Cockroach

Cock: “Warning: the following content may not be suitable for the faint hearted. If you are, do not continue. If you're going to have your meal soon, especially a buffet, don't continue. If you just ate your meal, especially a heavy one, don't continue...just an advice.”

Bull: “Disclaimer: No animals were intentionally harmed to produce this post.”

This happened a month or two ago. I was in my room in my hostel, and out of the blue, I heard a zapping sound. Zzzzp… Sounded like that. I knew it was the sound of something that was hit by the fan.

Guess what? It was a cockroach. The mightiest insect in the world committed suicide by flying into the rotatable fan - perhaps to prove it’s mightiness? If you don’t already know, yes, cockroaches can and do fly, sometimes. (So next time if there’s a cockroach somewhere, remember to look up as well.)

The worst part was that the cockroach was cut into two. The blades of the fan slashed it’s body into 2 parts – the bottom part got stuck inside the frame of the fan while its other half laid on the floor.

Amazingly, that half-cockroach was still breathing and surviving. My roomie picked it up with a tissue paper.

Half-cockroach

As you can see, the top part of the cockroach is still intact. And surprisingly, it was still moving its antennae and hairy legs. Impressive! It’s spirit is one to be modeled.

Yikes, My bottom half!

The bottom part got stuck in the frame. It' doesn’t seem like a part of the whole insect but believe me it is.

Isn’t it something quite unusual? Imagine being cut in half and still being able to live, although not for long.  That can only be possible in magic acts of sawing people in half. Besides maybe earthworms, I know of no other living creatures that are capable of the same feat. If there is, do share.Truly, the cockroach is one hell of an amazing living being.

If I’m not mistaken. The cockroach is quite a pre-historic creature, having crawled the planet Earth for hundreds of millions of years. The rather simple make up of its body makes it very survivable and durable for all these while. I bet it could survive longer than us humans too or any cocks out there, especially if there’s a nuclear warfare. Just for clarification, although the word cock is part of the roach, it has nothing to do with cock.

Speaking of nuclear, Japan is now struggling with nuclear reactor failures which could potentially escalate to a nuclear meltdown, after an 8.9 magnitude earthquake sent waves as high as 10 m upon Sendai. Hopefully all will be well for them. Sometimes it’s saddening to see the force of nature wrecking havoc on civilizations, but things like that is highly unpredictable and uncontrollable.

If there is ever a nuclear meltdown or warfare, rest assured that the cockroaches would survive longer than humans. According to a documentary I watched a long time ago, cockroaches can survive for as long as two weeks after a nuclear warfare when humans exposed to the same radiation can all die within a day.

How is this possible?

Cockroaches are simple structured insects, compared to humans which are so complex inside and out. So in a way, simplicity leads to long term survivability. When we are faced with a radiation, our cells could easily mutate and react to the contamination, but that’s not the case for our exoskeleton-ed friends.

Their eggs, also known as Ootheca, are also very unique. It looks like an armored shell. Because of it’s air tight, waterproof, tough, almost impenetrable property, it could survive a nuclear warfare. Definitely, the Ootheca is a tough nut to crack. So in an event of a nuclear warfare, the anti-radiation eggs could hatch after the war and grow into healthy adults.

Source: wikipedia

Even if a healthy, young cockroach is exposed to lethal radiation, the cockroach could lay an egg which contains hundreds of babies that could have the resistance of radiation passed down to them from their mother roach. Thence, the cockroach can continue to spread and dominate the world.

Have you seen an albino cockroach?

I don’t know about you but I’d seen quite a few with my own eyes. I’d seen them in the most unsurprising places of all – the toilet, specifically in the toilet bowl.

Now sometimes when you see a cockroach, you see that it’s white in color and think that maybe there exists albino cockroaches. Imagine, if it really exists, could it be an antithesis image of the normal kind? I do hope so. However, the truth is that there’s no albino cockroaches, yet.

What we’re seeing, those white versions of the cockroaches, are in fact normal cockroaches going through a phase of ecdysis, or shedding of the exoskeleton. After a cockroach sheds it’s skin, it will break out as a white roach. In a matter of a few hours, it breathes in huge amounts of air to inflate its body before the hardening process in order to “grow”. After that few hours, it turns hard and brown as usual. So that’s how people like me thought that white cockroaches are out there somewhere.

True, some of them are gross, but that might be the price to pay for being so adaptable.

cock-roach

Next time you see a mighty cockroach, try to admire them instead of hating them. Love them, don’t hate them. =)