Cockroaches

Of all hated members of the insect family, cockroaches seem to have the worst reputation.

To us they are symbols of dirt and disease and their scuttling little legs give everyone the shivers.
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Contrary to popular belief, cockroaches do not carry disease in themselves
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Although they can aggravate allergies and worsen asthma.
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They may have gained such a bad name because of their favourite places to hang out:
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Anywhere fairly warm and wet, such as sewers, toilets and rubbish dumps
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Where they can pick up germs and spread them around in their tracks.
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In fact, cockroaches are one of the most successful and tough pests on Earth
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They have been around for 250 million years and even outlived the dinosaurs.
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They are thought to be able to resist 15 times the level of radiation that a human being can
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So they would probably be the only survivors of a nuclear war on Earth.
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They do not need much food, either, being able to live on just one meal a month.
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One of cockroaches’ favourite pastimes is to make more cockroaches.
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A female roach can lay an egg at the age of one month
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Then another for every month of her life thereafter — and every egg contains 40 babies.
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Each baby makes another 40, and so on.
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It is estimated that in one year, a single cockroach can be responsible for producing up to a million new cockroaches.
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There are about 4,000 species of cockroach but 99 per cent of those live outdoors and are not household pests.
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Watch out, though, for the biggest species in the world, the Australian Rhinoceros cockroach, which is up to 9cm in length.
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And is it really true that cockroaches can survive without a head?
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Yes — a cockroach will live for a number of weeks after decapitation, before starving to death.
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The severed head survives for several hours.
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The cockroach is also the fastest insect on the planet.
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Michael Carroll  - Times