Mutant cockroaches. Secrets and speculation about albino white cockroaches: where did they come from, what is it all about, are they dangerous to humans. Relate to strong allergens

Good day!

I'm ashamed to admit it, but cockroaches settled in my apartment and getting them out turned out to be a huge problem.

In fact, I haven’t seen cockroaches for so long that I even began to believe that the earth had become unattractive for them, and they all flew away together to their planet.

But no, it turns out they exist and feel great, and in my apartment.

Ahhh, I hate the neighbors who brought them to our house and bred them to unknown hordes (the house is 3 years old). Well, okay, breed for your health, I love cats and dogs, and the neighbors apparently love insects, but as soon as the neighbors started repairs, all their beloved Stasiks ran to me in a friendly crowd.

Seeing this miracle of nature, at first I screamed and fought in hysterics, not believing my eyes, and then I had to pull myself together and begin to destroy the enemy.

First of all, I sealed all the hoods, well, like everything, everything that is freely available, I even had to disassemble the hood in the kitchen, but I couldn’t get close to the hood in the bathroom, well, I’ll sort out the flow and seal all the holes.

What I just haven’t tried, and Mashenka’s chalk is an absolutely useless remedy, and a gel for killing cockroaches both in a syringe and in a tube, and the well-known dichlorvos, as well as dichlorvos with the scent of lavender - it smells of a lie far from flowers.

I've already blown half my gold reserves on cockroach remedies!

Once again I went to the hardware store in search of a gun in order to destroy these unearthly creatures and came across system for the complete elimination of insects.

The system costs so much that cockroaches, just by sight, should fall asleep forever, not only in my place, but also in the whole house, as well as near adjacent houses.

Price 370 rubles.

Everything is decently packaged expensive creams do not always have such packaging, the box is packed in a film all in promising inscriptions that the product will not only save you from cockroaches, but also make all ants fall into an eternal coma, if there are any in the house.

The box contains a tube of gel, supposedly long-acting and 4 traps, the traps are additionally packed in a sealed bag.

I ran home and, with a malicious laugh, scattered the traps all over the kitchen, threw one into the bath, smeared everything that I could with the gel, but you can smear not much at all, the tube is small.

And she began to wait for the Stasiki to eat up some sweets and start to run out and fall upside down with their paws. I waited a day, two, three, it even seemed to me that there were a little less cockroaches, although I did not find a single corpse.

But it wasn’t there, one fine day, I met hordes of cockroaches, and at their head was a mutant cockroach of an absolutely white color, they looked at me and moved their nasty mustaches and did not even think of running away.

The fact that cockroaches, although there are fewer, but they are there and feel great.

I would like to give the tool a huge O, but in comparison with other means, I put the tool as much as 3 stars, since there really are much fewer cockroaches.

It remains to hope and believe that the neighbors will finish the repair and their beloved pets will gladly return to them.

Hypotheses refuted by scientists:

• White insects are mutated under the influence of high doses of radiation, insects that emit gamma rays. They are indeed capable of acquiring mutations, but this will require a powerful radioactive source, which is impossible to encounter in a human dwelling.
• They are representatives of albinos- the rarest individuals who are congenitally absent pigmentation. If this were true, then the likelihood of meeting them would be negligible.
• Albino is not at all, but new insect unknown to science. Agree, it is naive to believe that a representative of a new species could hide from systematic scientists developing new taxonomic units.
• The lack of pigment in a white cockroach is a consequence of a lifestyle in secluded dark places. The theory has been criticized due to the fact that the relationship between exposure to light and the color intensity of the cockroach was not found.

Interesting! Some chlorine-containing insecticides can temporarily inhibit pigment synthesis in animals. This may be the cause of a temporary blanching of the color of the poisoned insect.

In fact, an albino is a nymph that has just shed a small chitinous scale, and not a new species of cockroach.

White individuals are less common than others for two reasons:

• the chitinous cover is colorless for a short time: after 4-6 hours the pigment gives it a light brown color;
• during molting, insects are vulnerable, so they hide in secluded places where they will not be taken by surprise.

As a result of molting, a young, colorless chitinous cover is formed in the larva under the old shell. Pigment formation contributes to its hardening and begins a few hours after the scale is shed.

The last molt transforms the nymph into an adult, which in the first hours of life is also devoid of color. Soon the pigment accumulates, and the insect takes on its usual form.

A photo

Consider a photo of white cockroaches and make sure that these are not some kind of mutants or a new type of insect:

Differences from the rest

insect have all the qualities. Neither remarkable survival, nor gluttony, nor danger to people, they became famous. On the contrary, during the “colorless” period of life, the insect is most vulnerable due to the fragility of the newly formed protective shell.

Albinos, like other individuals, live next door to humans, but due to vulnerability they choose secluded places:

• gaps under the bathroom, furniture;
• defects in the walls, between the skirting boards;
• cellars.

More often than an adult, a white nymph is found, taken for a new type of insect and frightening with an unusual color and lack of wings.

Interesting! Now it is clear why the color intensity of cockroaches varies so much: the more time has passed since the last change of the old shell, the darker the color of the chitinous cover.

What harm do they do?

They are carriers infections of the gastrointestinal tract.

The entire body of the insect is covered with small villi that act as a tactile organ. Tens of thousands of pathogenic bacteria, fungi, protozoa and helminth eggs can settle on the villi.

The average domestic cockroach is a carrier of:

• dysenteric amoeba;
• salmonella;
• pathogenic cocci;
• Koch sticks;
• meningococci;
• roundworm;
• pinworms

Visiting garbage chutes and sewers (especially), he collects pathogens of enteritis, colitis, acute intestinal infections, meningitis that enter the human body after swallowing a piece of food with which the insect has come into contact.

Relate to strong allergens

Along with pet hair and plant pollen, they are powerful allergens.

Enough contact with dust particles that came into contact with the allergen in order to be able to develop:

• any type of immediate allergic reaction (contact dermatitis, conjunctivitis, urticaria, allergic rhinitis);
• exacerbation of bronchial asthma and the onset of the disease in children.

Interesting! A man presented to a hospital in Taiwan with a foreign body sensation in his nose, allergic rhinitis, lacrimation, and conjunctivitis. a live cockroach was removed from a man, which, according to the patient, was in the nasal cavity for 3 days.

Can it bite a person?

There is an opinion that a cockroach is capable of

In the late 90s, it was very fashionable for filmmakers and science fiction writers to scare readers and viewers with images of killer cockroaches or mutant cockroaches. Suffice it to recall the creepy, but rather funny (if you still understand who the cockroaches are) the film "Mutants" in 1997 or an episode from the "Kaleidoscope of Horrors" - "They crawl over you" ...

Horror, sci-fi and comics have always used the image of a certain mutant cockroach - a predatory, unrealistically huge insect that has grown to such sizes thanks to radiation, experiments of a mad scientist or something else. At some point, all the "movement" with this paranoia died out and the cockroaches left the screens of cinemas, but disappeared from the profile literature. Only terrifying legends continue to periodically add up about mutated individuals. Yes, yes, once a year we are definitely called to 🙂

Mutant cockroaches: do they exist?

But everything mutant cockroaches(in the traditional view) is a myth, as well as the fruit of the inflamed imagination of science fiction lovers or a very impressionable person. Often, and in fact out of ignorance, “mutants” are also called those types of cockroaches that, by their nature, are larger or faster than those familiar to us. But let's do it in order, otherwise not all of you are professional exterminators or experienced entomologists?

Let's start with a little about mutations.

Yes, they are. No matter how strange it may sound, but mutant cockroaches exist for themselves. Only, of course, not in that cinematic image of a huge carnivorous predator that has absorbed too much radiation and is now attacking people from an ambush. Modern mutant cockroaches are individuals that have managed to partially change and adapt to life in the realities of a new climate / conditions. In some individuals, wings have disappeared, body color has changed, or another layer has grown on the shell. Most often, all external changes are minimal and have nothing to do with size.

Also, mutations can occur due to the fact that we use various chemicals on constantly adapting cockroach species. To them or, to some of their species, individuals gradually develop resistance, gaining immunity and protection. Gradually, there may be too many records of poison, from which cockroaches will change their habits, and sometimes their lifestyle. Serious mutations of the species, most often, take a very long time and are unlikely to be established in any non-scientific order. Given the selectivity of mutations, they are often simply not identified, it is almost unrealistic.

Are the big ones mutant cockroaches?

Of course not. big cockroaches, up to 70 mm long, are ordinary representatives of the species. Or, in extreme cases, it may turn out to be ordinary American cockroaches, also quite impressive in size when compared with our “Russian” red and black ones. These cockroaches, in the sense of Madagascar and American cockroaches, do not live in our latitudes.

Madagascar hissing cockroach

american cockroach

The American cockroach is much smaller than the Madagascar cockroach, but it looks much more impressive than the species that live in our country and in our latitudes. And this scoundrel is also not an overgrown mutant.

Whites are mutant cockroaches?

And pass again. White cockroaches, or as they are also called "albinos", get their outlandish and obviously abnormal color not because they mutated and are now changing. The thing is that with age, the cockroach sheds its shell, in fact, just shedding. Updated, with a body that has not yet grown strong, he looks so strange. Although in fact, this is a completely natural process.

Scientists have long argued about the reasons for the appearance of such an insect as a white cockroach. At one time it was even considered as a manifestation of a single case of albinism in the insect world. However, information began to come in about the mass accumulation of such insects, which gave food for new myths and conjectures. Consider them all and try to reveal the truth, based on proven facts and logically reasoning.

Speculation about the causes of the appearance of white cockroaches

Noticing a strange cockroach with an unusual color, people get scared, assuming that a mutant has wound up in their house - an evil monster that will eat their supplies, things, and themselves in the end. However, time passes, and the white cockroach does not manifest itself in any way, as if it never existed, so that the witnesses themselves begin to doubt its existence. And the assumptions expressed by them at one time continue to live their lives, acquiring every year with more and more details and shocking facts.

So, here are the main assumptions associated with the appearance of an insect with a white color in city apartments:

1. This is a mutated insect that has lost its natural coloration under the influence of harmful ecology, which has changed it at the gene level.
2. This is a new species of insects, unknown to science.
3. White color is a manifestation of albinism, which often occurs spontaneously in different animal species.
4. Coloration is absent in insects that have been in the dark for a long time.

At first glance, all these conjectures are not without meaning, but there are facts that deny the possibility of their implementation.

Facts that debunk the speculation about white cockroaches

So, let's consider the real facts regarding the causes of the appearance of white cockroaches in the order of the rumors presented above.

Mutation

There are facts proving the simultaneous existence of two or more unusual cockroaches within the same apartment. At the same time, a mutation occurring within a single species is such a rare phenomenon that it would hardly have become possible in several insects in one colony at once.

In addition, if environmental conditions are so pathogenic that they can change one of the oldest insects that has retained its appearance since the time of the dinosaurs, then in the first place they would affect the more vulnerable human body.

unknown species

The world of insects is so well studied that meeting a previously undescribed species is as unrealistic as finding an alien in the attic of your house. Yes, and cockroaches rarely get along with their own kind. Among related species, competition occurs, the cause of which is food and fodder lands.

Studies have also shown the identity of insects of supposedly different species, with the exception of their color. If you overcome disgust, then with a detailed examination of an unusual cockroach, you can notice a clear resemblance to the usual inhabitant of apartments - the Prusak.

Albinism gene

The albino cockroach is a myth that has also not been confirmed. Insects are known to science, in the color of which melanin is partially absent, which is responsible for the color of their skins, but the well-established fact of the complete absence of pigment in cockroaches has not yet been recorded in any country in the world.

The albinism gene is often found in mammals and birds. Breeders use this phenomenon to develop new decorative breeds of pets. However, no one has yet been able to get an albino cockroach.

Reclusive cockroaches

Regarding the lack of "sunburn" in reclusive cockroaches, only one thing can be said - this is pure nonsense, since then the color would be absent in the entire colony, and not in a single insect. If cockroaches living in the same room with a white individual are brown, then there are no reasons for the appearance of an albino, since living conditions are the same for everyone.

The "untanned" insect feeds just like the rest, running out of its shelters only at night. The sun is out at this time of day. So there is absolutely no reason to believe that their brown and cockroaches owe our luminary.

White cockroaches - who are they?

This answer explains the reason for the appearance of several white cockroaches within the same apartment. Since the development of larvae from one clutch proceeds in the same way, which is due to similar conditions of existence, then they will molt at the same time, thereby giving rise to myths about an allegedly new species of cockroaches.

Sometimes the reason for the change in the color of the outer covers of insects may be the frequent treatment of the premises with chemicals. For example, such a reaction can be caused by chlorine, a rather toxic substance that causes discoloration of the chitinous cover. However, such a "etched" individual is easy to calculate by its painful appearance, since the poison has its effect on all organs of the cockroach, eventually leading to its death.

Myths about white cockroaches

The townsfolk tend to exaggerate the facts, so on the basis of idle gossip, whole myths arose regarding unusual albinos. So, white cockroaches - what kind of insects are they? Are they dangerous, and if so, why?

Myths about white cockroaches:

1. The white cockroach is dangerous to humans, as it is an extremely contagious insect. This is complete nonsense! The larva does not become any more dangerous because she shed her skin. Not only that, insects tend to hide during this period of their lives, as its soft skin makes them vulnerable to any kind of external influence.
2. They are radioactive, as they arose under the influence of radioactive irradiation. This myth also has no justification, since we have already found out that mutant cockroaches do not exist.
3. They grow to gigantic proportions, posing a threat to residents. This fact has not been recorded either.

How people react to white cockroaches can be seen in this interview:

1. Where cockroaches usually hide in an apartment and what you need to know about their "nests";
2. Are there so-called sewer cockroaches and what to do if they suddenly appeared in the entrance of the house;
3. Where cockroaches can live in the kitchen and how to remove these insects from microwaves and other household appliances;
4. What to do if cockroaches climb from neighbors;
5. Are there mutant cockroaches in the home?

…and other interesting points.

Imagine a typical situation: you are sure that your apartment is in full order, cleanliness and comfort are maintained. And do not even imagine that cockroaches are already hiding somewhere in this very cleanliness - the fiends of garbage and unsanitary conditions.

But then one night you find such a pest on the kitchen table, in a bathtub cleaned to a shine, or just on the floor in the hallway. Usually, at the same time, residents are puzzled by the question: how is it, where did the cockroaches suddenly come from, because the apartment is almost perfectly clean! And if this runaway cockroach is not the only one, then where are the rest hiding? ..

Let us immediately reassure you: this situation is quite typical, and thousands of people in various parts of our country are puzzled by similar questions. For some of them, the apartment does not at all resemble the standard of cleanliness, while for someone it is quite suitable for a photo shoot in a fashion magazine, however, cockroaches appear here and there, scare the owners with themselves and, most importantly, worsen the general sanitary situation in the house (because they are potential carriers of pathogens).

The less often the apartment is cleaned and the more food waste accumulates in it, the easier it is for cockroaches to survive. However, these insects are also able to populate well-cleaned premises: the main thing here is that they maintain the conditions necessary for cockroaches to live. And given that there are not many such conditions, almost everyone can expect to meet pests in their home.

All cockroaches need is:

• water - in the sink, toilet, bathtub, glass on the table or even its remains in a flower pot. Having access to water sources is the main condition for the survival of cockroaches in an apartment.(and this is often used in practice to get rid of pests);
• any foodstuffs within easy reach, such as breadcrumbs, fruits and vegetables, groceries, burnt-on pieces of food on the stove or in the microwave. Cockroaches will not disdain wallpaper glue, splashes of oil behind the stove and even soap;
• the temperature in the apartment is above 15 ° C all year round - cockroaches do not live in colder rooms;
• the presence of secluded places where you can hide and wait out the daylight hours - for example, these can be spaces under cabinets, bedside tables and other furniture, closets with randomly piled things, the back of the stove and refrigerator. Cockroaches also like to hide in various household appliances (we will talk about this in more detail below).

In practice, the situation is often as follows: cockroaches can find food and shelter almost anywhere, and the availability of accessible sources of water becomes a critical factor in their survival.

It is interesting

Experiments show that the glue on a postage stamp is enough for a cockroach to eat for about one month. Be sure: in your house, such a mustachioed neighbor will find something to profit from.

At the same time, with an acute shortage of water, cockroaches can make up for its lack with the help of a person - there are cases when these insects gnawed the wet epithelium from the lips of sleeping people. Young children are especially vulnerable in this respect.

Another risk factor for the sudden appearance of pests in an apartment is the ability of cockroaches to easily enter the premises, for example, from neighbors. From places where they breed in large numbers, some individuals sooner or later “resettle” due to the growing overpopulation in the population.

Where cockroach scouts find suitable conditions, insects “take root” and actively multiply, colonizing a room that was previously uninhabited by them. Especially known for this are the so-called sewer cockroaches, which in the warm season crawl out of the sewers not only in apartments and houses, but sometimes even just along the streets of cities.

If there is such a nursery near an apartment or house where cockroaches hide in abundance, then getting rid of them in a single room can be very problematic: here you need to either securely isolate the room (which is usually not possible in practice), or fully armed to meet scouts, fighting them on your own, or contact the appropriate authorities and complain about the insect breeding center near you.

Remember: cockroaches in the entrance are the main candidates for the speedy settlement of your apartment. If you simply take their presence on the stairwell or near the garbage chute as a matter of course, do not go anywhere and do not fight on your own, then with a high probability you can expect that most apartments in a multi-storey building will soon be infected and will simply become breeding grounds for new hordes of cockroaches.

See also our experiments on cockroaches:

We catch cockroaches and test different means on them - see the results...

The photo below shows cockroaches on the wall in the entrance of a multi-storey building:

On a note

Each district of large cities of our country has its own district SES. If cockroaches climb from neighbors or from the entrance, then first of all you need to call the SES. And they will already tell you what to do next: wait for the inspector, call private services, or get rid of it on your own.

At the same time, keep in mind that the Sanitary and Epidemiological Station is a state structure, and while its partly bureaucratic mechanism is cranked out, it is easier to call a private pest control service, or still negotiate with neighbors on your own.

Optimal hiding places for cockroaches in an apartment

Insects usually breed in the largest numbers behind kitchen furniture and large household appliances (refrigerator, dishwasher, stove), since no one disturbs them here, and it’s “just a stone’s throw” before the sink with water and the bin with food. The abundance of food, access to water, and the heat generated by technology form an ideal habitat for cockroaches in such places.

For example, sometimes residents are horrified when, during pest control work (or just during repairs), they move furniture and literally hundreds of fattened cockroaches and their larvae are found just behind the furniture. In some apartments, insects, for example, behind the refrigerator, are able to form an almost continuous swarming "carpet". Here, on the floor, there are an abundance of chitinous covers of cockroaches remaining after molting, dry shells of cockroach eggs (ootek) and black dots of excrement.

Examples of such shelters are shown in the photographs below:

Meanwhile, if you are going to remove cockroaches, you need to remember that they come to the watering hole only in those places where there is water available to them - in sinks and bathtubs. This means that it is better to place traps and poisons here, and not just somewhere near the refrigerator or stove.

On a note

Actually, cockroaches do not have a nest - they simply gather in the most secluded places, sometimes forming significant clusters. Therefore, sometimes it may seem that such a cluster of them, which usually looks like a rather dirty and very unsightly place, is a real nest. However, strictly speaking, this is not a nest, since cockroaches have no organization.

However, this does not mean that it is not worth looking for a “cockroach nest”: if you find the main places of accumulation of these pests, then it can be much easier to deal with them.

The photo shows what a large cluster of cockroaches looks like in an apartment:

In some cases, the apartment of less prosperous neighbors can become the main source of cockroach infestation in your clean and well-kept home. Usually, it is the houses of alcoholics that have not been cleaned for years or, no matter how bitter it is to realize, the apartments of lonely and infirm elderly people who are no longer able to maintain cleanliness and order, are real farms for growing these insects.

It is from here, from the neighbors, that cockroaches sometimes climb in whole hordes into the nearest apartments, eventually settling on all floors. Therefore, if you do not want to meet insects in your room, then conduct explanatory conversations and educational work with your neighbors, and if necessary, involve SES. Remember: if you don’t complain anywhere and don’t take action, then you will be provided with cockroaches for many years to come.

It is interesting

The main habitat of cockroaches in nature is leaf litter in tropical rainforests. Here, insects swarm sometimes in huge numbers in close proximity to the main source of food - rotting vegetation and falling fruits.

In higher latitudes, cockroaches also live in forests, but here their habitat is replaced by meadows and ruins of stones, and in South Africa - mountain slopes. In any case, cockroaches come from places with an abundance of vegetation and frequent rainfall, which is why they are so dependent on water.

Unusual hiding places

Do not forget that in addition to the "standard" shelters, cockroaches can sometimes also hide in the most unexpected places:

What to do if cockroaches have chosen one of these (or some even more unusual) places in your apartment? Of course, it is necessary to remove insects from these shelters, but sometimes this also has to be done in different ways.

For example, you can get cockroaches out of the microwave by turning off the device from the network and plugging one of its technological holes at the back with cotton wool moistened with ammonia (a 10% pharmacy solution will do). If some cockroaches hide in the block with electronics, then they will leave the microwave rather quickly from the smell of ammonia. However, you should be prepared that after weathering the ammonia, pests can again climb inside in search of food and shelter.

Do not try to drive cockroaches out of the microwave with the help of powerful insecticides - in this case, it will not take long to poison yourself.

It is interesting

Cockroaches love the smell of wood and stay near wooden objects whenever possible. Therefore, people often report to the SES that they found a cockroach nest at home in a cage with sawdust where a hamster lives, or in an old plywood mailbox.

Finally, in the southern regions of our country, as well as in Central Asia and Ukraine, cockroaches can live normally in the summer on the streets of cities and even in the fields around villages. Black cockroaches in exceptional cases can even hibernate in nature.

Sewer cockroaches: do they exist?

In almost any city, cockroaches inhabit sewer systems. And the reasons for this are quite obvious: there is enough food (do not ask what kind) and water, high humidity and a more or less comfortable temperature for them.

It is not surprising that insects often climb into houses through the sewer system and crawl out through sinks and bathtubs into apartments. And such people from the sewerage clearly do not improve the sanitary situation in the room ...

Sewer cockroaches are no different from "ordinary" apartment cockroaches. In our country, these are ordinary Prussians and black cockroaches; in Europe, American cockroaches are also added to these species.

In an apartment or house, they cannot be distinguished from insects that constantly live behind the nightstand or under the sink. One can only assume that the cockroaches found in the bathroom or toilet could have come from neighbors, or could have recently crawled out of the sewer.

On a note

In many newspaper news from around the world, there are regular reports of invasions of sewer cockroaches in large and seemingly prosperous cities. Naples, Paris, Istanbul, San Francisco, Moscow are faced with such a cockroach epidemic with enviable regularity. There is nothing surprising in this: in some years, the number of cockroaches in the sewers is growing at a particularly rapid pace. In the summer, they crawl out to the surface and look for suitable places to settle. And the townspeople, accustomed to cleanliness, begin to panic and cut off the phones of the Sanitary and Epidemiological Stations.

You can get rid of sewer cockroaches in the same ways that are used to combat any other cockroaches: treating the room with insecticidal preparations, setting traps and poisoned baits, and preventing insects from entering the room. All these actions can be performed either by the apartment owners themselves, or these tasks can be entrusted to professional exterminators.

Sewer mutant cockroaches - fact or fiction?

But mutant cockroaches, which are fashionable today to talk on forums or make journal notes, are nothing more than fiction. All currently known reports about mutant cockroaches are easily refuted not even by a specialist biologist, but by a simple enthusiastic young naturalist.

So, for example, reports of the appearance of cockroaches with gills in the basements of houses, which have adapted to the aquatic environment in the sewers, appeared after the discovery of ordinary aquatic swimming beetles in bathrooms by several residents of Ukrainian cities. As they say, fear has big eyes, and people want to become victims of "mutants" without fail.

Here is a photo of a red cockroach:

And here is a photo of a swimming beetle:

On a note

There is nothing surprising in the fact that a cockroach climbs out of the toilet or from the pipe in the bathroom. These insects swim well, and when completely immersed in water, they can survive for a long time. In laboratory experiments, individual red cockroaches came to life after being underwater for an hour, so traveling through the sewers for such a Spartan will not be stressful at all. Therefore, by the way, it is worth remembering that if you flush a cockroach into the toilet, it will simply move down the sewer pipe and almost certainly will not die, but will only find a new habitat for itself with an abundance of food and water.

The situation is similar with white cockroaches, which people always meet in their homes, but which, at the suggestion of the media, began to talk in some places as mutated monsters. A white cockroach is not a mutant, but just a very recently molted individual that has shed its colored chitinous cover and has not yet had time to form a new one (see example in the photo).

In general, talking about mutant cockroaches is not entirely correct: it takes millions of years for the appearance of any serious functional mutation and its fixation in the insect population (especially when it comes to, for example, the development of the aforementioned gills) - this is much more than in this world There is sewerage and water supply. In this regard, it would be very naive to believe that the sewer system in your home is so unique that cockroaches in it are undergoing such major evolutionary changes in just a few years.

However, changes imperceptible to the human eye in the body of cockroaches still gradually occur - for example, under the influence of chemicals. It's no secret that for many years of stubborn struggle between man and this insect, the latter has adapted (some will say - mutated) to survive even when poisoned by some insecticidal agent: that is why the industry offers us more and more new, more advanced drugs.

On a note

By the way, the talk that cockroaches will be the only living creatures that will survive a nuclear war is also naive. This is another myth. Cockroaches are indeed more resistant to short-term exposure to radiation than humans, but prolonged fallout of radiation is just as detrimental to them as to all living things. Cockroaches are no different in their "anti-nuclear" properties from other insects, and in the event of a corresponding cataclysm they will die out at about the same rate as, for example, flies or ants.

Cockroaches are not in the apartment: where else can these insects meet in the city

It is logical to assume that if conditions suitable for the life of cockroaches are maintained in some place outside the immediate habitation of a person, then insects will be able to live there as well. Let us recall at least cockroaches in the entrance and in heating mains throughout the city.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, cockroaches in the city hide in a huge number of places.

1. Warehouses for food products and imported products. Here, by the way, among the bunches of bananas and boxes of oranges, you can even meet representatives of exotic species that came to us from across the ocean.
2. Supermarkets and their warehouses. Despite the certificates received from the SES, almost every such room gives shelter to a huge number of cockroaches. And in some places, insects even manage to seep into the trading floors and frighten buyers with their appearance.
3. Underground. Indeed, the climatic conditions here more or less meet the requirements of cockroaches, especially at the stations. In the subway, garbage accumulates in abundance, which can become a food source for picky insects. Not surprisingly, cockroaches in the subway are, in general, not uncommon.
4. Kitchens of restaurants and cafes. Yes, yes, absolute cleanliness in such establishments is observed only in the halls for guests. What happens in the kitchen and who hides there among the pots is hidden behind well-closed doors.
5. Greenhouses in which cockroaches simply bliss in warmth, high humidity and an abundance of normal natural food for them.

This list can be continued for a long time: attics and basements, markets, MAFs, greenhouses, food industry enterprises, canteens of schools and universities - wherever there is food and heat is maintained, sooner or later cockroaches can start. And talk about the fact that cockroaches have left cities lately seems to be as much a myth as the belief that these insects will survive a nuclear winter.

On a note

If you find yourself in Egypt, Jordan or Israel and want to experience the thrill - walk through the backyards in the tourist districts in the early morning, when the owners open cafes and sweep out cockroaches that have been poisoned at night. Here you can meet both marble cockroaches, and American ones, and even rarer ones, and in such quantities that it is just right to ask the question: who eats more in this cafe - tourists or insects ...

So do not be alarmed if you suddenly meet a red-haired, mustachioed friend in your favorite supermarket or in a cozy cafe. Even with a careful approach to maintaining order, the owners of the establishment are not always able to prevent insects from entering it.

Ordinary citizens should remember that cockroaches most often get into the house from neighbors or from the entrance, and hide here in the most unexpected places. And if meetings with these pests become too frequent, then you need to contact the pest control services, or start an independent fight.

Interesting video: another hot news about “mutant cockroaches”…