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* They have followed humans whereever they have expanded and now the urban jungle is their natural habitat. If they just stayed in the sewers, that would almost be tolerable, but their nature keeps them exploring new territories. In all honesty,
not even the cleanest house is immune.
* In the US, the German cockroach is the most common roach found in homes, apartment houses,
restaurants, and hotels. German cockroaches (eggs included), are "brought in", usually on man's belongings, luggage, boxes or
packages. All it takes, is bringing in one egg capsule, and you can go from one to infinity in just a couple of weeks.
* With our urban way of life, we have created an ideal environment for cockroaches to breed in, and now we are seeing legeons of cockroaches, multiplying at an alarming rate.
Click on the picture above for a larger version. In it, you can see an egg pouch. These contain from 16 to 64 eggs -- enough to form a new colony. They can be laid anywhere from a book binding to your luggage.
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Of those that we typically see, the German cockroach is the most important world
wide as a pest.
The American cockroach came from tropical Africa, probably first
on the slave ships to the Caribbean and southern US.
The Oriental cockroach is
mostly in Europe and along the Mederterranean.
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* Cockroaches have been around hundreds of times longer than man, and they look much as they did 300,000,000 (that is 300 million!) years ago.
* There is an urban legand that they will be the only thing to survive a nuclear war, and that they can survive being cooked in a microwave oven. Actually they are no better than other insects, most of which are about 15 times more resistant to radiation than humans.
* Still, they make great test subjects for insecticides, because if a product can kill a roach, it can take out anything on 6 legs, and nobody cares what happens to the test roaches.
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