Have you ever gone to the kitchen for a midnight snack and flipped on the light, only to discover 10 zillion cockroaches running for cover? Those little hard-shelled guys are everywhere. Why? They’re survivors.
DIE HARD
Cockroaches can live in practically all climates and temperatures. They can live for a month without food and a week without water. And they can hold their breath for 40 minutes. Here are some more amazing facts about these amazing creatures:
• They’re old. Cockroaches have been around longer than almost every living creature on Earth. They were here even before the dinosaurs. They are one of the most adaptable creatures on Earth.
• They’ll eat anything. Cockroaches are perfectly at home in your kitchen—they love your food. But if you don’t have any food, they’ll eat the grease off your stove, the paint from your wall, and the wiring in your TV. They’ll eat soap. They’ll eat paper. They’ll even eat the sweat out of your sneakers. Yum!
• They’re sneaky. Cockroaches can go practically anywhere. They can flatten themselves as thin as a piece of paper and slip through tiny cracks. They have an oily coating that helps to make them extra slippery.
• They’re big. There are more than 3,500 kinds of cockroaches in the world. They come in all shapes and sizes. The Oriental cockroach is about an inch long and is shiny black. The Australian giant burrowing cockroach is about the size of an adult finger. But the biggest cockroach of all is the giant hissing cockroach from Madagascar. It’s about four inches (10 cm) long. (Yes, it really hisses!)
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• They can fly. Sorry, but it’s true. The brown-banded cockroach is one kind that flies. Another is the Cuban cockroach (it’s green). Good news: the giant hissing cockroach doesn’t fly.
• They outnumber us. Cockroaches mostly live in caves or under logs, but there are some that really like living with people. They especially like big cities. And they love big families. Put two German cockroaches (a male and female) together in your kitchen cupboard, and within a year you’ll have 50,000 cockroaches.
• They don’t have a brain! A cockroach’s entire nervous system is in its main body, which means it has very little of what you would call a brain. That’s why—are you ready for this—a cockroach can live for 10 days without its head!
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