Like bananas? How about the the taste of toothpaste? Or a nice loaf of bread?
Congratulations. You have the tastes of a cockroach.
Contrary to popular opinion, roaches will not eat just anything.
They like canned dog food, for instance, but aren’t crazy about dry dog food. They detest cucumbers and tomatoes and scrupulously avoid vegetables of any kind. They dislike salty crackers or pretzels. But perhaps the most stunning news is that growing numbers of roaches are turning up their antennae at peanut butter and sweets.
For the past five years, a team of scientists from the University of California at Berkeley and researchers from Combat Insect Control Systems have tried to figure out the favorite foods of cockroaches.
And recently, Vernard Lewis, an urban entomologist at the University of California at Berkeley, came to Orlando to spread the news about the latest roach research.
What fascinated the scientists, Lewis said, is the news that roaches are getting pickier about what they’ll eat. With new information on the ideal roach cuisine, scientists and insecticide manufacturers are now scurrying to build the perfect bait – used in those little disclike feeding stations you stick around the house.
“The game,” said Lewis, “is to find out what is a roach’s equivalent of filet mignon.”
Floridians, Lewis figures, will want to sit up and take notice of roach news. Forty-two of the 69 roach species in the United States live in Florida, giving the Sunshine State the most diverse roach population in the country.
Florida is not, however, home to the world’s biggest cockroaches.
“The biggest cockroach I’ve ever seen was from Zaire,” Lewis said. “It was a 4-inch-long Deathhead roach. They’re sort of round, shaped like a saucer.”Following close behind is the Madagascar hissing roach, which tries to scare off predators by hissing like a snake.
And, yes, cockroaches do have predators.
Spiders eat them. And in some cultures, so do people.
As part of his research, Lewis has eaten a few roaches. “They’re actually kind of bland tasting,” he said. “Insects tend to taste like what they eat. Grasshoppers have sort of a tobacco taste. Ants are peppery.”
Eating roaches and other insects, Lewis maintains, helps him use all his senses to figure out bug problems.
It is just part of the job.
Employed by the University of California at Berkeley, the 42-year-old Lewis spends his days researching roaches, answering consumers’ questions on the Insect Hot Line (established by the university for residents of the San Francisco Bay area) and, of all things, trying to think like a roach.
A general entomologist, Lewis started out studying all kinds of bugs. He worked as an exterminator to pay his way through graduate school, so when he chose a topic for his master’s thesis, he selected a familiar subject: the mighty cockroach.
“Cockroaches are pretty bold,” Lewis said. “They live in close association with humans. Insects like termites – you rarely see them. Ants are seasonal. Mosquitoes are an outdoor problem. But cockroaches are always there.”
And roaches, which are known to carry more than 60 kinds of viruses and bacteria such as salmonella, can be found almost anywhere. Lewis has uncovered roaches that have taken up residence in bank vaults and submarines.
Trying to get rid of cockroaches has become a preoccupation for many Americans.
“The problem is that most people don’t have the right game plan,” Lewis said. Spraying roaches or stomping them gives us a feeling of satisfaction, but it’s impossible to wipe out the thousands of roaches living behind the walls by employing those methods.
Instead, Lewis wants the public to understand roaches.
Practically blind, roaches grope along the edges of walls at night. Sensitive to the slightest vibration or wind current, they also have a keen sense of smell. “They come out of their cracks at night and they begin tasting the air with their antennae,” he said. “They pick up plumes of food odors and follow it. When they get near a source of food, they get very excited.”
Roaches get excited about lots of things, apparently. They also eat the dead bodies of their fellow roaches and will even eat roach excrement.
But it is their ability to develop resistance to pesticides that has stunned scientists and amazed the rest of us. Yet there’s hope. Hydramethylnon, which has been used on fire ants, may be the latest weapon against roaches. Scientists report that roaches haven’t been able to develop a resistance to the chemical.
The roach is a mighty adversary. Cockroaches have been on Earth for 350 million years, according to scientists. Lewis, just as a reminder, carries with him a 40-million-year-old roach fossilized in amber.
