how smart are cockroaches?


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Since I moved into the new place, I've seen a few roaches here and there in the kitchen. There is however one in my room that hides behind my desk. It is the only one that has its wings spread out, so I know it is the same one. (the only one in the room) It comes out at night when I am typing and I have tried to squish him a couple of times, but it was too fast. Eventually I stopped trying and watched him run around. Then, it appeared to be testing me. It would come out and wait for me to squish it, but I didn't do anything. A few days later, it came out and stood up on its legs. I didn't know roaches could do that, but maybe 2 days later from there, it crawled onto my hand while I was typing. So I decided to keep it, put out a crumb or 2 and a wet napkin, I've seen it eat and drink from there. Today it reached out again to try to get to my hand. How long do they live?

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We had some in our apartment. We tried using traps, sprays, and exterminators. With the exterminators they would just crawl out to the other floors or rooms of the apartments and later return. Once they even turned completely white but never died out.

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They can survive a nuke and a massive asteroid, however they will die if you stomp on them ;)

Strange huh? Check it out on wikipedia. I also heard about this on the Discovery Channel.

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I think I want to keep this one, put it in one of those plastic bug pet cases. i don't want my cats to eat him because they've been catching a whole mess of them. i was wondering how intelligent they were, since this one stands up and tries to reach for my fingers. if i see it again, i'll capture it with my webcam and you'll see it, pretty funny stuff.

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Since I moved into the new place, I've seen a few roaches here and there in the kitchen. There is however one in my room that hides behind my desk. It is the only one that has its wings spread out, so I know it is the same one. (the only one in the room) It comes out at night when I am typing and I have tried to squish him a couple of times, but it was too fast. Eventually I stopped trying and watched him run around. Then, it appeared to be testing me. It would come out and wait for me to squish it, but I didn't do anything. A few days later, it came out and stood up on its legs. I didn't know roaches could do that, but maybe 2 days later from there, it crawled onto my hand while I was typing. So I decided to keep it, put out a crumb or 2 and a wet napkin, I've seen it eat and drink from there. Today it reached out again to try to get to my hand. How long do they live?

Do NOT try to squash any of them. If you squash any that have egg sacks then you will creat a few hundred more.

If any of them have their wings open, it indicates they are secure in your house (cant remember the right word im looking for). This means they are happy and are nesting, which means more problems are on their way (like hundreds more roaches).

Cant they survive a Nuke? Or... is that the only thing that can kill them? :p

Yes they can, but only because the sacks will rpotect the unborn and for each on roach there are probably a hundred more somewhere near by.

Roaches also carry illnesses and desease and in the UK it is the law that you must have them sorted if you find them in your residence. If you dont, then you can be sued along with being ill.

You must stay very clean as they will contamiate food by walking over it and *****ing in it. So keep all food products secured away.

If you start to see any in your room as you have that indicates a much larger scale problem which i would suggest you get sorted.

If you can get it (you cant in the UK unless your a professional, but may be different else where in the world), try Golliath. Its a brown baite which you place a small ammount of in every crack and corner you can see. This attracts the roaches, they eat the bait, go back to the nest and die and the other roaches eat them. The other roaches subsiquently die and thats the end of it.

In worse cases you will need to have people come in and seal windows etc and then leave roach bombs laying around.

Roaches can adapt to their surroundings very quickly. Although there is no proof of this, i personally feel they are able to communicate with humans on a higher level and what you are seeing of this roach is the same as what i have seen before. However as they are blind and only pick up on feel and vibrations, i doubt it is true... Probably just the mind playing tricks as they are strange little things.

They also talk to each other by a way called "Sateliting" this means they use their antennai to contact their clan so to speak. I suppose it is possible they could be kind of phsycic using these antennai.

I know all this as i HAD a roach issue in my flat a while back and researched them as well as spoke to the roach control people about them etc.

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Cant they survive a Nuke? Or... is that the only thing that can kill them? :p

They can survive a nuke and a massive asteroid, however they will die if you stomp on them ;)

Strange huh? Check it out on wikipedia. I also heard about this on the Discovery Channel.

Well, they can survive the gamma radiation from a nuclear explosion - not a direct hit. You drop a 10kT atom bomb, any cockroach within a good few kilometres will be vapourised.

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shhh, typo ;)

Ah ok. Sorry mate, didnt want to seem like i was being ignorrant etc.

In answer to your question... Yes they will, however they will return to the nest after eating the poison and die. The others eat the body and they too die, until there are none left.

What you ahve to remember also is that, there are unborns. So you may stop seeing them for a while, then the nymphs are born and come out, so its only when they are born and eat the bait that you truely kill the nest.

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They're not smart at all. But seeing that it would not let you stand on it, but you let it stand on you -- I'd say it's smarter than you.

HAHAHA good point

I've never had any encounters with cockroaches.

We used to have pet rats and people were like WTF???? but they are extremely clean creatures. It is the fleas that they may catch that spread the plague etc. I'm not sure if it's the same case with roaches??

I didn't even realize we got them in the uk?? :pinch:

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If you can get it (you cant in the UK unless your a professional, but may be different else where in the world), try Golliath. Its a brown baite which you place a small ammount of in every crack and corner you can see. This attracts the roaches, they eat the bait, go back to the nest and die and the other roaches eat them. The other roaches subsiquently die and thats the end of it.

I will swear by this Golliath stuff. In my first apartment, we had some roaches that like to come around. Our land lord called in an exterminator and we thought we would have to pack things up and leave for a copule days while they roach bombed the place. Nope, they used what looked like a caulk gun and put that brown paste (which hardens pretty quickly) in cracks around the kitchen cupboards and in the bathrooms (I guess roaches like wet areas). On the first day our roach count was down from like 2 - 3 sightings a day to 1. By day 3, we never saw another roach again....we lived there for 2 years and never saw another roach.

BTW....I would never let one come near me. I don't mind bugs, but I can't stand roaches. I would get the problem cleared up or you may be swimming in them soon.

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