Blattodeology (YES, COCKROACHES) with Dominic Evangelista

Summary

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Ologies with Alie Ward

Episode: Blattodeology (YES, COCKROACHES) with Dominic Evangelista
Guest: Dr. Dominic Evangelista, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Release Date: October 15, 2025

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Main Theme

"Cockroach, My Beloved":
In this Spooktober-themed deep dive, science humorist Alie Ward confronts one of the most reviled creatures on the planet—the cockroach. Joined by cockroach expert (blattodeologist) Dr. Dominic Evangelista, the episode sets out to challenge disgust and fear, unveiling the surprising diversity, extraordinary biology, parental prowess, and misunderstood reputation of Blattodea. From evolutionary origins and glittering forest dwellers to pest control realities and even medicinal cockroach creams, it’s a jam-packed celebration of one of the planet’s most successful survivors.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Cockroach Basics & Reputation

• Cockroach Diversity: There are about 7,000 described species, likely many more; only 10–20 ever interact with humans as pests. The rest avoid us entirely.
  • "99.904% of cockroaches will never be in your toaster." [05:27]
• Species Most People Know: The American and German cockroaches, neither of which originated where their names suggest.
  • The vast majority live out in tropical rainforests, deserts, grasslands.

2. Evolution and Taxonomy

• Termites Are Cockroaches: Recent science reclassifies termites as highly social cockroaches, not a separate order.
  • "Termites are actually just fancy cockroaches." [06:03]
• Varied Social Structures: Only termites are truly eusocial (queen/king, castes), but other roaches practice subsocial behavior or display parental care.
  • Some cockroach “clans” fare better socially, showing reduced appetite and shyness in isolation (French study "Weight of the Clan," 2009). [07:55]

3. Defining Features

• Luggage Handbags for Eggs: Cockroach mothers create leathery egg cases (ootheca), distinct from the foamy cases mantids produce.
  • "They craft [their egg cases] with their genitals, and they’re stuffed... with their own children." [09:26]
• Hidden Head and Flat Body: Pronotum (shield) covers their head; they evolved for hiding in crevices.
• Sensory Butts (Cerci): Two finger-like appendages sense vibrations/air movement, key for predator evasion.
  • "It’s like you having a nose or eyes right on your hiney." [11:54]

4. Wild Roaches: Superpowers & Habitats

• Olympian Agility: Forest cockroaches are acrobatic, fast, and hard to catch (“American Ninja Warrior” vibes).
• Tiny and Massive:
  • Smallest: About 2 mm, e.g., Attaphila fungicola, which rides leafcutter ants during nuptial flights.
    • “Do they ride them like little ponies?” “I think they do, yeah.” [15:10]
  • Largest: Megaloblatta (hand-sized wingspan), and the Australian burrowing cockroach (closed-fist size). [16:31]

5. Evolution of Wings & Sexual Behavior

• Mystery of Tiny Wings: Many species have short, nubby, even flightless wings—an ongoing area of research.
• Mating Rituals: Elaborate—males use wings to position the female and offer “copulatory gifts” made of uric acid crystals (urine).
  • "Cockroaches are the only animals, other than humans, that give sexual golden showers." [20:38]
• Symbiosis and Superpower: Cockroaches lack conventional urine; their endosymbiotic bacteria recycle uric acids, turning waste into protein.
  • "Cockroaches don’t actually pee... they recycle [urates]." [22:46]

6. Behavioral Ecology & Diet

• Nocturnal/Diurnal Split: Most cockroaches are nocturnal, but colorful species are likely diurnal.
• Diet:
  • Wild cockroaches are primarily detritivores: leaf litter, fungus, some specialize in wood, and cave dwellers may eat guano.
  • Some are even nectar feeders or pollinators. [28:42]
• Indestructible Myths: Pest species persist due to adaptability, hiding, and human environments—eating glue, dead skin, even book bindings.

7. Pest Species and Human Abatement

• Origins: American cockroaches likely from Africa; German cockroaches from Southeast Asia; "oriental cockroaches" are from Crimea.
• Pest Control Tips:
  • Clean up, seal gaps (especially plumbing), run a dehumidifier. Pesticides only kill visible ones; long term, discouraging their survival is most important.
• Damp Living: American cockroaches are water-resistant, can swim, and traverse plumbing.

8. Polarizing Anatomy & Smells

• Genital Architecture: Male genitalia are ornate and asymmetrical (clamps, hooks, spines—artworthy!).
• Odor: Cockroaches release musty, sometimes skunky odors, especially en masse; some act as "skunk roaches".
• Are They Clean? Yes and no—cockroaches groom constantly and their cuticle may have antimicrobials, but pest species pick up filth from their environment.
  • "They're not inherently dirty, but just like anything else that moves around and interacts with its environment, it might pick up some things." [44:21]

9. Cockroaches in Culture and Medicine

• Edibility & Medicine:
  • Roaches are eaten in some cultures (deep-fried), and their creams, teas, and pain patches are used medicinally, especially in China and Latin America.
  • "The whole bit about them not peeing but saving their pee in their bodies makes them seem not that appetizing." [47:12]
• Pop Culture:
  • Joe’s Apartment (movie), La Cucaracha (song), and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis are all referenced—though Dr. Evangelista finds these portrayals inauthentic and American-roach-centric.

10. Parental Skills & Reproduction

• Diverse Births:
  • Some lay eggs in cases, others do live birth; some nymphs pierce mom’s exoskeleton and drink her blood; certain species even secrete “cockroach milk.” [52:29]
  • "That's a dedicated mom." [52:28]
• Parental Care: Subsocial species guard, feed, and even "inoculate" babies via fecal/oral transfers, much like termite relatives.

11. Population & Coexistence

• If You See One…: There are usually more. For German cockroaches: “about 100 more for every one you see.” [53:43]
• Ambassador Roaches:
  • Madagascar hissing cockroaches are calm, easy to handle, and make great ambassador species for exposure therapy and education.

12. Conservation/Ecology

• Crucial Role: Cockroaches are a key biomass in tropical canopies, important prey for birds and lizards, critical for nutrient cycling as detritivores.
  • "Cockroaches as a whole are hugely important to certain ecosystems... the largest proportion of animal biomass in tropical rainforest canopies are cockroaches." [67:03]

13. Why the Disgust? Why Love Them?

• Social conditioning and unpredictability drive fear/disgust, but learning about their diversity and ecological role can shift perspectives.
  • "They are some of the best mothers in the animal kingdom." [60:13]
  • Check Dr. Evangelista’s "roachbrain" iNaturalist for glamor shots of beautiful cockroaches.

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• On Cockroach Reputation:
  "Those 10 species that we might come across in our homes give a bad reputation to all of them." —Dr. Dominic Evangelista [04:08]

• On Sociality:
  "Only termites are what we call eusocial... Other cockroaches, they do have levels of sociality, but not to that highly advanced organized level." —Dr. Dominic Evangelista [07:14]

• On Mating Rituals:
  "Cockroaches are the only animals, other than humans, that give sexual golden showers." —Dr. Dominic Evangelista [20:38]

• On Anatomy:
  "Their genitalia are totally different on the left and the right... complicated three dimensional clamp-like structures." —Dr. Dominic Evangelista [34:51]

• On Pest Survival:
  "We have cockroaches in our building, and this is probably no way to get rid of them... eventually they'll find some kind of food." —Dr. Dominic Evangelista [29:48]

• On Cleanliness:
  "They're constantly grooming themselves. Their antenna, their legs... and have antimicrobial properties on their exoskeleton." —Dr. Dominic Evangelista [43:00]

• On Parental Care:
  "Some of them have small colonies... guarded by a matriarch." —Dr. Dominic Evangelista [07:55]

• On Conservation Guilt:
  "In order to achieve [conservation] I have to kill a lot of cockroaches... it doesn’t feel great." —Dr. Dominic Evangelista [64:42]

• Career Inspiration/Advice:
  "If you want a job, you sometimes can't watch a door and wait for it to open—you gotta cram in through the cracks like a cockroach." —Allie Ward [End]

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Important Timestamps

• What defines a cockroach? [04:32–10:34]
• Termites are cockroaches: [06:01–07:14]
• Cockroach mating/sexual ritual details: [20:18–24:03]
• Wild species (tiny to giant): [14:46–16:59]
• Lab and pest survival stories: [29:29–33:38]
• Cockroach parental care/live birth: [50:18–52:31]
• Cockroaches in pop culture: [54:26–56:20]
• Strategies for learning to love cockroaches: [59:52–61:00]
• Ambassador species (Madagascar hissing cockroach): [62:28–63:17]
• Conservation/ecosystem role: [65:42–67:03]

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Memorable Moments

• Cockroach riding ants like ponies [15:10], complete with a citation and irresistible mental image.
• Cockroach milk and “vampire” nursing—bonus content promised for future episode. [52:31]
• Urine-based mating gifts—a rare example of sexual behavior found in both roaches and giraffes.
• Pain patch anecdote: Allie’s revelation about unknowingly sleeping with cockroach-ingredient pain patches. [48:40–49:17]
• "If you see one roach..."—the classic dread: for many species, if you see one, you may have 100 hidden. [53:05–53:43]

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Summary Table: Cockroach Portrait

| What Most People Think | What’s Actually True | |---------------------------|------------------------------------------------| | Dirty, persistent pests | 99%+ are nowhere near humans, play vital ecological roles | | Indestructible | Pest resilience is more about opportunity + adaptability | | Creepy, “bad” sociality | Range of advanced social behaviors; some are model mothers | | Monotonous, ugly species | Wild rainbow of color, shape, size—many are beautiful, charismatic | | Unhealthy, infectious | Some have antibiotic properties; regularly used in medicine |

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Quick Tips on Coexistence and Control

• Deterring Home Invaders: Clean up, seal plumbing gaps, use dehumidifiers
• Pet Ambassador: Madagascar Hissing Roach—gentle, slow, great with kids (adults may need more exposure therapy!)
• Appreciating Roaches: Look up “roachbrain” on iNaturalist for stunning cockroach portraits
• Ecosystem Reminder: If you hate household pests, remember the rainforests would collapse without their cockroach “clean-up crew” cousins.

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Final Call

Allie ends with encouragement to see cockroach tenacity as an aspirational metaphor—be the roach; find your way through, outlast adversity, keep your antenna (and side of things) clean.

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For more info:

• Dr. Evangelista’s lab: roachbrain.com
• Beautiful cockroach photos: iNaturalist @roachbrain

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“If you want a job, you sometimes can't watch a door and wait for it to open. You gotta cram in through the cracks like a cockroach.” – Allie Ward [Epilogue]

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Transcript

[Allie Ward]

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[Allie Ward]

Oh hey, it's the smell of fresh paint in your new apartment. A.L.I.E. ward don't you dare leave. Don't you leave. I'm holding your hand maybe a little too firmly for you to get away. I'm urging you to be strong. Let's learn about cockroaches. First of all, it's Spooktober, all right? Secondly, there's so much to love.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Is there?

[Allie Ward]

Sort of Find out with me a person who until this interview knew a very few redeeming qualities of a roach, but now I would have a chat with one if its mouth worked that way. Now this expert was recommended to me by another ologist who I adore and when I told her I needed a cockroach person, she instantly named them. They are an entomology assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champagne. They run a cockroach lab. This guest studied biology for undergrad and ecology and evolution for their PhD and we'll talk to them about what is a cockroach and why they are not quite what you think they are. But first, just a quick thanks to patrons of the show who submit questions for the ologist ahead of time. Thanks to everyone wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com and thanks to everyone who leaves reviews which help the show so much, such as this crisp new one from Not Abby who wrote a poem review I know nothing but then I listen to Ologies. Now I know a little something. Ain't that great? Not Abby. That's me snapping my fingers in an appreciative way. Also, if anyone needs shorter kid friendly episodes for their children or classroom safe, we have smologies. S M O L O G I E S Wherever you get your podcasts, there's a separate feed you can subscribe to. Okay, so first off, the term cockroach comes from the Spanish cucaracha, which stems from cuca for a caterpillar. But in Latin, the word blada means that which shuns the light. So let's shed some light on these low profile, skittish little critters. Let's learn about their bonkers dicks, their preferred diets, ones that look like emeralds and candy corn. How to catch a rainforest cockroach, if you want to. Their stunning diversity, why we need cockroaches, and in the wild, at least, but also how to get them out of your house, how they got there in the first place, and some behavioral aspects that will make you wish you had one as a pal, maybe a pet. With entomologist, assistant professor and professional bloododiologist, Dr. Dominic Evangelista.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

My name is Dominic Evangelista, and I use he, him, pronouns.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Blattodiologist. Would we say I?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah. I registered the email bletiologymail.com like 10 years ago, but I've never used it.

[Allie Ward]

Nice.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Can people email you their thoughts and questions about cockroaches?

[Allie Ward]

No.

[Dominic Evangelista]

You're like, don't.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I know what most of them will be. So I don't want those questions.

[Dominic Evangelista]

But sure, are those questions how do I get all these roaches out of my refrigerator?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yes, pretty much that's like 70% of them.

[Dominic Evangelista]

And there's only 10 species of cockroaches, really, that we cohabitate with. Correct. Out of thousands of species in the.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

World, that's about right, yeah. I don't know. Somewhere between 10 and 20, maybe. So the vast majority of cockroach species you will never come into contact with, they live out in the forests and the deserts and the grasslands of our planet, and they do not want to come into contact with humans. Those, like, kind of 10 species that we might come across in our homes give a bad reputation to all of them.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Maybe we should just start with what even is a cockroach? Because I think people probably think there's just the ones that they've seen on TV or maybe like in their dorm room.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

My sense is that when people hear the word cockroach, they have an image in their head of one or maybe two species. Either Periplaneta americana, the American cockroach, or Lutella germanica, the German cockroach. By the way, those cockroaches are not originally from America or Germany, I figure. Yeah. So like, for Periplanida americana, that's like the wally roach that's the big brown one that most people are probably familiar with. And Botella germanica is the tiny little amber light colored one with black stripes. Those are just two species. Cockroaches. We, we know of about 7,000 species of cockroaches. There's probably like three times as many as that in the world.

[Allie Ward]

So 99.904% of cockroaches will never be in your toaster or, or your building's boiler room. Their species. Not interested. So where are they then? All those roaches that we never hear about?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

The vast majority of those are in tropical and subtropical latitudes, so tropical rainforests mostly, but there's also a lot of species in deserts and some species in temperate ecosystems as well. There's also termites, which are subgroup of cockroaches.

[Dominic Evangelista]

That's like a new rebrand, isn't it?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, that's only within the last 20 years that it was somewhat official that termites are actually just fancy cockroaches.

[Allie Ward]

And yes, in 2007, the paper came out boldly announcing the death of an order. A comprehensive molecular phylogenic study confirms that termites are eusocial cockroaches. And this study noted that our molecular analyses, the most comprehensive yet attempted, show that termites are social cockroaches, no longer meriting being classified as a separate order from the cockroaches. Instead, we propose that they should be treated as a family of cockroaches. And it continues with the backstory that termites, cockroaches and mantids form a well established lineage, uniquely defined by having a preparation in essentially what is their skull and enclosing their eggs in a specialized case called an oo the ka. So yeah, you got termites, you got some wood eating roaches, congrats.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Oh, fancy, fancy.

[Dominic Evangelista]

But do other cockroaches live in that kind of social structure? Is that one thing that sets them apart from other types of cockroaches? Or do a lot of cockroaches have that division of labor?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

So no, only termites are what we call eusocial. They only, only termites live in those highly organized societies with different castes and a queen and a king. Other cockroaches, they do have levels of sociality, but not to that highly advanced organized level that termites do. So there are some cockroaches that we would call subsocial. There are cockroaches that are more solitary and then there's everything in between. So there's lots of species that provide different levels of parental care, including Some of them that have small colonies where maybe burrows in wood or in soil that are guarded by a matriarch.

[Allie Ward]

And Yes, a French 2009 study titled the Weight of the Clan. Even in insects, social isolation can induce a behavioral syndrome. Found that like some vertebrate organisms, German cockroaches, reared among 10 siblings, fared better in life than one's raised in complete solitude, which suffered from reduced appetites and less exploration of their surroundings. They were shy roaches, if you will, and they were bad at flirting. But roaches also take restaurant recommendations from each other. They prefer to have dinner companions when enjoying a food source before they all move on to enjoy another nearby snack. And this was evidenced in the 2010 paper Collective Foraging Decision in Gregarious Insect. And yeah, they are great parents. Well, better than me, but that's because I don't have any children.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, so there's lots of different levels of sociality among cockroaches.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What makes a cockroach a cockroach then?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Good question. So first let's talk about what's not cockroaches. So praying mantises are the sister group to cockroaches. So they're the closest relatives to cockroaches. So what makes cockroaches different from praying mantises? Cockroaches have a leathery egg case. So whereas mantises lay their eggs in this sort of like foamy egg case on plant matter, cockroaches create this like little leathery looks like a purse that they stick their eggs into.

[Allie Ward]

So, yeah, cockroaches make themselves some nice handbags. They craft them with their genitals, and they're stuffed to the zipper with their own children. And I picture cockroach moms birthing an uthica, like Miranda Priestley slamming a handbag on a desk in the Devil Wears Prada. These ladies are loathed, feared, but also respected and a city girl and cosmopolitan to the core. But out in the wild, of course, they are living all kinds of varied lives, but still they emerge into the world from mommy's vagina purse.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

So that's one defining feature of cockroaches. Another one is less obvious. They have this endosymbiotic bacteria that lives inside of their fat cells. Then there's some other sort of less well defined characters that you can use to identify a cockroach. Like, cockroaches are flat, they're kind of oval shaped. They have a shield like thing that covers their head. A lot of people think it is their head, but actually the head is underneath this shield like thing at the front of their bodies.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Oh.

[Allie Ward]

So this is the dorsal sclerite of the prothorax of an insect, but you can call it the pronotum if you're feeling casual. Also, if you are a person who likes say heavy metal and cockroaches, you might enjoy the death's head cockroach, which is an easy one to rear. And it has red and black markings on its pronotum. What if you got a roach pet? What if it was your new bestie?

[Dominic Evangelista]

What if I'm as someone who really loves bugs and has had a praying mantis pet and I don't think I realized that about cockroaches, that they have an awning.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, they do. An awning. That's a good way to put it.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What are those little finger like things that stick out from their butt? The cerci.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Cersei. I say circe.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Okay.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah. So circe are pretty big in cockroaches.

[Allie Ward]

So these are the pointy things on their butts that look like two little tiny rump antennae which can sense low vibrations or gusts of air. Evolutionary biologists think these appendages help them escape predators.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I think most insects have them, but they're smaller and a lot of other insects, whereas in cockroaches they're quite large. As far as I know, they are sensory organs and they may also produce or be involved in like pheromone or hormonal production.

[Allie Ward]

So yes, sensory organs. It's like you having a nose or eyes right on your hiney. We hate to see you leave, but you can smell us as you go. Can your butt do that? I don't think so, baby.

[Dominic Evangelista]

I feel like you're mentioning praying mantis. And if a praying mantis lands on your shoulder, it's like good luck. You know, you see a cricket and you go, oh, cricket, get out of here. But they both look a little like cockroaches. But obviously we're just not used to interfacing with cockroaches in a way that is benign. But when they're out in the world, like when they're living in their actual usual habitat and they're not imported into cities and such, are they using that little flat body to scoot under bark. They're hanging out in leaves like other like burrowing habitats. Like why that flat round body?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. So that's sort of like cockroaches superpower is hiding, escaping predators or being in little nooks and crannies because that's where it's nice and, you know, moist and humid. So this is probably something that they inherited from their ancestors. So if we go way back to, like the Carboniferous era, there were a lot of insects on the planet that looked cockroach. Like they were not modern cockroaches, but they still had that, like, flat body. They had that shield, the awning that we mentioned before. Pronotum, they had similar wings. And then praying mantises and cockroaches derived from insects that looked like that. And cockroaches retain that flat body.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Okay.

[Allie Ward]

And.

[Dominic Evangelista]

And they move so fast. Do they all move fast in. In the forest in subtropical regions? Are. Can they haul ass like that naturally, or is that just something that they're evading a shoe?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I mean, it's mostly. It's mostly evading shoes or evading predators when they move that fast. But yeah, they do move fast, and most of them do. You know, my graduate students and I, when we're out in the field, that's what makes fieldwork fun for us, is that it's like a challenge with other insects. You know, you catch them with traps or with nets. By far, the best way to catch cockroaches is with your hands, with your just bare human paws. And it takes a lot of, like, accuracy, precision, and speed because these, these little tiny things, some of which are only a couple millimeters long, and they move very, very fast.

[Dominic Evangelista]

How do you even see it? Do you all have magnifying glasses, scopes on, like, how do you see these little ones?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

You just got to get used to it. You just gotta, like, train your body to recognize, oh, that's a cockroach. Or sometimes it's like you grab it and you're like, oh, that was just a spot on a leaf that wasn't actually a bug.

[Dominic Evangelista]

And how little are the littlest ones and how big are the biggest ones?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Pretty big range in size. The smallest cockroaches are about 2 millimeters long.

[Allie Ward]

Oh, little.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah. And there's a couple of different tiny ones. One of the cutest tiny cockroaches is called Adipylla fungicola. They are a cockroach that lives with leaf cutter ants. They, like, attach onto the bodies of leafcutter ants and sort of like, hang around them.

[Dominic Evangelista]

No.

[Allie Ward]

And yeah.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Do they ride them like little ponies?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I think they do, yeah. You can find pictures of it online.

[Allie Ward]

You can find pictures online. And I did. And this little cutie does, in fact, live with ants, and they do ride them like ponies. Sometimes right on top of their heads and they look like a little brown beret. And if you're ready to get obsessed, you can take a gander at the 2021 study by Dr. Zachary Phillips titled Emigrating Together but Not Establishing A Cockroach rides ants and leaves, which explains that the Atophylla fungicola miniature cockroach that lives in the nests of Texas leafcutter ants hitchhikes on their winged queens and it happens during their nuptial flight. And I also happened upon Dr. Phillips study in its dissertation form. I was reading through it and in the intro, Dr. Phillips states that if it weren't for those meddling cockroaches, I would have studied bees and soils. Thank you, cockroaches. You are not meddling. That was a lie. You are an inspiration. Finally, it concludes, I owe everything to my family and friends. None of you are going to read this dissertation, not even this acknowledgment, but I forgive you. And Dr. Phillips also dedicated the dissertation in part to Cafe Medici. And I looked that up and it's a coffee shop in Austin near the university. And I hope someone there knows that they are name checked in a paper about roaches flying on queens like a fever dream.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

And the largest cockroaches are some of the largest insects. So the largest one in terms of wingspan is Megaloblada, appropriate name.

[Allie Ward]

That means big cockroach.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

It's about the size of. I don't know, I have a pretty big hand about the size of my hand when its wings are spread out. And the largest one in terms of weight is the Australian burrowing cockroach. And they're. Yeah, about the size of like a closed fist. And then every, every range of size in between.

[Dominic Evangelista]

And when it comes to you, you haven't been chasing cockroaches in the rainforest your whole life. Did you start down an insect nerd path? It's hard to find a good cockroach expert. And you are one of the finest. So how did that happen?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, when I was a kid, I loved animals. I loved the. Just the diversity and the surprising nature of like weird animals or interesting animals. I was. I started off being interested in evolutionary biology. I wouldn't have said it at the time, but it gave sort of spiritual meaning to the world around me. From there it just. It kind of happened. I just kept exploring the world of evolution of animals. I ended up in a lab with Jessica Ware, who's a, I guess a previous ologies guest, where she. I went into her lab and she said okay, do you want to work with dragonflies, termites, or cockroaches? And every. Everyone was already working on dragonflies, and I wanted to be different. So I was like, all right, I'll do cockroaches, not knowing anything about any of these. And that's. Yeah, that's. That's why I got into it. Just trying to be different, trying to do things that other people don't want to do, necessarily.

[Allie Ward]

For more on Dr. Jessica Ware, you can listen to our odontology episode on dragonflies. Although odontology is the study of teeth and yeah, I do owe you that episode. I swear I'm going to do it.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Where are you based now? And did you come from, like a city or kind of a rural background?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Grew up around New York City. I live most of my life around, around New York City, and I'm currently at the University of Illinois, which is in Champaign in the middle of the dead center of the Midwest.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Were you pretty quickly surprised by the diversity of them?

[Allie Ward]

Were you already aware?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I guess I kind of start off with the default assumption that insects are just always weird and surprising and diverse. I am still surprised a lot of times by how diverse cockroaches are. There's a cockroach in India that has these, like, devil horns. There's cockroaches in South America that have these divots in their shield and make their shield look really like some kind of like, war mask.

[Allie Ward]

So when Dominic observes these forest roaches in the field, he says that they get around essentially like an Olympic level American ninja warrior. They're just maneuvering deftly to evade him. They're using speed, acrobatics, U turns. Now, if you've seen a cockroach, let's say a city roach, you may have noticed in its giant amber colored wings. Or maybe you've seen the smaller kind of crickety German roaches or a dark glossy one that might look wingless but has nubbins for wings, kind of like the arms of a mighty T. Rex. What are they doing there?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

But lots of cockroaches have those very short, nubby wings, and we don't know why. That's actually one of the research questions that my lab is working on. My graduate student, Johanna is doing a deep dive into wing evolution and wing reduction in cockroaches. And it has happened many, many times. It may have to do with both flight and also evolution driven for sexual selection, for mating, because they. Cockroaches use their wings for both of those things.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Wait, how do they use their Wings for mating.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Great question. My friend and collaborator Zuzana, who's a researcher in the Czech Republic, has done work on this. The males use their wings to position the female on their abdomen while they're doing their little mating dance.

[Allie Ward]

I want to make babies with her.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

One of my favorite things about cockroaches is why the males are positioning the females on their abdomen. Because the males offer a copulatory gift to the females. Yes. It's so cute, right? This copulatory gift. What's so interesting about this copulatory gift is that it's made exclusively of urine. So. Oh, yeah, it's beautiful. So actually, as far as I can tell, cockroaches are the only animals other than humans that give sexual golden showers. It's really, like, important to their biology. There's these, like extravagant glands. They've like adapted these very ornate structures for amplifying this behavior, for attracting females using their urates and having females feed on their urates for longer.

[Allie Ward]

Now you may be thinking, surely another animal must partake in the golden shower of courtships. And technically you are correct. So in the 2023 paper Flamen Osteophagia and Other Behaviors of Giraffes, Boneronasal Organ Adaptation, the Giraffe Research Team of Drs. Lynette Hart and Benjamin Hart explain that males, this is a quote. Males provoke females to urinate by sniffing and prodding them. If the female is going to urinate, she first widens her hind leg stance and sets a stable posture and then urinates. So this has been described by onlookers as gargling her sweet, sweet piss to figure out if she is the one and would be amenable to carrying his baby. And yes, we need a giraffe episode because I really need to ask these doctor's heart who are married what their deal is. The giraffes and also them. But back to cockroaches enjoying a dinner date of crystal urine, which looks kind of like coarse coffee grounds or like little mouse droppings. But more romantic now is this because.

[Dominic Evangelista]

In, in rainforests, sodium is a premium. Are they getting electrolytes from that?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

It's actually protein. Oh, so another. This is another superpower of cockroaches. The reason why we expel urine is because that's ammonia. That's like metabolic waste. Our bodies cannot use that. In fact, it's toxic to us. But I mentioned earlier that cockroaches, one of their defining features is they have these endosymbiotic bacteria, and these endosymbiotic bacteria give Them this superpower where they can take urates, which are normally a waste product, and recycle them. Oh, so they can recycle them and reuse them and create new amino acids from that. So cockroaches don't actually pee. They just. Or they pee very little. They just secrete that those urates and they recycle them.

[Dominic Evangelista]

That's so wild to me that part of what defines a cockroach is the endosymbionts. Like, part of who you are is what you've got living with you. Kind of.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah. I mean, in this case, like, it seems to be so integral to their biology because they're literally. It's literally within the cells. Like, it's almost like a new, like, type of mitochondria, really.

[Dominic Evangelista]

And it's made of a bacterium of a virus. What exactly are those endosymbionts?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, so they're. They're called, appropriately, bladder bacterium, cockroach bacterium.

[Allie Ward]

So a 2024 study titled Frequent and asymmetric cell division in Endosymbiotic bacteria of Cockroaches described that these bladobacteria, which can help digest that extra uric acid, too, divide at really frequent and in wonky ways and have been with cockroaches for over 140 million years. So they have a good thing going. And if you're wondering, by the way, why people call cockroaches palmetto bugs, that's because there's a wood cockroach. It lives down in Florida, southeastern United States. They love palmetto trees. And sometimes, yeah, one might wander into people's houses, and it's just easier for people to call all roaches palmetto bugs because denial is a very effective drug.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What about their behavior? Do they tend to be nocturnal?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Most of them are nocturnal, yeah.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Oh, okay.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

During the day, they'll be in nooks and crannies and they will come out sometimes. At night, there are diurnal cockroaches. Typically when you see, like, a colorful cockroach, I think our assumption is that most of the time those are diurnal. Yeah. If you ever see a picture of a pretty cockroach, which there is a lot of them, it's probably a diurnal species.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What are some of the prettiest? I know there's a domino roach, which is so cute and looks so much like the beetle that it mimics. What are some other. Just stunners.

[Allie Ward]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

There's a couple of beetle mimic cockroaches that are really cool. One of them is prosoplecta which is found in Southeast Asia. They look like leaf beetles. There's Meliroidea magnifica, which is emerald green and ruby red, like very bright. It's also mimicking a beetle. There's a couple of species or groups that are like metallic colored. Corydidarum. That one I think sometimes colorful. There's also a lot of like Madagascar hissing cockroaches. A lot of cockroaches have these like warts horns on their shield. Those can have like cool and interesting pattern color patterns on them.

[Allie Ward]

I mean, Meleroidea magnifica, which mimics blister beetles with this cherry red head and a metallic green body. Are you shitting me? Polysosteria micelli, you blue and yellow armored beauty. I know why they call you the Mardi Gras cockroach. Because I want to party with you. Pseudoglomeris magnifica, also known as the emerald cockroach, which looks like a futuristic domed car in this stunning deep iridescent peridot color gray Domino cockroach, you polka dotted joker. You're cute as hell. And for more examples, I will direct you to the 2016 Smithsonian article by Jason Patel, which is titled I am officially in love with cockroaches. Roaches, they leave no crumbs.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What are they out there eating? I once walked by an apple core on a summer's evening and it was absolutely lousy with roaches. And I said, I bet they're loving that right now.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Where were you?

[Dominic Evangelista]

Where was it? Yeah, I was in Los Feliz, walking down the sidewalk, L.A. hot. We got hot nights and when it's hot out, the roaches are out and they're skitting around and they're saying, what's this? A pizza crust? I'm in love. And you just go get it. It was like jackals around a carcass. This apple core, it was like definitely the watering hole of the evening. But what are they out there usually eating? Are they breaking down a lot of leaf litter or what do they munch it on?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Great question. So for most of them, we really don't know. We have like no idea. We can guess though. The one that you saw munching on the apple was probably a pest roach. And we think that they probably just have very general diets. They'll just eat whatever's around. There are some cockroaches that we think probably get a lot of nutrition from bat guano. Like a lot of the cave dwelling species or the species that live in hollow trees. There are Some species that specialize entirely on wood, not just termites, but the relatives of termites as well as other cockroaches, feed on wood. There are some that largely getting a lot of nutrition from fungus. They're feeding on fungus. And actually it might be that fungus is super important to a lot of their diets, since almost all cockroaches are detritivores, we think. So fungus growing on dead stuff might be an important nutritional component component to their diet. There's also some species that we think are pollinators are drinking nectar, feeding on like garbage at the base or inside of birds nests. Not like, you know, bird garbage, not human garbage.

[Allie Ward]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dominic Evangelista]

They can be nature's cleanup crews though, right?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, exactly.

[Allie Ward]

What about when they are not foraging, but rather being served by their captive humans, such as a grad student in a lab. The 2006 paper Food Preference and Feeding behavior of the German Cockroach offered up several meal options to cockroaches and found that their favorites were banana and potato. But unlike me, they can deal with not snacking because our roach friends can live for weeks without water and nearly two months with no food, which is an intermittent fasting window so long even Jesus couldn't hang with it. Oh, and yes, they can also live a week without a head, which is not something that John the Baptist can do. And yeah, I did Google biblical beheadings looking for a parallel. And honestly, there was no shortage to choose from.

[Dominic Evangelista]

I think that when we're talking about pest species, we hear that they can survive a nuclear attack. I have heard that they can eat a fingernail and live like a month off of that. Like how when there are roommates, like, how tough are they? How badass are they?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, I was just talking to some of my colleagues today about this that we have. We have cockroaches in our building, and this is probably no way to get rid of them. Like, we can keep the numbers down, but they're not going anywhere because they just have so many places to hide. Eventually they'll find food. We can. We can keep the floors clean and, and, you know, clean up after ourselves, but eventually they'll find some kind of food. Whether it's like the glue holding a book binding together or just dead skin. They can't survive just on that stuff. But know, they could eat anything. For the most part, they seem indestructible because we try to get rid of them and they just won't go away. They need us, those pest cockroaches. They probably need us because the, you know, the American cockroach, our classic pest cockroach is pretty much everywhere, but it's not out in nature for the most part.

[Allie Ward]

Really?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, it's sticking to human habitations.

[Allie Ward]

It loves us.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, it needs us. You mentioned that German cockroaches do not come from Germany. American cockroaches not from North America. I'm wondering about the oriental cockroach, which also, I'm not sure nomenclature, it seems outdated. I don't know if anyone's working on that or not. Where are they initially from?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

So this was a little bit debated. The American cockroach probably came from Africa, somewhere in Africa. The German cockroach I think is from Southeast Asia.

[Allie Ward]

So the so called oriental cockroach, or bladder orientalis comes from the word for eastern roach. And it is a misnomer because these dark water lovers are really from the region of Crimea. Now the females have little cute winglets and they don't work. And the males have kind of a three quarter sleeve look with some shortened wings. Also, if you absolutely cannot hang with roaches, maybe try somewhere colder. Although I did fact check this just now, just on a whim, I yelped cockroach exterminators in Anchorage. And yeah, they do have them up there too.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

And we think that they've probably been with us for a very long time.

[Dominic Evangelista]

They're kind of like tiny wolves, right? They're just like hanging out in the garbage pile being like, what do you got? And now they're just roommates, unfortunately, part of the family. Is it weird for you, as someone who studies and loves roaches to have to do abatement in your workplace? And is there a good humane way to keep them from reproducing? Because obviously people do want to appreciate them, but just not in such proximity.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, I mean, I don't like pest cockroaches either.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Okay.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I was doing field work like two years ago and I was in a very bad hotel and I got woken up in the middle of the night because there was a cockroach biting like my lower back. And I was not happy about that.

[Dominic Evangelista]

No, they do that. They bite.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, they bite. I mean, it doesn't hurt really, but like it was enough to like wake me up. Like, oh, what is that? Yeah, and so like, I don't like cockroaches either. I have a lot of compassion for people that are dealing with infestations because some of them can be very, very bad. And. Yeah, kill them.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What? Is it good? Is it. Is the borax method good? For that? Well, I feel like spraying your living area and raid is not going to be effective other than just killing the one that you've doused.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

The things that I would normally recommend are just clean up as best you can. Try to close any little gaps, especially in plumbing that are leading into the place where the infestation is and run it. Dehumidifier. Oh, after you do all that. Because cockroaches are not very good at retaining water, so they dry out pretty quickly. So those things might not kill an infestation, but it could significantly reduce infestation.

[Dominic Evangelista]

You mentioned plumbing. How are they surviving in pipes and not drowning now? Like, how do they crawl out of a shower drain when you're like, I was just running that?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Well, cockroaches, particularly the American cockroach, is pretty water resistant. And they can swim. Oh, they don't probably want to be swimming, but they can. And their cuticle is pretty water repellent.

[Allie Ward]

This is also why some folks call cockroaches water bugs. Because they can crawl upside down on like the dry ceiling inside a pipe. They can do some swimming. They can come through cracks in sewer lines just bursting into your life on a slip and slide.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

They can probably get through short distances of water pretty easily.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Most cockroaches though, do they breathe through spiracles on the side of their body? Where are they taking in air? What's the guts like?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, they use spiracles. They will expand and contract their abdomen to bring air in and out of their abdominal spiracles, which are little holes at the sides of their bodies.

[Allie Ward]

In terms of the guts of a roach, Dominic is pretty neutral about their anatomy.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Well, except for their genitalia, which are fantastic.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What's going on there?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

So, yeah, cockroaches have, the males have these really complex and ornate genitalia that are asymmetrical. So cockroaches, like most other animals, are bilaterally symmetrical, but their genitalia are totally different on the left and the right. There's like a part for hooking the female and preparing her for the rest of the genitalia to go in. There's a part that looks like a, like this complicated three dimensional clamp like structure. There's another part that like usually has a series of spines that may be used for like scraping out sperm from previous mating events.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Oh dear.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Some parts that might be like a mating plug. There's like so much variability in genitalia. There's really very little we know about how they actually work. I think, I think people should make art based on cockroach genitalia. They're so ornate.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Just architectural. Gorgeous. Yeah, and so useful too. They've had so much time to evolve and actually people had questions about evolution. Can I ask questions from some listeners?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Absolutely.

[Allie Ward]

So yeah, Roaches. They are packing some pretty weird looking asymmetrical heat. And now you know why there's so many of them. They are out there making love. But before we get to your questions, let's take a quick break to donate to a cause of the ologist's choosing. And this week Dr. Evangelista selected teach for America, which is a network of more than 70,000 leaders who started in the classroom and remain in lifelong pursuit of the vision that one day all children will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education. And we're also going to donate to the wonderful entomologist of color at Ento POC. And Dr. Evangelista is a founding member of that org whose mission is to diversify entomology and help support people of color or POC members of the entomology community. You can head to entopoc.org to learn more or to donate. And thank you to sponsors of the show for making those two donations possible.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

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[Dominic Evangelista]

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[Allie Ward]

All right, let's scuttle into the mailbag and eat some envelope glue. Even though these questions were submitted by patrons electronically via patreon.com ologies which you too can join for $1. But yeah, moving along how do they move along? Patrons? Dr. Lena Carpenter, Rosie Clark, Andy Pepper, Chris F. Wanted to know let's actually.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Talk about locomotion because Marissa Asher wanted to know why are they so bad at walking? The size freaks me out, but more than anything, the way they stumble around depletes all my bravery when it comes to trying to kill the things. And others wanted to know why they're so fast. Eva Berger says, I grew up in Georgia and I swear cockroaches fly. My question is can they really fly or do they just glide? So yeah, why are they bad at walking, good at running? Are they flying? What's happening?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I don't get them bad at walking thing. I think they're pretty good at walking, okay. And yeah, they are super fast. So maybe, maybe if someone saw a cockroach that's bad at walking, that may have been a beetle.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Do they have really good joints? Are they just like because they really speed walking, they're super fast.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Their legs are just optimized for sprinting, right? They're sprinters and there's some cool like slow motion video on YouTube of cockroaches running and how they, how they coordinate their legs and how they move their legs and as they find a ledge they kind of drag their hind legs and Their hind legs will, like, latch onto the ledge and they'll, like, flip around and go underneath. They're agile runners as well as on flyers. So, yeah, regarding that, do they fly? Do they glide? Both. Some of the bigger ones are probably not the most graceful flyers. They probably flutter a lot and may not be able to gain much altitude. But they do have pretty big wings. Yeah. We have evidence suggesting that cockroaches can fly multiple miles at a time. What if that freaks out some of the listeners out there? They. But these are the forest cockroaches I'm talking about. So the pest cockroaches are not very good at flying. They will flutter. If you ever want to know if a cockroach is good at flying, just pick it up and throw it in the air and see what it does.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Easier said than done, perhaps.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah.

[Dominic Evangelista]

You know, I have heard that pest cockroaches that come in a lot of times will come in if you don't have an infestation and you see, like, one of the American cockroaches, which takes longer to breed, it's light likely that they just hitched a ride from a box. So if you're like a real online shopper, you've got a lot of boxes in your entryway. You might have some stowaways.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's probably how they get around most of the time, because like I said before, like, they don't want to stray too far from human habitations. So the way they're getting around is, like through sewers, any kind of hidden tunnels underneath buildings, and through, like, us moving them around in potted plants or boxes on Amazon.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, but you mentioned cleanliness, and I'm glad that you did. Chrysalis Ashton Riley G.J. wyatt Kenan Daly, Mindy Corcoran, Turley, Austin Johnson the Tangle System Meg is me, Greg Wallach and Jaws Theme Swimming asked Austin Johnson asked, will you settle some flimflam? I'm hearing they're clean. I'm hearing they're not. Which is it? G.J. wyatt said, I've heard that they aren't a sign of things being dirty per se, but they are as clean or dirty as their surroundings.

[Allie Ward]

G.J.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Wyatt says, I'm a little curious about them because I've never seen one irl and I'm like, what planet are you living on that you've never seen a roach in real life? Who among us hasn't dated a musician with a roach infestation? You know what I mean? Who among us? I guess some people but what about their cleanliness? Are they cleaning their antenna all the time? What are they doing?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, they're constantly grooming themselves. Their antenna, their legs. They are constantly grooming themselves. You know, they can't groom their whole bodies, but I think they do also have antimicrobial properties on their exoskeleton.

[Allie Ward]

Yes, it is true. And if you don't believe me, you can curl up with the 2023 study. Cockroaches, a potential source of novel bioactive molecules for the benefit of human health, which gushes. Cockroaches are one of the hardiest insects that have survived on this planet for millions of years. It says they continue, they thrive in unhygienic environments and are able to survive without food for up to 30 days, without air for around 45 minutes, and being submerged underwater for half an hour, they can endure doses of radiation 15 times greater than humans. And then the researchers ponder that. It is intriguing that cockroaches are able to endure and flourish under conditions that are harmful to Homo sapiens. We postulate that the cockroach gut microbiome and or its metabolites may be contributing to their hardiness, which should be utilized for the discovery of biologically active molecules for the benefit of human health. So, yeah, doctors are looking to cockroaches with stars in their eyes, money in their dreams, thinking cockroaches, how do they do it? And where can I get me some of that? But now back to the city.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Filthy, for the most part, I would say pest cockroaches, if they're around, they have to be eating something. So that might mean that there might be some food for them around, which might be crumbs, food, waste or mold, even if it's not visible, might be there for them. And basically, if you cough on a cockroach and that cockroach walks on someone's sandwich, then you just coughed on their sandwich. But that's not the cockroach's fault, your fault for coughing on the cockroach. They're not, like, inherently dirty, but just like anything else that moves around and interacts with its environment, it might pick up some things.

[Allie Ward]

Right.

[Dominic Evangelista]

So if they're using the sewer as a commuting channel, then blame the sewer, not the roaches. They're just walking where they gotta walk. But you mentioned coughing on one and getting close enough to cough on one. Blair C. Justin Bowen and Brit Carpenter had a question about their smells. And Justin Bowen said, my wife wants to know why they smell like they do. I want to know why she's been so close to them that she knows what they smell like. And Justin, that seems like a conversation you need to have with your wife. But do they have an odor when they're squished? If they're squished, they do smell.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

They do smell kind of musty. And I smell them most. And there's a lot of them, like in a container. Because we have a lot of cockroaches in containers here in the entomology department. When you open up those containers, there's a distinct musty kind of smell. I think it's mostly from their pheromones. And some of them have like a very strong smell. So like Eurycodis, which is a genus of cockroach that is found in the tropics, but also like in Florida, they're called skunk roaches because they stink. They smell kind of like stink bugs.

[Allie Ward]

If you have not had the pleasure of a stink bug with. Let me give you some adjectives to imagine in terms of cockroach smell. I have read that they smell musty, like a basement or old wood. They smell like a combination of BO and mold, rancid oil, wet dog and or burnt hair. Now that's when they're alive. But dead they smell worse. Sorry.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Maybe not all of them appetizing, but. Iris.

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[Dominic Evangelista]

Audrey Hudak. Julia loves fun facts. Clouds, bugs and shrooms. Leo Shang Kaforius Classroom and Madeline Fox wanted to know clouds, bugs and shrooms. Asked, what do they taste like? I want one in my mouth. Julia loves fun facts, says, could we eat them like people eat crickets? Do people eat them in different parts of the world? Could we eat them if we farmed them?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I do believe they're used as like a medicinal remedy in Eastern Asia. And I've never eaten a cockroach. The whole bit about them not peeing but saving their pee in their bodies makes them seem not that appetizing.

[Allie Ward]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Some species I have been curious about, like Panchlora, the banana cockroach. They're kind of green. They're one of the ones that are potentially pollinators. And drinking nectar, they might taste nice.

[Allie Ward]

And sure, plenty of people eat roaches sometimes probably without telling anyone, and sometimes in broad daylight. And cultures where it's perfectly normal, like China or Australia, Mexico, deep fried seems to be the way to go. And considering that in my country, in the sprawl of America, we eat deep fried Pepsi, which seems impossible from a physics perspective. But one BBC article titled how cockroaches could save lives praised our New buddies exoskeletons for perhaps holding the key to antibiotic resistant infections. And also noted that cockroach tea was used in the Americas as a tetanus remedy. And cockroach cream and syrup is administered in some Chinese hospitals for burns and stomach issues, even heart problems. So medicinal cockroaches also found in my home, to my own surprise. So your podmother, Jarrett, my spouse has a black belt in jiu jitsu and I brag about that a lot. But over the years he has come home with just checkerboard of injuries. Something's always hurting. So we have a lot of kind of questionable remedies on hand. But the one that works wonders is this thing called the 701 pain easing plaster. It's in this little yellow tin. It has both English and Chinese writing on the outside. And these are like sticky plasters that come in a roll. It looks like brown fruit leather and it smells like menthol and camphor. And if you look on the back, the first ingredient is ground beetles. And I was like, what does that mean? Dug in a little further and you will find it's an excellent euphemism for a wingless cockroach. These are pain patches made of cockroaches. And many, many times I have shared a bed with the minty ghosts of dead roaches. I don't care if you're eating right now. This is my truth.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Savannah Johnson, first time question asker and Mouse Paxton wanted to know. Mouse Paxton says every time I eat Bugles. I remember the time I once watched a Madagascar hissing cockroach give live birth for like 10 minutes at the science center while eating Bugles. Are they good parents? I really thought maybe that Bugles would look like their genitalia. But no, this person was just eating Bugles. Interestingly enough, I was eating Bugles yesterday and I eat Bugles about once every 10 years. So who knows? We're living in a simulation.

[Allie Ward]

I need you to know I really don't eat Bugles often. And while I ate Bugles a few weeks back when this was recorded, I also ate Bugles last night after your podmother and I had done some gardening. But while I'm generally doing a poor job of parenting myself lately, let's see how the roaches are faring. So many patrons asked about roaches starting a family, including Casa Reed, Dean, Oliver Callis, Kelly Lime Pie, Simone Francoeur, Potato Puffer, Shayla Borger and Kimberly Peck needed.

[Dominic Evangelista]

To know what kind of babies we talking. Some of them are popping out egg Cases. Some of them are doing live births.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What's going on?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, that's a great question. Now I just can't for a second. I thought maybe the cockroaches were eating the bugles.

[Dominic Evangelista]

I thought so too. I thought I didn't know where they were going with bugles, but now we know.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah. So parental care, another superpower of cockroaches. So, like some of the subsocial ones, the females will stick around their offspring and keep protect them in burrows in termites. And the ones related to termites, they need to have these endosymbionts in their gut that help them eat wood. And so the parents stick around to feed that to them. They also feed it to them through their butts by eating each other's butt secretions. So another beautiful aspect of their physiology.

[Allie Ward]

Do roaches have, like, one opening such as a cloaca? Not really, kiddo. But they do have a multipurpose anus, like a pea and poo shoot. And then the boy's got dazzling asymmetric architectural dongs called phallomeres and a genital appendage rhythmically inserted into his sweetheart to help with sperm transfer. And this organ is called a titillator. Now your girly pop roaches, they have ovaries, a vagina, an ovipositor. They got a genital pouch. And they have some surprises in store for you too.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

A defining feature of cockroaches is that egg case. But some, in some lineages, that egg case has been modified. So there's a group where they don't lay the egg case, they hold it inside of them, and they let their young incubate inside the egg case, which they keep inside of their bodies. And then there's some that give true live birth where they don't even have an egg case. The eggs just develop directly inside. The coolest example of parental care in one species is the young. They have modified mouthparts. Their mouth parts are modified into like, not like a hypodermic needle, but they are modified to. To pierce their mother's exoskeleton and suck her blood.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Wow.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

So that's. That's a. That's a dedicated mom.

[Allie Ward]

Woof.

[Dominic Evangelista]

It's like nursing but blood. Little vampire babies.

[Allie Ward]

Did you know that some cockroaches make milk for their babies? Through an odd series of events, I recently paid a lab to milk a cockroach for me. And I'll tell you all about it in a bonus episode coming out in a few days about cockroach milk Spooktober.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What about their populations? Zenfrog, Cynthia, Cinnabar, Markulet, Meg, Saluda, Michaelologist, Mini, Mini and Tharassoporous. Jess wanted to know. Zen Frog said, if I see one, how many are there really? Cynthia, Cinnabar.

[Allie Ward]

Is it true that if you see.

[Dominic Evangelista]

One roach there's a million hiding nearby? Is that true? I mean, from going in the forest. If you see one in the forest, you know, that's not the only one, obviously.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, in the forest. It's a general kind of thing in entomology or even broader ecology where sometimes we only see like, like one individual of a species. There's probably way more of them. We just don't know where. Yeah. So when you see one, there's probably more because that individual had to come from somewhere. And populations that are very small aren't well sustained. So it's a good hypothesis. Yeah.

[Allie Ward]

So this really depends on the species. Some outdoor wood roaches can find their way in through a drain and they're only in your house because they got lost or they followed the call of a light source and were curious. Others say that if you have the little German roaches, there are about 100 more for every roach that you see. Also take a Google and see what baby cockroaches look like. They're kind of beetle esque with a little round butt. And I've gotten texts from friends asking what kind of bug they found and I have to break the news to them that two roaches fell in love and now life is a nightmare. Unless you like roaches, which we do. We love them, right? We appreciate them.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Felipe Jimenez and Ora first time question asker want to know? Felipe asked, I would like to know if the ologist has the ringtone La Cucaracha.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

No, I don't.

[Dominic Evangelista]

You do not. Okay, just checking. A few people asked what you thought of the song. Other people asked if you've seen Joe's apartment. Have you seen Joe's Apartment? Not a dude named Joe, but a movie called Joe's Apartment about roaches. It's fine.

[Sponsor Voice]

This summer we cordially invite you to spend the night at Joe's apartment.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

La Cucaracha and Joe's Apartment. It doesn't really ever come up. I've seen parts of the relevant scene in Joe's Apartment.

[Allie Ward]

The entire movie is about a guy who moves to New York and has an apartment infested with roaches who talk and are up to a lot of mayhem. And it is a horrifying way to approach the rom com genre. But let's just say after 30 years, 30 years ago, Joe's Apartment was released. People still talk about it, so I guess as a movie it has legs. Now, another indelible art of the cockroach is Franz Kafka's 1915 literary masterpiece, Metamorphosis, which I'm not going to consider this a spoiler because it's literally the first paragraph and it's been out for 100 years. So consider this opening graph, kind of like a sampler platter of some cockroach pop culture. So it reads, one morning when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armor like back, and if he lifted his head a little, he could see his brown belly slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

[Dominic Evangelista]

So if you want a story about.

[Allie Ward]

Being a cockroach, Metamorphosis awaits.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Are there any movies or books that do a good job of sort of celebrating the evolution and the majesty of the cockroach? Is Kafka one of them?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, I mean, that's certainly a mysterious and ominous portrayal of possibly a cockroach in the Kafka story. I don't know. Wally made cockroaches kind of cute, but yeah, generally cockroaches are not portrayed in the way that I see them. I don't think about the American cockroach very much. And that's usually what is used in movies and TV and stuff is the American cockroach.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What cockroaches would you say you think about the most?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

So there's a group of cockroaches from South America called Neoblattellini. They're very common in the Amazon and they really haven't been studied at all in like 50 years. I think about them a lot because I want to study them. They're super diverse. Some of them are quite pretty, some of them, them are like yellowy colored, but they have a lot of intricate patterns. And they're another one of the groups that have very interesting genitalia, diversity in their genitalia. But it's impossible to work with them because so much of the work is, is like a hundred years old that we can't even really identify them. I just think about them a lot because I, I want to study them. I want to know what they're Doing.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Briodiversity asks, can you talk about Simandoa conservarium, the so called extinct cockroach known to inhabit a single bat cave in Guinea West Africa which was destroyed by mining.

[Allie Ward]

Eleanor Wall also asked about cave dwelling species as did again briodiversity, a cave.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Cockroach, Helma blada Louis Rothi, that hitches rides on bats in order to move caves. Have you heard of those ones?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I have. So that example of the the extinct cockroach that the Simandoa cockroach, that's always the example I throw out when people ask about like oh, will cockroaches survive the apocalypse? Well we know of that one and it went extinct pretty quickly we think.

[Allie Ward]

And this Simon Doa roach continues to thrive, but only in captivity. Partly because it's a pretty chill pet as long as you don't stress them out and partly I think for design reasons. They are very cute. They have like a bumblebee little striped, but they have nice white trim around their pronotum. We now know. Oh and the one that rides a bat like a getaway car is this stunning translucent butter yellow. So if you're in the market for a new special interest or you need things to talk about at an upcoming holiday function, may I suggest cave cockroaches. Fantastic. Now what if you hate this and everyone and the this whole episode and me. You're not alone. Many of you all caps me with questions like Ursula Goodwin who said I don't mind bugs but I hate cockroaches. Why do I dislike them so much? Is this completely irrational? Ziz the Tangle System W Amanda Panda, Amy Hanks, Jacob Morvay Hope, Amanda Metcalfe, Anastasia Press, Jennifer Jelly Tot, Mariana Alvarez the Ren you know James Orsati, Deborah L. Blanton, Sabrina Williams, Priukli, Kenny Shaver, Mark Ruben Cool next door and even roach likers Hegular Chloe and Nature. Nessie needed some insight on why these creatures give people the willies.

[Dominic Evangelista]

What about Sienna wanted to know, as did a lot of people. Please tell me how to love cockroaches. They are the only animals in the world that I dislike, aside from a few notably awful human animals. They say what's a good way to get over you're like about them in order to appreciate them.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Like I said before, there are some of the best mothers in the animal kingdom. Just the amount of different parental care strategies that you'll see in them. If you live in a place where you can go outside and see like forest cockroaches like, if you live in South America or in an area with a wet tropical forest, go out and try to take pictures of them. Some of them are very pretty. If anyone goes to my inaturalist page and look at my favorites. So that's I'm roach brain on inaturalist and look at my favorites. Like, I don't see how you could look at some of these pictures of beautiful cockroaches and just not think, oh, okay, that's actually kind of nice. If not, wow, that's beautiful.

[Allie Ward]

Roaches, again, are fashion. There are mint green roaches with delicate wings. There's a goofy looking ant looking one, beautiful banded orange and brown and yellow. Kind of like a throwback 1970s van or an alive candy corn. There's a Lusa Hermetica, which hails from South America. It glows under black light and has two big spooky fake eyes on its face. You can get yourself a Halloween hisser from Madagascar. Orange and black stripes. It makes noises when it hates you, when it's threatened or horny. A few species of Madagascar hissing critters huff and puff. They sound like a Windex bottle or a can of duster on its last laugh. Although the more you handle them, trying to get them to hiss, the less scared they are and the more over it they become. So you've gone from like a predator to a dance mom and they're not having it. Now. What are some other roaches you can cuddle with? Tortellini Hot wrote in and said, I have several Madagascar hissing cockroaches. One of them, potatoes, has a white wormy alien blob coming out of his butt. None of the entomologists I work with know what's going on, but he seems to be fine. Do you have any guesses? And I'm not an entomologist, nor am I a female cockroach. But based on some things I've seen online, he may just have a boner. Like you may be staring down the barrel of his titillator now, teacher Thorposaurus. Jess and Hope also asked about good ambassador species.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Do you think that holding a Madagascar cockroach would be good exposure therapy? Re asked why they're so calm compared to ones that run a little faster. But I feel like a Madagascar hissing roach is a good ambassador species for some.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, they're fun, they're easy to handle, they're interesting to look at. They're not super ugly. Maybe to some people they are.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Wow.

[Allie Ward]

Okay.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I do think they're good ambassadors. When entomologists, when we do outreach. We see that kids aren't usually afraid of looking at or handling Madagascar hissing cockroaches, but adults often are. It's not necessarily something inherently scary about that's just something that we learn over the course of our lives.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Kind of like snakes and spiders. Same things. We see what's modeled.

[Allie Ward]

So not only do we have an episode on creepy crawlies called Forest Entomology, but we also just released an episode on what makes things creepy. And a big part of it is unpredictability. So if you know what a roach is doing, is that unpredictable? Are they creepy? I don't have answers. I'm just writing this like a Sex and the City newspaper column.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Kate said, are they actually widow sweetie babies? They seem to be lovely. Or have I just anthropomorphized the ones I've met? But all the Madagascar ones have been very, very chill and calm. But all of your research, it's taken you to many different places, I imagine, right?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, I've done field work mostly in South America, but also in West Africa. And it wasn't field work, but I also did a postdoc in Paris, France. Some of the best researchers of cockroaches, both present and past, have been in the museum in Paris. You know, once there's a good collection of an insect group somewhere, then that attracts other people to research that insect group. And it kind of just builds over time.

[Dominic Evangelista]

I love the idea of an infestation of cockroach experts.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah.

[Dominic Evangelista]

In Paris, a colony of cockroach experts. What's the hardest part about the job? Is it traveling to new places? Is that the best part? Is it paperwork? Is it misconception?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Paperwork sucks. But the hardest part is that, like, I'm motivated a lot by conservation, and I want to use my research in order to understand how to better conserve cockroaches and other animals as well. Yet in order to achieve that, I have to kill a lot of cockroaches. And if you're listening to this, you hate cockroaches more than me, but I've killed way more than. And so, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't feel great.

[Dominic Evangelista]

I imagine it's. It's like ethanol, usually, and not just like, putting down a bunch of borax.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, it's ethanol. Grab them, stick them in a vial of ethanol and try to ignore the screams in your brain.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Do you think that they get so drunk right before they meet their great grandparents? Yeah. Like maybe they're just hella loaded, and then that's they slip into the next realm. What about the best thing about cockroaches? Your favorite thing or your favorite thing about being a lauraologist?

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Well, other than the drinking their pee thing, which is the best fun fact, the thing that I think is best or most important about them is their ecological importance. Cockroaches are so abundant in tropical rainforests. Now they're not as abundant as like ants, wasps, but each individual cockroach tends to be larger so they end up having a lot of biomass, which means that they're, they're probably super important prey items for birds, small lizards, other insects.

[Allie Ward]

I have heard of some people who live in gecko territories that they bring a few geckos in to gobble up their roaches and spiders. But you gotta watch out for this because the roaches could be dusted in pesticides. You could be harming the geckos. Also. Do not go buy a gecko and let it roam free range or in 10 years I'm going to have to make an episode about out of control invasive geckos because of you. Now other people swear by rubbing a bar of Irish Spring soap along doorways and windows to keep them out. I've heard borax baits are effective. And there's a little syringe of roach bait you can see squeeze out kind of like peanut butter in different areas. And it's called Advyon and It has like 15,000 five star reviews in case you don't want these beautiful city creatures in your houses.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

So people don't like cockroaches in your houses, but cockroaches as a whole are hugely important to certain ecosystems. In fact, there's some studies showing that the largest proportion of animal biomass in tropical rainforest canopies are cockroaches. Woohoo.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Way to go. Yeah, just dominating. I mean it's so interesting that you can go into a forest and just not even have any comprehension of how surrounded by bugs you are. You can sit on a lawn and not realize like how many spiders are right under your butt.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, they're just in every little crevice and doing everything you can possibly imagine.

[Dominic Evangelista]

So next time you see a roach, you can think about its relatives. Pretend it's just a praying mantis, just kind of a chubbier praying mantis or rounder praying mantis and maybe see if you can hold one.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Dominic Evangelista]

This has been so lovely. Thank you for letting me ask you so many cockroach y questions.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

You're welcome. Thank you Allie.

[Allie Ward]

So ask insect people ill informed questions. If you have to, because that's really the only way to bust some flimplam. So how do you feel about roaches now? Do you feel better? I knew it. Send this to anyone who thinks roaches are out to get them personally. And to learn more about Dr. Evangelista's work you can head to his lab website roachbrain.com thank me later. Also he does have that gmail address, but only email him with roach roach praise or like good questions. You can talk to an exterminator for the rest. Okay, we are at ologies on Instagram at bluesky. I'm allieward with one l on both. You can find many more links [e-mail] Ologies Blattodiology A sorted catalog of Ologies episodes is available for [e-mail] we have shorter kid friendly versions of Ologies called Smallogies and those are available wherever you get Podcasts to join our Patreon and submit questions or get early access to our live shows, go to patreon.com ologies Last week I mentioned I'm doing our first ever live show on November 17th at the Bell House in Brooklyn. And folks, you almost sold it out. I think there are maybe 20 tickets left as far as I know and I didn't even put it on social media. So see there and join Patreon for $1 to get an early heads up on the next one. Erin Talbert Admanseology's podcast Facebook group Avileen Malik makes our professional professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyer does the website. Noelle Dilworth is our super speedy scheduling producer. Susan Hale gently rears us as our managing director. Jake Chaffee sometimes works at night as our editor. And lead editor of our audio colony is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn made the theme music and if you stick around until the end of the show, I do burden you with a secret about my life. And whenever I give talks or someone asks me for career advice, I tell them how often I think of cockroaches in an aspirational way. Like if you want a job, you sometimes can't watch a door and wait for it to open. You gotta cram in through the cracks like a cockroach. You want to be in there, you gotta scuttle under the door. You gotta send that email. You gotta send a follow up email. Be willing to start small too. Like eat a fingernail on the way up to that apple core. Outlast others, be good to others. Keep your side of the antenna clean and get the hell in there. You are like a roach. You're smart enough, you're strong enough. That door jamb can't stop you. Go forth. I'll see you on the other side. Okay.

[Dominic Evangelista]

Bye. Bye.

[Allie Ward]

Pachydermatology, Homeology, Cryptozoology, Lithology, Technology, Meteorology, Olfactology, Mapology, Serology.

[Dominic Evangelista]

I do like it.

[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

I like it very much.

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[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

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[Dr. Dominic Evangelista]

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