Roach Problem

Roach Problem (2004)

From Yucky -- "Amazing Roach Facts":

Some female cockroaches mate once and are pregnant for the rest of their lives.

A cockroach can live a week without its head. The roach only dies because without a mouth, it can't drink water and dies of thirst.

Young cockroaches need only a crack as thin as a dime (about .5mm wide) to crawl into. Adult males can squeeze into a space of 1.6mm or the thickness of a quarter. Pregnant females need the most space to hide: 4.5mm or a space as tall as two stacked nickels.

Crushed cockroaches can be applied to a stinging wound to help relieve the pain.

Roaches use their feelers, or antennae, as noses. Their sense of smell is so great, they recognize family and friends by their distinctive odors.

Male cockroaches transfer sperm to females in a "gift-wrapped" package called a spermatophore. Some males cover the package in a protein-rich wrapping that the female can eat to obtain nutrients to raise her young.

From the Detroit News -- "Headway Made in War on Roaches":

In the long and seemingly futile quest to build a better roach trap, researchers have identified the come-hither chemical of the female German cockroach and produced a synthetic version that makes males come running in fewer than nine seconds.

The search for the sex pheromone has been a top priority for cockroach scientists, but it has been an arduous process because the compound is emitted in very small quantities and is so fragile that it easily degrades during laboratory analysis.

The synthetic version appears to work at least as well as the original, giving scientists hope that they might be able to shift the balance of power in the age-old contest between humans and cockroaches -- creatures widely believed capable of surviving nuclear war.

Ah, but don't count the roaches out just yet. It seems they are capable of doing some investigations of their own. From hackcanada.com:

Robo-Roach Undercover

Cybernetically enhanced bugs have become a reality meaning that humanity may have more to worry about than the threat of AI-style robots taking over the world. Japanese boffins at Tokyo University are developing a 'robo-roach' remote controlled insect that could be used to carry a miniature camera and microphone.

It would not be to make very small documentaries or make its own cockroach karoake either; robo-roach could be used in any number of environments ranging from searching through rubble for disaster victims to acting as a tiny spy in espionage missions.

Cockroaches make the ideal agent because they cannot be shot, poisoned or bribed and would be the only life form likely to survive a nuclear war.

[...]

The pulse-emitting backpack sends signals to the host cockroach through electrodes, causing it to turn left, right, run forward or back. Apparently there is no 'scuttle under the fridge' function.

Although the control technology is accurate to a certain degree, sensitive robo-roaches have been known to leap off the tabletop after receiving a control signal, possibly in a bid to end it all.

And speaking of vermin that shun the light, there's this analogy from Democratic Underground:

Tom DeLay is not a likeable man. Some part of him has always known this, it seems, and has avoided the spotlight the way a cockroach or a beetle will, less out of a conscious sense of self preservation than because to operate in shadows and dark places is part of the creature's fundamental nature.

And, adding a little more light, from American Politics Journal -- "The Truth about Insects" by Jeff Koopersmith:

Dr. Dean foretold that once he was installed in the White House, an outpouring of new Democratic voters would also give that party a majority in Congress once again, hurtling spine-chilling Texas mess-about Tom DeLay, the Republican leader who was once a bug control guy, "back to exterminating cockroaches -- where he belongs."

To my knowledge Dean has not uttered a mea culpa about that one.

Dean did apologize, however, for an additional remarkable truth that he uttered the day before the DeLay cockroach observation. He told supporters that when he was elected Congress would be "scurrying for shelter, just like a giant flashlight on a bunch of cockroaches."

Later, Dean remarked: "That was a bad line. I shouldn't have said that."

Wrong. He should have said it -- and more.

[...]

If it looks like a roach, walks like a roach, and talks like a roach...

Let's turn all the lights in the House on -- on Delay, on the Downing Street Documents, on the lying liars coming out of the walls and claiming false ties to 9/11 and Iraq, on all the deceptive fixed policies that have spread moral filth and cultural stench and political rot. It's time to fumigate -- and crush some cockroaches to directly relieve our nation's "stinging wounds."

Remember -- roaches writhe and twitch the most when they are being directly sprayed with Raid.