what happened after they became outlawed, and how they
are all these outlaw like fungal experts who all had
like PhDs and doctorates, but we're also like, might as
(32:19):
well have just been bikers growing these huge crops of mushrooms. Um,
and there's a murder involved in all that. But there's
this it's an awesome article. Check it out. But um,
there's this one fact in there that there's a type
of fungus that has evolved to mimic termite eggs so
perfectly that it can fool the termite into thinking it's
(32:40):
her own eggs and termites um salivate on their eggs,
they keep them moist constantly. Um, and this fungus needs
to be kept moist, so it'll be kept moist by
a termite that thinks this fungus is one of her eggs.
Does that fungus then later on kill the termite? Probably? Okay,
because that would be I believe that's irony, even though
(33:00):
we've been told we misused that bird. Thanks for the ride, lady, um, Wow,
we should do one of termites. Okay? Well I say
that because apparently road eggs need to be kept moist
as well. Yes they do. I don't know do they
regurgitate on them to do so? Them? Well, another way
they're related to termites are they like to hang out together.
(33:21):
They like to live in groups where they differ as
termites actually have sort of like bees, to have very
specific roles in their colonies and a social structure that's
very organized. Cockroaches ain't like that. They ain't like that,
but they still like to hang out with one another.
And um, they actually make decisions like collectively together on
where they want to roost, you know, which is an
(33:44):
emergent system, right, I think? So? Is that what that's called. Yeah,
they've done studies where they found, um, like big large
numbers of cockroaches, if they don't have enough space, actually
divide up evenly, Yeah, into like the small this number
of spaces. They can go like, well, there's two hundred
of us, so let's divide up into three groups and
(34:06):
go to three different places and you go, you guys
go there, We'll go there, and we'll go here, right,
and there's always one dude cockroach out. It's like, what
about me? It would be a Pixar movie. Yeah, that's
a good one. Um. They're they're also social and that
they follow one another, although not necessarily a leader, but
(34:27):
I guess whoever they think has the best idea. That's
a collective conscious. Yes. And there was a group of
scientists that created something called in Spot and it is
a robotic cockroach and they coated it with cockroach pheromones
and introduced it to a colony of roaches that accepted it,
(34:47):
and then they started to mess with the roaches. Of course,
they had um in spot lead them out into daylight
so that they abandoned their nocturnality. Um, they would wander
out in the open following this thing. He got him
to move um and he brought them fire. Oh really, man,
(35:09):
I was like, this is getting good. That reminds me
of the I know I talked about Errol Morris at nausea.
But fast, cheap and out of control is uh. The
robot scientists makes robots that mimic cockroaches, another small bugs
that's really neat. And he said, one potential application one
day is to have like to imagine like thousands of
these that clean things, like these robot bugs that you own. Well,
(35:32):
you just like hit a button and like two hundred
of them dust your television and then go back to
their little places. Pretty neat. It's like scrubbing bubbles, yeah,
or like the X Files when it when across the TV. Yeah,
everys wasn't cleaning anything though. What's scrubbing bubbles? It's like
a type of cleaner it is. Yeah, all right, is
that a plug? I don't think so. Okay, it was
(35:54):
just a free association, all right. So let's get to
let's say you're like me and not like Josh, and
you don't want roaches in your home. I don't want
roaches in my home. It's just when I see a roach,
I will I will gingerly pick it up with a
paper towel and toss it outside. I'm sure that doesn't
injured at all. It doesn't, okay, No, no, I don't
(36:16):
squeeze it at all. I just very gently like, al right,
what happens if that roach like gets free and crawls
up your arm? Up your Okay, but I hopefully I'm
doing it outside, all right, I just want to see
where it stops. I'm trying to get a feel out
your position fully. Um yeah, if if it's injured, if
(36:37):
I accidentally injure it, I'll go ahead and kill it. Okay,
Well that's really you're quite the humanitarian or insectarian insectaria.
So let's say you don't want roaches in your house,
which is pretty much everybody. They say, the first thing
to do is try and seal it off. Good luck
with that, because roaches can fit into cracks that are
(36:57):
as small as one six of an inch one point
five millimeters. And just show me a house that doesn't
have or at least maybe some new houses, you might
have some luck. But if you live in an old
house like me, there's there's always cracks like animals can
get through these cracks. So if you realize you've got
a bunch of cracks, seal them up as best you can. Yeah.
(37:19):
But if that's still not doing the trick. Um, they
say that you want to go with a bait trap, yeah,
rather than a spray, because you when you use a
bait trap, you become like a pioneer tracker. Um. You
can put the trap somewhere and if it's not attracting roaches,
even though you know you have roaches, Um, then you
(37:41):
need to move your trap. And when you move your
trap and start of tracking roaches, then you can tell
where they're coming from. Then you can seal up those cracks.
That's right. You you come to know the roaches using
the traps with a spray, it's just like you're just
spraying blindly. Can we do one in fleas or just ticks?
Just ticks? We need to do fleas too because I
have bad please. Um. They say, don't use like, don't
(38:03):
waste your money on those sound devices. They say that
don't work that emit like some like sound that only
a roach can hear. Um. You want to keep your
house clean, Yeah, keep your house clean anyway, Tracy, Uh,
if you've ever seen The Simpsons where margin Homer lose
the kids and have to go take a parenting class.
(38:24):
That's what this paragraph reminds me of about you. Lop
up after every meal exactly, clean and seal all of
your food, or cover and seal it. Wipe down counters
and tables after eating. Sweeper mop your floor after cooking.
Eat only in your dining area. I guess if you
eat over your sink, run the water afterwards to clean
(38:44):
out any crumbs that may have dropped out of your mouth. Yeah. Um,
and as a last resort, you could use poisons, but
I would never recommend that putting poisons in your household. Um.
You can always call your friendly neighborhood exterminator and they'll
take care of it for you, sure you know, Or
(39:07):
you can call an in spot and he can lead
all the concerts. Is out like the pie piper. There
are a few natural things though, Yeah, some things have
been shown to work. Nepa talec tone. It's in two
forms of catting up, so if you have a cat,
you might just kill two birds with one stone. Here.
(39:29):
Um A sineole sine ala um also known as eucalyptole,
and that is in bay leaf and then ossage orange
oil and they don't know what in that is the
magic potion, but apparently that works. So if you're into
natural you could try some of those things. Just put
bay leaves and cat and up all over the place.
See what happens in orange oil, and you'll never have
(39:52):
a roach again. Or you can just clean up your house.
I don't see many roaches. It's good. I mean, I'm
surprised with the amount of moisture and how all my
house is. How like the fact that I eat all
over my house and spill things everywhere, you know, garbage
laying around, it's like gum stick to your FLOORI yeah,
but I don't see roaches much. When I do, I
(40:12):
have my friend in the foot flop I'm sure you do,
and coming soon the roach paddle. Yeah, I see. I
don't feel as bad because, especially after I saw those
reproductive figures, I'm not putting a dent in the roach population. Yeah,
I can tell you the ones that you're killing. Care
I don't, I don't know. I'm sorry to tell. With
their brains since smashed on the bottom of your man. Well,
(40:34):
if you want to learn more about cockroaches, you can
type that word into the search bar how stuff works
dot com, and it'll bring up this fine article. And
I said, a search bar, which means it's time for
message break. This is from an Englishman who went up
(40:58):
a hill and came down a mount. That's not true
self experimenter though when I was a kid. Guy's about
eighteen actually, And notice that when you get water up
your nose, the effect is all consuming. Can't seem to
think about anything, feel anything, or do anything except think
about that water that you just sniffed up your footer.
(41:20):
He's English. At a similar thought about what happens to you,
both psychologically and physically, when you get soap in your eye,
Because that stinging sensation and the resulting fevered knuckling of
the optic cavity for is for a short time, the
only thing in the universe. So while it's slaying in
the bathtub with the reflected sunlight sparkling through the red
(41:40):
tint of my closed eyes, contemplating this phenomena, I decided
to run my own experiment. I want to know which
of these all powerful sensations would eclipse the other. So
I got a nice big chunk of soap on one
finger and simultaneously rubbed it vigorously into my eye and
ducked under the water, sniffing in deeply. The result was,
(42:03):
as you can imagine, quite horrific. I must have looked
like I was being fatally electrocuted. I thrashed and rubbed
and coughed and cried. My final conclusion, are you dying
to know what happened? Was that unbelievably both experiences behaved
in some sort of quantum mechanical way where I was
all consumed by two separate, all consuming events at the
(42:24):
same time. So basically it sucked really bad. If you
share this information with the world. However, no one else
will ever have to suffer this hitherto undocumented facet of reality, right,
because they're going through that kind regards James Holmes, not
the maniac version. Did he say that? Erneth he the
(42:45):
signature that was parenthetical? Yeah, from Manchester, England. So James,
I don't know why you do such a thing, sir,
but I raised a pint to you, okay and thanks? Yeah. Um,
isn't there like a whole movement like M plus one
or any equals one, the an equals one movement. It's
like self experimentation, and is the study population, and so
(43:07):
if an equals one, there's just one person yourself. Yeah.
I don't know about sniffing water and putting soup in
your eyes. But he was a kid. He was only eighteen, right, James, Right, yeah, James,
not the maniac version. Thanks James. If you, uh, anyone
else out there have a cool self experiment that you've done,
we want to hear about that all the time. Cockrade
(43:30):
story too. Sure, let us know. I agreed. Um. You
can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook, dot com slash stuff
you Should Know, and you can join us at our
home on the web, our website Stuff you should Know
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(43:52):
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