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