Advanced Search International Search. Cockroaches A Guide to Identifying Common Types of Cockroaches Long despised by homeowners, the cockroach is more than just a creepy nuisance pest that can survive freezing temperatures and a week without its head. However, you can also use this guide to help determine which type of cockroach has become an unwelcome houseguest if you suspect or discover an infestation: Types of Cockroaches American Cockroach Appearance : American cockroaches are reddish brown with a yellowish figure 8 pattern on the back of their head.
This species is the largest of the house-infesting roaches. Region : This species is located throughout United States and worldwide. Habitat : American cockroaches are often found in sewers and basements, particularly around pipes and drains. They will also congregate in kitchens, bathrooms and laundry rooms in search of water and food. Unique Facts : They are active when the temperature is 70 degrees or higher, but they can survive lower temperatures with the right conditions.
Brown-banded Cockroach Appearance : Brown-banded cockroaches are brown with pronounced banding across their wings. Region : This species first entered the U. Habitat : Within a room, brown-banded cockroaches tend to prefer warmer, drier, and higher locations than any of the other urban pest roaches. They can be found in kitchen cabinets and bathrooms, as well as behind picture frames. This species often hides its egg cases in or underneath furniture.
Unique Facts : This species gets its name from the two light brown bands that appear across their dark brownish bodies. The male's wings are larger than the female's wings. German Cockroach Appearance : German cockroaches are light brown to tan with two dark stripes located on their backs.
They are oval shaped with six legs and antennae. They are smaller than the other 6 types of cockroaches, only growing between mm in length. These cockroaches are much faster and smaller than the other 6 types, making them harder to detect. Where will I find german cockroaches in my home? These cockroaches like dark and humid spaces like kitchen and bathroom drains, crevices, and air ducts.
What are the signs of a german cockroach infestation? The most common signs of an infestation are droppings small, dark spots or smears , egg capsules, and a musty odour — the more cockroaches they are, the worse the smell! What are the risks of a german cockroach infestation? German cockroaches can spread bacteria and trigger allergies and asthma, but they also have the ability to contaminate and infect food with an odorous body discharge — gross!
Scientific Name: Periplaneta americana What do american cockroaches look like? Hold onto your hats for this one, american cockroaches are the largest of the 6, growing up to 53 mm long! Where will I find american cockroaches in my home? These cockroaches prefer warm, dark, and humid spaces but will survive in dry areas if they have access to water. They prefer basements, bathrooms, crawl spaces, kitchens, laundry rooms, cracks and crevices.
What are the signs of an american cockroach infestation? The first possible sign of an american cockroach infestation is a sighting. These cockroaches are very active, fast, and may even fly! More signs include reddish to dark brown egg capsules, droppings, and a musty odour. What are the risks of an american cockroach infestation?
Similar to the australian cockroach, they can carry bacteria such as salmonella and e. If they infest in large enough numbers they give off an odour. Scientific Name: Supella longipalpa What do brown banded cockroaches look like? Brown banded cockroaches are the smallest of the 6 mentioned, only growing between 11 to These invasive roaches have a light to dark brown body with lighter tan or transparent wings that stretch across their body.
Where will I find brown banded cockroaches in my home? These roaches are primarily nocturnal and love to be dry and warm. They usually enter homes for shelter. There they sit, about a dozen of them: bloated, shining, and the colour of slick sewage, the glass of their enclosure stained with faeces and regurgitate. Their antennae waggle as they slowly mull about the confines of their glass enclosure. I can hear them; the gentle scratch, scratch, scratch of their spiny feet.
I can feel it in the hairs on my arms, in the racy beat of my heart and slight shortness of breath. The hissing cockroach Thinkstock. Finally, the moment to confront those monsters has arrived.
Pereira pulls the American cockroaches off their place on the shelf and gently deposits them on the counter before me. Pereira, meanwhile, is all giggles.
Then, she moves to remove the lid. The reek of their existence fills the small room, and I crinkle my nose while craning my neck toward the jar. Nestled within protective folds of cardboard, several large roaches wave back to me with their antennae. In one swift motion, Pereira snatches the cardboard shelter from the jar, seamlessly transferring it to another empty container and banging it against the walls.
The roaches tumble forth from their hideout, scattering around the glass enclosure in startled confusion. Eventually, they all grow still. I extend a trembling hand, and she drops a fat specimen it into my open palm. Pereira gently takes the roach and returns it to its slumbering friends. Me holding a cockroach in my own personal hell Later, I send a photo of myself holding the roach to my boyfriend. Only a fellow phobic would understand. Glove or no glove, I held a cockroach, and I survived.
Cause for alarm One early morning during my teenage years, I groggily got out of bed and reached for a box of cookie leftovers on my bedroom floor. I took a big bite, and — while chewing — casually noticed a large chunk of chocolate icing was still in the box.
It was a tremendous American cockroach. A roach that had, for all I know, dredged itself in raw sewage and rotting meat, not to mention toting along its own natural garden of microbial terror. I spewed out my mouthful, splattering my white and pink flower-patterned wallpaper with dark streaks of chocolate-infused spittle. Those stains never did come out. People have long suspected that cockroaches are mechanical transmitters of disease — they walk through rot and faeces and filth and then deposit those germs onto other surfaces.
Several years ago, however, Koehler and one of his students helped prove that cockroaches could at least plausibly transmit harmful bacteria. Bacteria such as salmonella and E. Bacteria can also survive a trip through a cockroach gut, so faeces scattered throughout a kitchen or home are like little land mines of potential disease. Spreading disease, however, likely is not their biggest impact on our health.
Proteins found in cockroach faeces, regurgitates, skin and body parts are potent allergens for many people, as proven when entomologists often become acutely allergic to their research subjects. Likewise, some people who seem to be allergic to coffee or chocolate are actually just aversely reacting to ground up cockroach parts sprinkled into those products. People breathe in whiffs of cockroaches on the subway and in restaurants, on the bus and in the street.
For many, especially those who live in large apartment buildings with inadequate pest control, their homes are also perfumed with these invisible allergens. Are roaches causing higher rates of childhood asthma? Children are the most impacted victims of cockroach allergies, which have also been associated with asthma attacks. The distribution of asthma is not at all even across New York. He and his colleagues travel to homes across the city and vacuum up dust samples in kitchens and beds.
In his white, sterile lab, he analyses the contents of those vials for cockroach parts. There are surely other factors, but Perzanowski has found that kids who live in neighbourhoods with higher rates of asthma are about twice as likely to be allergic to roaches. Roaches, in other words, are more than just a source of irrational fear. They may be making us unwell. The question is, what can we do about it? The coming war I douse the roach in a stream of Raid, taking perverse pleasure in its dance of death.
Try as it might, the roach can no longer get a grip on the plaster wall. It topples backward, antennae flailing, wings unfolding, running in frenzied figure-of-eights as if searching for a way out.
But it will find no respite from the neurotoxin. Minutes later, it has bucked itself onto its back, its abdomen curled into itself, the closest a roach could come to a foetal position. Life occasionally reasserts itself with a deceptive spasm of the legs, but I know this roach is toast. Naively, we thought we could stop them. Back in the s, we assumed the war was won when bait traps hit the market.
After decades of inefficient home treatments, we had finally developed a method that seemed to completely devastate the enemy. The hoards were pushed back, the cockroach problem all but eliminated.
We humans became complacent. Assuming the problem had been taken care of, fewer entomologists dedicated their studies to roaches, and funding for roach-related research and poisons shifted to other pests, like bedbugs. But that success will likely be short-lived.
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