Roaches eat everything from plant matter to people food, dead skin cells, garbage and even feces.
Usually cockroaches are attracted to their neighbors' feces, but they tended to avoid the germ-free stuff.
Do cockroaches eat feces? Feces is a rich source of nutrients for cockroaches and they'll eat it wherever they find it. This includes dog feces, cat feces, and rodent droppings.
The place where you found dead roaches have the elements from the roaches bodies and their smells too, especially when you've smashed the cockroaches. Leaving those smells, which contain pheromones, will attract other roaches.
When a cockroach's nervous system has been compromised by an insecticide, it can result in the insect flipping over onto its back. Because the roach is not healthy and is experiencing muscle spasms, it is less likely to be able to return to an upright position. There's a lot more you can learn about cockroaches.
Can Cockroaches Play Dead? Cockroaches can, indeed, play dead. Many have reported seeing cockroaches stay completely still (sometimes even roll onto their backs) until a human presence or threat has gone away. Once they detect the coast is clear, the cockroach will flip back onto its feet and scuttle away to safety.
Maxillae - basically the teeth of the roach. These are secondary chewing parts that further grind down the food into smaller and smaller pieces so they can be pulled into the digestive areas for nutritional purposes.
The average cockroach lifespan is about twenty to thirty weeks given that the roach has ready access to food and water. The first stage in the life of cockroach females and males alike is the egg stage. Eggs are produced in what are called egg capsules.
The abdomen has ten segments, each having a pair of spiracles for respiration. In addition to the spiracles, the final segment consists of a pair of cerci, a pair of anal styles, the anus and the external genitalia.
Roach droppings look like specks of pepper, coffee grounds, or dark grains of rice. The size of the feces is directly related to the size of the cockroach. Bigger insects produce larger droppings.
Cockroaches communicate through pheromones, allowing them to transmit a variety of intentions, messages, and suggestions. They can warn others that danger is nearby, suggest good food sources, encourage mating, and invite other roaches to a good shelter.
Cockroach milk is a milk-like, protein rich, crystalline substance produced by cockroaches of the Diploptera punctata species. It serves as nutrition for their young, but humans can harvest this milk by killing female cockroaches and extracting it from their midgut.
Cockroaches clean themselves regularly, even though they're dirty, bacteria-riddled insects. They prioritize removing anything that reduces their olfactory sense and ability to function optimally.
Though they look nothing like ours, roaches do have eyes. Although many parts of a cockroach's anatomy are fairly primitive, their eyes are quite advanced, giving them almost 360-degree vision of the world around them. Though their eyes possess many remarkable features, they do have some limitations on sight.
Technically, all female roaches undergo pregnancy. But, only species that are ovoviviparous, or those that carry their egg cases around with them, are considered 'pregnant'.
Cockroach 101
Cockroaches are social insects and often live in family groups. They have unusual reproduction: females lay eggs in groups of 4-30 bundled together.
How many eggs does a cockroach lay altogether? Oothecae hold between 14 and 48 eggs, arranged in two equal rows, depending on the species. The egg cases of most cockroach species contain between 14 and 16 eggs, while the smoky brown cockroach produces 20 eggs and the German cockroach lays between 30 and 48 eggs.
Like most insect bites, cockroach bites cause the skin to react by swelling up and becoming itchy. In the rare case that a cockroach bite becomes infected, the area will become inflamed and fill up with pus. The bite may then become as large as your hand.
Cockroach Bites Are Powerful
You may not feel them when biting you, but the aftermath might give you a painful sensation. Cockroaches' bite force is 50 times powerful than their body weight. The pain might depend on your tolerance, but if you have low pain tolerance, then you might find it too excruciating.
Cockroaches don't have a tongue loaded with tastebuds like we do. No, they have little 'tasting' hairs all over — on the legs, feet, wings and yes, around the mouthparts. Inside these hairs are specialised receptor cells that respond to 'sweet' or 'bitter'.
Cockroaches do sleep and just like other animals and insects, they also follow a specific circadian rhythm. They are nocturnal insects, which means that they rest or sleep during the day. Cockroaches are usually active for four hours after dark and then go into a period of immobility.
Praying mantises, certain types of beetles, and centipedes also prey upon cockroaches. Certain types of spiders, like the huntsman and brown recluse spiders, eat cockroaches, too.
It's a fact that cockroaches are afraid of humans and other mammals or animals that are bigger than them. They see us as predators and that fear triggers their instinct to scatter away. However, they dislike strong and distinctive scents such as citrus, peppermint, lavender and vinegar.
The answer is no, cockroaches do not have nipples. They're not mammals, and don't produce milk in the same way that nipple bearing creatures like cows and humans do. Instead, the Pacific beetle cockroach ferments crystallized milk protein structures in its midgut.