Cockroaches Can Be Smart And Beautiful — And Might Even Save The ...

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Cockroaches can be smart and beautiful — and might even save the planetShareShare articleCockroaches can be smart and beautiful — and might even save the planet

• By Len Gordon

• A

  By Anna Salleh

• ABC Science

• Topic:Insects

Sat 17 Apr 2021Saturday 17 April 2021Sat 17 Apr 2021 at 11:00pm

abc.net.au/news/cockroaches-insects-reasons-love-them-environment/100053056Link copiedShareShare article

Many people are disgusted by cockroaches — it's even thought they're the top insect feared by humans.

But not all that you've heard about them is true.

Some people, like Tanya Latty, an entomologist from the University of Sydney, even love cockroaches.

She thinks they get a bad rap and shared her top five reasons why you might want to change the way you think about them.

For a start, not all cockroaches are the plain brown ones you find in your home.

Lots of cockroaches are beautiful

Cockroaches can actually be quite stunning.

"There's some beautiful species with bright colours," Dr Latty says.

There are around 4,500 species of cockroaches in the world.

Of these, more than 500 are native to Australia.

And with this huge diversity, many species display spectacular colours and patterns.

Their behaviour can be considered beautiful too, Dr Latty adds.

Some species exhibit parental care, giving birth to live young that they look after for up to nine months.

"They take care of them, they feed them, they look after them," she says.

"They're living in these little family groups."

The environment needs them

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Of the hundreds of Australian species of cockroaches, only a handful ever come into people's homes, Dr Latty explains.

Most play a significant role in the ecosystem.

"They're just out in the bush doing a really, really important job of breaking down organic matter, like rotting leaves and rotting wood," Dr Latty says.

They are natural composters, producing fertiliser and bringing nutrients back into the soil.

"It's a super important job that they're just doing for free for us," she says.

And it's not just in the bush. Even the pest species we find in the city play a role in recycling leaf litter and other green waste.

"It's worth thinking about how much waste management they're doing for us," Dr Latty says.

Deep-fried cockroaches may save the day

Some people think of insects as the food source of the future.

And from an environmental standpoint, it can be easy to see why.

"They have a much smaller environmental footprint than other forms of animal protein because of something called a 'conversion efficiency'," Dr Latty says.

Raising mammals for food takes up a lot of energy. Much of what they're fed is "wasted" in keeping their body warm and growing parts we don't eat, such as bones.

But for cold-blooded insects, there's less energy loss through body heat – plus you eat the whole thing.

"The amount of calories we get out for the calories we put in actually tends to be much higher [for insects] than for warm-blooded livestock," Dr Latty says.

Massive farms in China breed cockroaches in towers, feeding them 50 tonnes of kitchen waste a day.

However, these roaches won't be served up as a meal.

Instead, the ground-up roaches are used to feed animals or produce Chinese medicine.

Some companies farm insects, such as crickets, for human consumption, although it's not clear what future cockroaches have as a main course on the dinner table.

Even those willing to eat fried crickets might find cockroach chips a bit unappealing.

Cockroaches are survivors

There is a common belief that cockroaches could survive a nuclear apocalypse.

This isn't quite true. While they are about five times more resilient to radiation than us humans, they are on the lower end of tolerance for insects.

Other species, such as fruit flies and some ant species, can survive a dose of radiation more than 10 times the intensity. 

Australian animal 'myths'

Are quokkas really terrible parents? Are daddy-long-legs venomous? Is our coat of arms fashioned on fake news? Here are the answers you never knew you needed to some of the tallest and not-so-tall Australian animal tales.

But cockroaches are still quite hardy, and that has to be admired.

"A lot of them are able to withstand all sorts of things," Dr Latty says.

"You've got to respect that a little."

They are ancient too. The modern cockroach was around during the reign of the dinosaurs.

In fact, the common ancestor of cockroaches was around before the supercontinent Pangaea broke up approximately 175 million years ago, leading to their prevalence right across the world.

Their adaptability is the reason they are so abundant in cities — they have been able to survive where other animals have been pushed out or died off.

And while it's a bit disadvantageous to us, German cockroaches — the small ones that love taking up residence in your kitchen — have been able to rewire their sense of taste to avoid bait traps.

While they originally tasted the glucose used to attract them as sweet, they now taste it as bitter, which means they avoid it — and that's a rather impressive evolutionary development.

They're clean – well, as long as you are

Often, we think of cockroaches as dirty and disease-ridden.

And they can be. But it's important to make a distinction between a cockroach and something like a mosquito, which breeds diseases inside it and then transmits them.

You wanted more Aussie animal myths debunked. Here they are

There are a lot of tall tales when it comes to Australia's fantastical fauna. We try to sort fact from fiction.

Cockroaches aren't dirty themselves, but will spread germs if germs are already around.

When they're in our house, for example, they might run over some slightly off raw meat and then scamper across a salad.

In that way, they can spread Salmonella and other bacteria.

So, if you wipe down your food preparation areas before use and don't let cockroaches get into your food, there's no chance for cross-contamination.

Plus, by keeping sources of food away from cockroaches, you're less likely to get an infestation in the first place.

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