We get quite a bit of calls from customers who are pretty upset because they found cockroaches in their home. They seem to usually start in the kitchen. Some customers have only found one, while others have found 100’s! Either way it’s not a pest that is ever welcome in our homes and is usually a cause for panic. Use Tulsa Pest Control for all of your pest control needs.
Cockroaches are widely known as small, ugly, nasty pests. But these ancient survivalists have adapted in amazing ways over hundreds of millions of years. Cockroaches are insects who are actually related to termites. Scientists have found fossils of roaches that date back to over 320 million years ago. There are well over 4,000 species of cockroaches living around the world. Most of them don’t live near or interact with humans but the few that do have become serious household and commercial pests. Use Tulsa Pest Control for all of your pest control needs.
“Cockroach” is actually an English mispronunciation of their Spanish name, cucaracha. You may have heard of the song “La cucaracha” . It is a Spanish folk song that has been sung for centuries. Cockroaches are egg-laying insects but they don’t lay their eggs like birds in a nest. Female roaches lay eggs inside an egg case, called an ootheca. American roaches typically lay about a dozen eggs in an egg case, while German roaches lay as many as 50 eggs in each case. That is a lot of roaches! A single female roach can lay up to 400 orach babies in her lifetime. Male roaches of some species stick around to tend to the young after they hatch. Not only do the males scavenge food but they go as far as eating bird feces to take in vital nitrogen and bring it back to their offspring. Use Tulsa Pest Control for all of your pest control needs.
Cockroach nymphs molt repeatedly as they mature. Each time, they shed their old exoskeleton and grow a new one. But during the short time in between, they appear white because they are lacking that hard outer covering that darkens as it hardens with time. Most roaches live for less than a year. The adult lifespan of a cockroach varies between species. An adult German roach only lives 20 to 30 weeks. However, an adult American roach can live for well over a year. Roaches breathe very differently from humans. Instead of using their head to breathe, they breathe through tiny pores in three body segments called spiracles. A roach’s exoskeleton features a number of these holes that let them take in air and absorb oxygen directly into their organs. This respiratory system gives them an amazing superpower, a roach can live a week without its head! They also have an open circulatory system, which lets their blood travel through a system of connected spaces instead of on a closed track. A headless roach can still breathe and circulate blood; its undoing is actually that it can no longer drink water or eat without its head. Thus will die from dehydration. Use Tulsa Pest Control for all of your pest control needs.
Roaches are crazy fast runners! Their powerful rear legs can propel them up to 1.5 meters per second. For humans, that would be equivalent to us running 200 miles per hour! Quite a few species of roaches can fly, but they usually don’t. On the other hand, Asian roaches are relatively strong fliers. The unique Cuban cockroach is probably the best flier of them all. It’s nicknamed the “banana cockroach” because of its tendency to fly around the branches of banana trees. Some roaches avoid lights, hiding in dark places all day and scavenging at night. Others, however, are strongly attracted to lights. Flying roaches, like the smoky brown cockroach, are especially drawn to lights and often they fly through open windows toward tv screens and ceiling lights. A cockroach’s stick-like legs and delicate wings aren’t the ideal p[addles for swimming through water. But that doesn’t mean that flushing a roach down the drain is as easy as it sounds. A roach can hold its breath for up to 40 minutes! There’s a good chance that it will come out fine at the other end and won’t mind that it wound up in a sewer. After all., sewage is among the many things that make up a roach’s diet. Use Tulsa Pest Control for all of your pest control needs.
Have you ever noticed how difficult it can be to crush a cockroach? It turns out, a roach’s hard exoskeleton is also quite flexible or leathery. You can see the joints in it if you want to look that close. When scientists squish them, they use a machine that is 900 times their body weight, and they survived! More than that, they still ran at full speed, unbothered. Most roaches live outdoors. They crawl among the fallen leaves on the forest floor or build colonies inside tree hollows. They burrow, climb and fly to find habitats and sometimes that search leads them into buildings, such as your nice warm and cozy home. Cockroaches have a reputation for being expert survivalists but there is one place on Earth that hasn’t been able to colonize, Antarctica. Though it is possible a few roaches have stowed away on ships and sailed the seas to that southernmost continent, they haven’t been able to adapt to its harsh, freezing conditions.
A roach nest isn’t like a bird’s nest. It is typically just a hole, box or other dark, out-of-reach place where the roaches will just hide and reproduce. It will contain molted exoskeletons, droppings, and a few dead roaches. Our hoes arent the only ones that roaches like to invade. There are at least 2 species of wood cockroaches that have been seen living with ants! Researchers have found the western wood roach and the Boll’s wood roach living in anthills among the ants. It’s the nymphs of both species that seem to hide in the anthills during the day and leave to find the food at night. Use Tulsa Pest Control for all of your pest control needs.
