Speaker 1: M how do you everybody? This is Chuck and welcome
Speaker 1: to this weekend Stuff You Should Know Selects episode. Uh.
Speaker 1: This week, I'm picking how Cockroaches Work from August. You
Speaker 1: have heard Josh and I debate over the years about cockroaches,
Speaker 1: the fact that they are one of the few insects
Speaker 1: that I will stomp and kill with great enthusiasm, whereas
Speaker 1: I believe Josh is on the record as saying he
Speaker 1: will not and he will try and relocate them. Crazy
Speaker 1: talk to me. That cock roach will do nothing but
Speaker 1: spend the rest of his life trying to get back
Speaker 1: in your home to poop all over your stuff. So
Speaker 1: this is a good episode though, How cock Roaches Work.
Speaker 1: Enjoy it right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know
Speaker 1: from How Stuff Works dots dot com. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant is with me. He's got his glasses on, he's
Speaker 1: got his hair shorn, his fingernails are chewed down to
Speaker 1: the quick. He's ready to go. I was hoping we
Speaker 1: could open the show with Lakukaracha playing in the background. Well,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we can't. I don't know if we can
Speaker 1: or not. I can't know. There's no way we can't. Well,
Speaker 1: hold on, let's let's humme it. We could probably do that, right,
Speaker 1: that's lane. People just imagine in your heads that you're
Speaker 1: sipping a margharita and some mariachi bands playing lukukaracha right now.
Speaker 1: Not to be confused with tequila no, which is similar. Now.
Speaker 1: I always confused it too, really well, not want to
Speaker 1: hear him, but like if I think of la kukaracha
Speaker 1: like I often think of peewee dancing on the bar,
Speaker 1: then I'm like, oh, yeah, this tequila right. But you
Speaker 1: know what Luca lookukarat is about. I assumed cockroaches, but
Speaker 1: probably not. No, a cockroach who's lost one of his
Speaker 1: legs and is having a hard time. I just found
Speaker 1: that out today. I did not know that. Look at me.
Speaker 1: I didn't either until like just a few hours ago. Chuck,
Speaker 1: I was once like, you naive to the way of alright,
Speaker 1: so we talked about lakukarata as you'd hoped you feel good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen the X Files episode with the cockroaches?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Oh, it is perfect. It's one of
Speaker 1: the top five, and it's not even like a part
Speaker 1: of the part of the big, bigger picture. Once it's
Speaker 1: like its own thing. Yeah, they have the name for
Speaker 1: those episodes. I can't remember what it's called. But like
Speaker 1: when it's just about a shape shift or and it
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the overarching conspiracy, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: one of those, and it's just about cockroaches and a
Speaker 1: cockroach infestation that may or may not exist. But at
Speaker 1: one point, like it's getting really like the cockroaches are
Speaker 1: everywhere and like everybody's starting to go a little crazy
Speaker 1: and all that, and they um digitized cockroach like crawling
Speaker 1: across your TV screen like obviously not part of the scene,
Speaker 1: and it looks like it was on your screen, so
Speaker 1: like you're it looks like there's a cockroach in your house.
Speaker 1: It was, it was. It's a good episode. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was late on the X Files. I didn't watch it
Speaker 1: when it was out, And then when I moved to
Speaker 1: New Jersey they started doing reruns and Justin I was
Speaker 1: living at the time, was like you never watched X Files.
Speaker 1: It 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
Speaker 1: art it's Jose Chunks from outer Space. I remember where, Like,
Speaker 1: could 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,
Speaker 1: done so. Um, we're talking cockroaches here and apparently also
Speaker 1: Jessie the Body Ventura. Um, did you know, Chuck? The
Speaker 1: cockroaches are extremely clean insects. Well always said the same
Speaker 1: thing about vultures. They are personally clean. Apparently they do
Speaker 1: track a lot of germs spread disease. They apparently leave
Speaker 1: a trail of fecal material everywhere they go because it's
Speaker 1: like 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 a fatty secretion or some
Speaker 1: sort of secretion that if they don't clean it off,
Speaker 1: we'll block their antenna from sensing things. So they constantly
Speaker 1: clean their antenna. But apparent only they also cleaned their
Speaker 1: feet and everything. And I read about a study. It
Speaker 1: was just pretty almost anecdotal. It was so outside of
Speaker 1: the scientific method. But um, they took a swab from
Speaker 1: a guy's hands who hadn't washed his hands for two hours,
Speaker 1: and they took a swab off of the foot or tarsus,
Speaker 1: i should say, of a cockroach who had been walking
Speaker 1: through garbage. And then two hours later they took a
Speaker 1: swab and um, they put it in culture and the
Speaker 1: guy grew way more bacteria than the cockroaches culture did
Speaker 1: I don't care, which means that that man is dirt
Speaker 1: year than a cockroach. They proved it. I would still
Speaker 1: smash the cockroach with my flip flop. See, I don't
Speaker 1: believe there's a there's a sect out there, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's Hinduism or Jainism. It's one of
Speaker 1: those two where the the monks of this sect um
Speaker 1: carry little brooms hand brooms to kind of brush everything
Speaker 1: off wherever they sit so they don't accidentally kill even
Speaker 1: the tiniest Think that's great, and I kind of agree
Speaker 1: with that. I think everything is a right to life. Now,
Speaker 1: you have been on record on this very show talking
Speaker 1: about killing cockroaches because the way they skitter. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: not cockroaches. I am down with killing mosquitoes and ticks. No,
Speaker 1: you talked about the cockroaches. I don't kill cockroaches. You
Speaker 1: talked very much about how fast they are and how
Speaker 1: they skitter and how that freaks you out. I don't
Speaker 1: kill them. No, I don't kill roaches. I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: like I defy you to find the time stamp. All right,
Speaker 1: somebody please help me. Okay, Um, I will kill the
Speaker 1: crap out of a mosquito, a cockroach, and um I
Speaker 1: will generally shoe a fly. Now, I'll kill flies. I
Speaker 1: generally won't kill a fly because they're not a big problem.
Speaker 1: But you don't have flies around you all the time now,
Speaker 1: But mosquitoes and cockroaches I will kill. And that's about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything else right to life. Cockroaches, you must die. So
Speaker 1: cockroaches are Um, I guess they understand that Chuck wants
Speaker 1: them to die. Many people do. They're very disliked, right,
Speaker 1: which has possibly accounted for them evolving to be really
Speaker 1: difficult to kill. For one, they're nocturnal, so they're hiding
Speaker 1: away from us when we're up because we're diurnal, which
Speaker 1: is the opposite of nocturnal. Yeah. Um, they have sensors,
Speaker 1: little sensors in there. Um, we'll get to that spoiler.
Speaker 1: They run really fast, they do. They reproduce extremely quickly.
Speaker 1: And there's more than four thousand species of cockroach. So
Speaker 1: you would think the whole rule would be infested with cockroaches,
Speaker 1: but not true. It's actually mainly just one species, the
Speaker 1: German cockroach, that is uh accountable for most infestations in
Speaker 1: homes around the world. That's right. That is one of
Speaker 1: the four main species that you might see, the German,
Speaker 1: The American a k. A. Palmetto bug, which are they
Speaker 1: can get big. Oh yeah, man creepy. There's one man
Speaker 1: that like in South America. It's like as big as
Speaker 1: your hand, six inches launch one foot wing diameters. The
Speaker 1: brown banded cocka roach and the Oriental cocka roach um
Speaker 1: are the four that you're likely to come across in
Speaker 1: your life. And the German cockroach an American are the
Speaker 1: ones you're gonna see here in the United States. And
Speaker 1: they have been brought here by you because they get
Speaker 1: that you know, they're not obviously gonna fly from continent.
Speaker 1: In the continent, they hit trides on airplanes and boats
Speaker 1: and getting chipping containers and in your mouth, moving boxes
Speaker 1: and ghosery bags, and they are ubiquitous, and they, like
Speaker 1: all insects, are most insects, they do a service. Most
Speaker 1: of them are going to be out in the woods
Speaker 1: like chewing stuff and pooping it out and being a
Speaker 1: part of the ecosystem. Um. But it's the ones in
Speaker 1: the home that really freaked people out right. And Chuck,
Speaker 1: I think one of the more fascinating things. And by
Speaker 1: the way, Rod just turned out to be pretty fascinating,
Speaker 1: even more than I expect him. I just thought there
Speaker 1: were a few things that were fascinating where you creeped out,
Speaker 1: like reading this or do so it's not like that
Speaker 1: you just hate them, Yeah, I mean there, it's like
Speaker 1: you previously talked about that you deny it's The way
Speaker 1: they move and how fast they are is what creeps
Speaker 1: me out. And like, there's no greater fear than laying
Speaker 1: in bed and seeing one on the ceiling above you,
Speaker 1: just waiting for it to fall into your mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but apparently they are pretty good at not falling off
Speaker 1: of the ceiling. That's true. Um, And they've had a
Speaker 1: long time to practice this kind of stuff. They've been
Speaker 1: around for about three twenty million years, longer than dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: way longer than dinosats they survived that extinction event they did,
Speaker 1: and well, well let's talk about it, tuck. Just how
Speaker 1: much of an extinction event can a cockroach survive? Can
Speaker 1: they survive a nuclear fallout? A nuclear war that would
Speaker 1: kill all humans? Could a cockroach survive as they are
Speaker 1: rumored to? Uh? Maybe that's sadly, it's like, we don't
Speaker 1: know because that hasn't happened. Not sadly, thankfully that hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: But um, the answer is some people say maybe, some
Speaker 1: people say maybe not. Um. What we definitely know is
Speaker 1: they probably could not survive the nuclear winter because they
Speaker 1: like warm, moist places, right, and the nuclear winter would
Speaker 1: not be good for cockroaches. Apparently, they're less susceptible the
Speaker 1: radiation poisoning and humans are, but more than most insects.
Speaker 1: So as far as insects goes, they might not be
Speaker 1: the best candidate, right, Uh yeah, so maybe, but probably not.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of on that side that they probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: survive a nuclear war, so we're time at radiation though
Speaker 1: not like the blast obviously that would kill everything, you know. Um, alright,
Speaker 1: so they survived the dinosaurs extinction event. They have been
Speaker 1: around 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 This is just their bodies, you don't. And their
Speaker 1: heads point downward, like, as Tracy Wilson, who wrote this
Speaker 1: article points out, almost as if they're built for ramming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or just searching for stuff, you know, it's another way
Speaker 1: to look at it. The males are the ones that
Speaker 1: have wings. Females may have wings, but their vestigial wings
Speaker 1: they can't fly with them. Males can fly not very
Speaker 1: well though, which makes them even more horrific when the
Speaker 1: palmetto bug a big ones flying at your face because
Speaker 1: you know he has no control exactly. Yeah, man, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like the cicada. Like they're I don't think
Speaker 1: their wind wings were made for flying, but if they
Speaker 1: jump off of something high, they can help them a
Speaker 1: little bit uh to glide perhaps and not like hit
Speaker 1: the ground is hard um short distances basically, and their
Speaker 1: their insects, which means that they have three main body regions,
Speaker 1: the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. They have an
Speaker 1: exo skeleton that they mold as they grow, and they
Speaker 1: mold a number of times, depending on the cockroach species,
Speaker 1: over the course of a couple of weeks or over
Speaker 1: the course of a couple of years, and their lifespans
Speaker 1: also are um uh in step with that molting schedule. Um.
Speaker 1: But they cockroache will mold several times over its life
Speaker 1: before it becomes an adult. Yes, and when they molt, um,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing as when they're born. They're gonna
Speaker 1: look white and um that's probably kind of creepy looking.
Speaker 1: I've never seen a molted cockroach like a skinless cockroach
Speaker 1: it's like the Lady and Hell Raiser before she fully
Speaker 1: gets all of her skin, right. Uh, and uh, they're
Speaker 1: they're pretty uptible two injury and death obviously when but
Speaker 1: 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. Uh. They can regrow lost limbs when
Speaker 1: it molts, which is pretty cool, and they can even
Speaker 1: put molting off for a little while in order to
Speaker 1: regrow a lost limb um in their head. Let's go
Speaker 1: over their head. They have eyes and their antenna, which
Speaker 1: we've talked about, which we'll get into more specifically. And
Speaker 1: there Tracy loves saying mouth parts. She writes a lot
Speaker 1: of these articles. Yeah, she she will never just say mouths. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a true mouth apparently, it's yeah, a mouth part. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They do have brains, by the way, and they are.
Speaker 1: The brain is in the head. But the brain is
Speaker 1: not like a human or a mammal brain. It's not
Speaker 1: doing It's like it's not connected to a big central
Speaker 1: nervous system or anything like that. Right, there is a
Speaker 1: central nervous system that it's not in the head. There's
Speaker 1: a h it's some sort of ganglia um that allows
Speaker 1: the roach to continue living for up to a week
Speaker 1: after it loses its head. Yeah, this is a pretty
Speaker 1: good roach fact. Okay, I think, okay, um. So you
Speaker 1: can cut a roach his head off and it will
Speaker 1: live for a week and do all the normal things
Speaker 1: that a roach does for a week, and then when
Speaker 1: it finally dies, it dies because of thirst. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they they actually breathe. They don't breathe through the
Speaker 1: nose and mouth. They breathe through their sides. There's little
Speaker 1: holes in their side called spiricles and trachea tubes deliver
Speaker 1: the oxygen to the organs and tissues through their sides.
Speaker 1: So there's you know, cut off the head and it
Speaker 1: just dies of thirst. Yeah, which is my new favorite game.
Speaker 1: Actually that's not true, because that's like future serial killer stuff.
Speaker 1: It is like you torture cockroaches, and you torture animals,
Speaker 1: and you torture humans. Once you've moved down to the chipmunks,
Speaker 1: it's probably beyond the point of no return. You're a
Speaker 1: bad person. Jeffrey Dahmer orchard animals. He would lay down
Speaker 1: and Uh, like he would come across the dead deer
Speaker 1: in the forest and like lay down with it and
Speaker 1: spoon with it. It's like a Johnny Depp and Dead Man.
Speaker 1: Did he do that? Did the exact same thing? Well,
Speaker 1: maybe he was a serial killer. I don't think he was.
Speaker 1: He was a killer, but not a serial killer. That
Speaker 1: just shows how messed up Dahmer was that man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to like that was a connection to him was like
Speaker 1: holding this dead animal, all right, like the cockroaches. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's the head. Yeah, let's talk about their eyes.
Speaker 1: Their eyes are compound eyes. Um so they see the
Speaker 1: world in a mosaic like a fly. Like a fly,
Speaker 1: all right, So we talked about their eyes. I actually
Speaker 1: asked Tracy today, I was like, you, you wrote a
Speaker 1: bunch of insect articles. Didn't you ever get sick about
Speaker 1: talking about the head, the abdomen, the thorax, mouthparts, the legs.
Speaker 1: They're all the same for insections, No they're not. They
Speaker 1: all have these they're all the same, but they all
Speaker 1: have different little adaptations that make them different. I was like,
Speaker 1: how did you not get tired of it? She said,
Speaker 1: she was fascinated the whole time. She said, san x
Speaker 1: that's trable. Nit, that's tracy of stuff you miss in
Speaker 1: history class, by the way, plug plug. Um. So we
Speaker 1: talked about the antenna. They are movable and they are
Speaker 1: known as antennal flagella, and uh, they're actually tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: little hair covered segments and like it's it's thicker where
Speaker 1: it attaches at the head, and it gets thinner and
Speaker 1: thinner and thinner until it's just like a human hair
Speaker 1: almost at the end. And these things since, um, they
Speaker 1: smell sort of right, Yeah, they basically I guess, uh
Speaker 1: sense pheromones. Yeah, the there you have it. They sense pheromones,
Speaker 1: they pick up odors. I think they they're pretty finally
Speaker 1: attuned to the environment. Yeah, but that's like really how
Speaker 1: they're getting around, right, Like, even though they have eyes,
Speaker 1: isn't the antenna really the secret? I believe? So okay, um, chuck,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about mouthparts? Yes, Um, they are
Speaker 1: a lot different than mammals, as Tracy points out, Um,
Speaker 1: but they do have parts that sort of are akin
Speaker 1: to how mammals mouths work. For instance, there's a laborum
Speaker 1: and labium and they form the lips right uh, mandibles,
Speaker 1: there's two of those and they cut and grind things
Speaker 1: like your teeth might, which is very important because roaches
Speaker 1: eat literally anything. Yeah, and sometimes that's like wood and
Speaker 1: other stuff like they shouldn't be able to eat, but
Speaker 1: they can. It's right, go ahead, thanks to the mandibles
Speaker 1: and some other things that we'll get to. And then
Speaker 1: they have to stop. And then there's a couple of
Speaker 1: maxilla and they basically manipulate the food chewing. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: a squirrel, yeah, squirrels arms or hands, yeah, or a
Speaker 1: dung beetle. Yeah. The thorax, which is one of the
Speaker 1: body parts that one of the three pieces of the
Speaker 1: body um and that has the three pairs of legs
Speaker 1: and the wings, and the legs are so named after
Speaker 1: the part of the thorax that they're attached to. Right,
Speaker 1: So you get the pro, the mezzo, and the meta.
Speaker 1: So the pro is closest to the head. Mezzo middle Yeah,
Speaker 1: the pro or like the brakes apparently and the yeah,
Speaker 1: the pro Yeah, that's the just do stopping. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: middle ones can make the roach go forward or backward.
Speaker 1: And then so that's the mesothoracic legs. Then the metathoracic legs.
Speaker 1: The ones in the rear are the ones that propel
Speaker 1: the roach forward. And here's another good roach fact. Do
Speaker 1: you take this one? Man, is awesome. Uh. They can
Speaker 1: move about fifty body links in a second, which is
Speaker 1: up to three miles an hour. Sounds very slow to us,
Speaker 1: but think about this in roach terms. That's right. If
Speaker 1: that were a human being, Uh, that would mean we
Speaker 1: would be running two hundred miles an hour. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why they look so fast. It's because they are. They
Speaker 1: are fast. Now, like to us, three miles an hour
Speaker 1: is not that much but very slow walk. That equals
Speaker 1: two hundred miles an hour in reality for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and part two of that roach fact, which I think
Speaker 1: is just horrifying. When a roach runs really really fast,
Speaker 1: sometimes it it gets air and just is basically running
Speaker 1: on its back legs only, but the front the other
Speaker 1: legs are still moving. So that's just like my worst nightmare.
Speaker 1: They're then after you, exactly, man. So they the three
Speaker 1: pairs are all built the exact same. They all have
Speaker 1: the same parts, but they are different lengths. They function
Speaker 1: slightly differently. Um, but they all moved the same way.
Speaker 1: It just depends on, you know, what the roach wants
Speaker 1: to do. Like we said, the pro thorastic legs active breaks.
Speaker 1: The mesothorastic um can move it forward or back, and
Speaker 1: then the meta push it forward and they apparently move
Speaker 1: like poco sticks and then back and forth too, and
Speaker 1: they work in conjunction to allow the roach to kind
Speaker 1: of walk over just about anything. So um, when the
Speaker 1: the pro and meta thoracic legs on one side are moving,
Speaker 1: the mesothoractic leg the middle one on the other side
Speaker 1: is moving, so that's how they move, which apparently it's
Speaker 1: like a four by four yea uh. She also points
Speaker 1: out that there are um the parts of the leg
Speaker 1: you can sort of approximate as if it were a human.
Speaker 1: They have a trick canter that's like our knees uh.
Speaker 1: Femur and tibia um resemble arthai and shins, and then
Speaker 1: they have the tarsus which is the ankle and foot
Speaker 1: right and the tarsus is hooked in a roach, which
Speaker 1: 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. If three
Speaker 1: 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. Uh,
Speaker 1: twenty seven times per second. These legs can move back
Speaker 1: and forth. So these are fast little boogers, which is
Speaker 1: why you previously talked about hating them because they were
Speaker 1: so fast. I really I don't I'm gonna find it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll bet I didn't say i'd kill him. I've long
Speaker 1: advocated for road to his rights. All right, So now
Speaker 1: we're the abdomen um. They do have a heart. It
Speaker 1: is a too black 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 a the a
Speaker 1: word to carries blood around to the organs. But yeah,
Speaker 1: she says, the blood just travels through these spaces essentially,
Speaker 1: and then rather than having to worry about like a
Speaker 1: spare tire or something like that. I like a fat belly, right,
Speaker 1: They have a actual fat body, and it's just this
Speaker 1: little 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 it is gross and it's equal
Speaker 1: to like a an octopus having a beak, crushing beak.
Speaker 1: They're squishy, they're not supposed to have a hard beak
Speaker 1: in the middle. It's crazy. Yeah, it's called a probe
Speaker 1: and triculus on the roach and that just pulverizes the
Speaker 1: stuff like wood or whatever it's tough to digest, and
Speaker 1: then and then it pushes it back. This this pulverized
Speaker 1: part to the gastric cassilla, which houses enzymes, microbes, things
Speaker 1: that break it down even further. And all this is
Speaker 1: just the preliminary stuff. This is like what we do
Speaker 1: in our mouth. Um. All this is going through this
Speaker 1: process in a roach before it even gets to the
Speaker 1: part where it starts to digest. This this is sort
Speaker 1: of gross, like the digestion when was we haven't said
Speaker 1: the word bolus yet, Well, we just did. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then the searcy that we talked about earlier. These are
Speaker 1: the uh. It sort of looks like short little antenna
Speaker 1: sticking out from the butt area on each side. And
Speaker 1: this is what allows the roach to not get Like
Speaker 1: whenever you go to get that flip flop and you
Speaker 1: rare back and go to hit the roach and as
Speaker 1: you're coming it, it just like it could darts out
Speaker 1: of the way. You're like, how did it know? How
Speaker 1: did it know? It's because the searcy they pick up
Speaker 1: on air flow and they can actually feel and since
Speaker 1: that shoe coming, so if you're if you're unto killing
Speaker 1: roaches like me, you have to be swift and and stealthy,
Speaker 1: come at it hard and with vigor and with a
Speaker 1: I guess a paddle that has holes in it down air? Hey?
Speaker 1: Maybe so drag you might be honest something there. Oh no,
Speaker 1: you invented sharknado. So the roach paddle? Um? So, I guess,
Speaker 1: so that's a roach. That's the roach's body. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about reproduction, because they do reproduce depending on the species. Um.
Speaker 1: I believe the German roach uh can produce something in
Speaker 1: the order of like eighty thou offspring? Is that correct? No?
Speaker 1: Way more than that. The German produces. The German cockroach
Speaker 1: and it's offspring will eventually produce about three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: per year. So a mother and her her kids, yeah,
Speaker 1: like that, the family tree from that one cockroach will
Speaker 1: eventually number three hundred thousand in a year. Right, But
Speaker 1: think about this, Then one of those kids and then
Speaker 1: her offspring will be another three hundred thousand. Now I
Speaker 1: think that counts. I think that's the whole Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: then one of those three hundred thousand, we'll have more
Speaker 1: kids and another three hundred thousands. It goes exponentially kicks
Speaker 1: in somewhere. Exponentiality kicks in at some point. Yeah, an
Speaker 1: American cockroaches only produce about eight hundred babies a year.
Speaker 1: So I got something from Believe It or Not. The
Speaker 1: orcan website has a lot of really good scientific information
Speaker 1: that uh did you go and look at it? Uh?
Speaker 1: And they talked about female courtship. Um, they begin courtship,
Speaker 1: it says, by raising their wings and exposing their internal
Speaker 1: membranes and expanding their genital chamber. Hey, boys, check out
Speaker 1: my internal membrane exactly. My genital chamber is wide open
Speaker 1: and ready. I'm gonna release a pheromone. Hey man, this
Speaker 1: is science. This is science. They released the pheromones to
Speaker 1: attract males, and um, that's the calling position. And then
Speaker 1: the males that that pick up on these pheromones approached
Speaker 1: the female, they flap their wings a little bit to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I like what you got cooking there, and then mating commences.
Speaker 1: It says when a male cockroach backs into a female
Speaker 1: cockroach and deposits sperm so little, a little like you know,
Speaker 1: it's from the rear to the rear. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, let's go back to reproduction. Yeah, we used
Speaker 1: to be really good at stuff like this. And by
Speaker 1: the way, wasps, well, actually this is just a side note.
Speaker 1: Wasps will actually sting cockroaches and lay eggs inside of
Speaker 1: a cockroach. Like baby Wasps can be borne out of
Speaker 1: a cockroach body. Right, They incubate in the roach and
Speaker 1: I guess probably eat it alive from the inside out.
Speaker 1: There's a movie. I'm just gonna start saying that about everything.
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of ways that a mother roach,
Speaker 1: once her eggs are fertilized, can produce offspring um and
Speaker 1: a couple of them involves something with one of the
Speaker 1: worst words ever in my opinion, the oothica. Oh th
Speaker 1: h e c a. Yeah, the otha. You've never been
Speaker 1: to outhca. It's nice. I prefer oothica UPSTATEA. So that's
Speaker 1: basically just like an egg sac that the eggs develop in,
Speaker 1: and it can either be inside the mom which makes
Speaker 1: her oh vove of a Paris ovovie of a 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 say 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 a 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 and in ovovivi Paris and ovivi Paris.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry viviparis. Yeah you confused yet imagine following along
Speaker 1: with just your ears. I'm looking at words. So it helps, Um,
Speaker 1: the eggs are born or the young come out live. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they actually give birth to little baby cockroaches. So, like
Speaker 1: we said, the German cockroach can produce three hundred thousand offspring.
Speaker 1: The German cockroach and her offspring can produce three thousand
Speaker 1: cockroaches in a year. Um, and the Americans it's not many.
Speaker 1: And we talked about nymphs. Apparently the nymph when it's
Speaker 1: born is fleck of dust size maybe very very small. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of them, don't forget. Yeah, so uh,
Speaker 1: and they're white, they're waiting to molt. They're very um.
Speaker 1: Easy to kill. Yes, and if you're a common centipede,
Speaker 1: you love to eat these things. Imagine seeing that on
Speaker 1: a microscopic level, centipede eating baby cockroaches. There's a movie
Speaker 1: for you. Um. Also, here's another good roach fact is
Speaker 1: some mothers that care for their offspring after birth. Some
Speaker 1: of them just you know, either dump the utica or
Speaker 1: they just have the babies and leave, but some actually
Speaker 1: raise their little babies, and scientists believe that they the
Speaker 1: offspring actually recognized the mother. Yeah, I don't understand why
Speaker 1: that's so hard to believe. Well, because it's an insect. Man,
Speaker 1: it just seems like a very mammalion. They're not even ammalion.
Speaker 1: Just like it doesn't seem like something from the insect
Speaker 1: world like gives them a heart that I previously didn't believe.
Speaker 1: I know, I know up with cockroaches, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It just puts a face on them that I never
Speaker 1: really considered as I smashed them, because you can't see
Speaker 1: their face. That's right, um, And cockroaches, if you want
Speaker 1: to make them a little more um humanlike a little
Speaker 1: more personable, getting that the little hat and a cane
Speaker 1: their social Oh yeah, they're they're not they're they're related
Speaker 1: to termites, it turns out. And actually, I've read a
Speaker 1: fascinating fact. I read one of the best magazine articles
Speaker 1: I've ever read in my life, and I've read a
Speaker 1: lot of magazine articles in the most recent issue I
Speaker 1: believe it was of Harper's and it's about ten Ways
Speaker 1: to Satisfy your Man. No, it's early. It's an article
Speaker 1: about the early mycologists who discovered westerners, i should say,
Speaker 1: who discovered making air quotes like magic mushrooms, and in
Speaker 1: between that time and the time they became outlawed, and
Speaker 1: then what happened after they became outlawed, and how they
Speaker 1: are all these outlaw like fungal experts who all had
Speaker 1: like PhDs and doctorates, but we're also like, might as
Speaker 1: well have just been bikers growing these huge crops of mushrooms. Um,
Speaker 1: and there's a murder involved in all that. But there's
Speaker 1: this it's an awesome article. Check it out. But um,
Speaker 1: there's this one fact in there that there's a type
Speaker 1: of fungus that has evolved to mimic termite eggs so
Speaker 1: perfectly that it can fool the termite into thinking it's
Speaker 1: her own eggs and termites um salivate on their eggs,
Speaker 1: they keep them moist constantly. Um, and this fungus needs
Speaker 1: to be kept moist, so it'll be kept moist by
Speaker 1: a termite that thinks this fungus is one of her eggs.
Speaker 1: Does that fungus then later on kill the termite? Probably? Okay,
Speaker 1: because that would be I believe that's irony, even though
Speaker 1: we've been told we misused that bird. Thanks for the ride, lady, um, Wow,
Speaker 1: we should do one of termites. Okay? Well I say
Speaker 1: that because apparently road eggs need to be kept moist
Speaker 1: as well. Yes they do. I don't know do they
Speaker 1: regurgitate on them to do so? Them? Well, another way
Speaker 1: they're 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 small this number
Speaker 1: of spaces. They can go like, well, there's two hundred
Speaker 1: of us, so let's divide up into three groups and
Speaker 1: go to three different places and you go, you guys
Speaker 1: go there, We'll go there, and we'll go here, right,
Speaker 1: and there's always one dude cockroach out. It's like, what
Speaker 1: about me? It would be a Pixar movie. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good one. Um. They're they're also social and that
Speaker 1: they follow one another, although not necessarily a leader, but
Speaker 1: I guess whoever they think has the best idea. That's
Speaker 1: a collective conscious. Yes. And there was a group of
Speaker 1: scientists that created something called in Spot and it is
Speaker 1: a robotic cockroach and they coated it with cockroach pheromones
Speaker 1: and introduced it to a colony of roaches that accepted it,
Speaker 1: and then they started to mess with the roaches. Of course,
Speaker 1: they had um in spot lead them out into daylight
Speaker 1: so that they abandoned their nocturnality. Um, they would wander
Speaker 1: out in the open following this thing. He got him
Speaker 1: to move um and he brought them fire. Oh really, man,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is getting good. That reminds me
Speaker 1: of 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, another 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. Well,
Speaker 1: you just like hit a button and like two hundred
Speaker 1: of them dust your television and then go back to
Speaker 1: their little places. Pretty neat. It's like scrubbing bubbles, yeah,
Speaker 1: or like the X Files when it when across the TV. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everys wasn't cleaning anything though. What's scrubbing bubbles? It's like
Speaker 1: a type of cleaner it is. Yeah, all right, is
Speaker 1: that a plug? I don't think so. Okay, it was
Speaker 1: just a free association, all right. So let's get to
Speaker 1: let's say you're like me and not like Josh, and
Speaker 1: you don't want roaches in your home. I don't want
Speaker 1: roaches in my home. It's just when I see a roach,
Speaker 1: I will I will gingerly pick it up with a
Speaker 1: paper towel and toss it outside. I'm sure that doesn't
Speaker 1: injured at all. It doesn't, okay, No, no, I don't
Speaker 1: squeeze 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 roaches,
Speaker 1: even though you know you have roaches, Um, then you
Speaker 1: need to move your trap. And when you move your
Speaker 1: trap and start of tracking roaches, then you can tell
Speaker 1: where they're coming from. Then you can seal up those cracks.
Speaker 1: That's right. You you come to know the roaches using
Speaker 1: the traps with a spray, it's just like you're just
Speaker 1: spraying blindly. Can we do one in fleas or just ticks?
Speaker 1: Just ticks? We need to do fleas too because I
Speaker 1: have bad please. Um. They say, don't use like, don't
Speaker 1: waste your money on those sound devices. They say that
Speaker 1: don't work that emit like some like sound that only
Speaker 1: a roach can hear. Um. You want to keep your
Speaker 1: 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 what this paragraph reminds me of about you. Lop
Speaker 1: up after every meal exactly, clean and seal all of
Speaker 1: your food, or cover and seal it. Wipe down counters
Speaker 1: 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 afterwards to clean
Speaker 1: out any crumbs that may have dropped out of your mouth. Yeah. 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 talec 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. Here.
Speaker 1: Um A sineole sine ala um also known as eucalyptole,
Speaker 1: and that is in bay leaf and then ossage orange
Speaker 1: oil and they don't know what in that is the
Speaker 1: magic potion, but apparently that works. So if you're into
Speaker 1: natural you could try some of those things. Just put
Speaker 1: bay leaves and cat and up all over the place.
Speaker 1: See what happens in orange oil, and you'll never have
Speaker 1: a roach again. Or you can just clean up your house.
Speaker 1: I don't see many roaches. It's good. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: surprised with the amount of moisture and how all my
Speaker 1: house is. How like the fact that I eat all
Speaker 1: over my house and spill things everywhere, you know, garbage
Speaker 1: laying around, it's like gum stick to your FLOORI yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't see roaches much. When I do, I
Speaker 1: have my friend in the foot flop I'm sure you do,
Speaker 1: and coming soon the roach paddle. Yeah, I see. I
Speaker 1: don't feel as bad because, especially after I saw those
Speaker 1: reproductive figures, 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. I'm sorry to tell. With
Speaker 1: their brains since smashed on the bottom of your 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. This is from an Englishman who went up
Speaker 1: a hill and came down a mount. 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 eye,
Speaker 1: Because that stinging sensation and the resulting fevered knuckling of
Speaker 1: the optic cavity for is for a short time, the
Speaker 1: only thing in the universe. So while it's slaying in
Speaker 1: the bathtub with the reflected sunlight sparkling through the red
Speaker 1: tint of my closed eyes, contemplating this phenomena, I decided
Speaker 1: to run my own experiment. I want to know which
Speaker 1: of these all powerful sensations would eclipse the other. So
Speaker 1: I got a nice big chunk of soap on one
Speaker 1: finger and simultaneously rubbed it vigorously into my eye and
Speaker 1: 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: share this information with the world. However, no one else
Speaker 1: will ever have to suffer this hitherto undocumented facet of reality, right,
Speaker 1: because they're going through that kind regards James Holmes, not
Speaker 1: the maniac version. Did he say that? Erneth he the
Speaker 1: signature that was parenthetical? Yeah, from Manchester, England. So James,
Speaker 1: I don't know why you do such a thing, sir,
Speaker 1: but I raised a pint to you, okay 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 an equals one, there's just one person yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know about sniffing water and putting soup 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. Cockrade
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 for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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