And, by the way, a cockroach is an ancient, kind and responsive animal.

Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov

The cockroach has existed on Earth throughout the history of the human race. The insect itself is much older than us, and many other insects - clear prints of cockroaches, up to the veins on the underwings and knobs on the shells, are found in the oldest deposits of the Carboniferous period, numbering about three hundred million years. The cockroach is a heat-loving creature, the temperature below 5 degrees Celsius is already fatal for him, so in warm countries he lives in freedom, and in middle lane compelled to coexist next to man.

Although cockroaches live side by side with us, we know surprisingly little about them, preferring to communicate only with the help of an old slipper. We know about the faceted structure of the eye of a fly or dragonfly, but we never think about how the eye of a cockroach works. But his eye consists of two thousand optical elements, ommatidia, which is two hundred times more than that of a simple worker ant. He touches the cockroach with his paws, more precisely, with the hairs on his paws, smells with his antennae, while with the back antennae located behind the body, he senses danger and can run away in time if someone sneaks up on him. The cockroach shell consists of chitosan, a non-toxic immunostimulant and antiseptic. During maturation, the cockroach sheds and re-covers itself several times with this unique source. useful substances, leaving the old wallow literally under our feet.

In fact, a cockroach is a fairly harmless creature. As Sergei Dovlatov wrote: "And in general, what did cockroaches do wrong? Maybe a cockroach has ever bitten you? Or offended your national dignity? After all, no." Furthermore. The cockroach does not drink blood, like a mosquito, does not tolerate dangerous diseases, like a fly, does not lay eggs in cereals, like a food moth. He just lives next to us, hiding in secret corners during the day and getting out at night for a little snack - the leftovers from our table, the crumbs and garbage that we scatter around the kitchen. He, in fact, is our assistant, the orderly at home. And what? A person consistently and uncompromisingly destroys a cockroach, receiving from this some kind of painful satisfaction:

“Ah, you’re running around here, damn it!” He slapped his palm angrily at the cockroach, which had the misfortune to catch his eye. “Such a disgusting thing!

The cockroach fell on its back and shook its legs frantically. Nevyrazimov took him by one leg and threw him into the glass. The glass flared and crackled. And Nevyrazimov felt better. "(A.P. Chekhov).

The cockroach is disgusting, disgusting, it causes disgust, which is not caused by any insect, not to mention warm-blooded ones. It is he, and not crickets or grasshoppers similar to him, or flies or mosquitoes close to him in the synanthropic way of life, that causes disgust, so pure and meaningless that it is difficult to explain it with rational reasons.

An appeal to the collective subconscious reveals little in the nature of cockroaches. Some interpreters of dreams believe that seeing a cockroach - bad sign, meaning chores in the house, apparently by association with the flickering of the cockroach tribe in the night kitchen. Others dig deeper, claiming that the cockroach means someone else's envy - this one can probably realize itself by the appearance of a cockroach in your borscht. Especially if you cook it in a communal kitchen. And still others even believe that seeing a cockroach in a dream is an unconditionally positive sign, speaking of an imminent win, a large enrichment at someone else's expense. Here the dreamer himself puts on the skin of a cockroach, descends on eight paws and carries away a tasty crumb from a large and terrible table into a mink.

This is a rare case when a person identifies himself with a cockroach. Perhaps a Russian punk band named itself after this insect, by analogy with the British "bugs" and in the spirit of the punk decline of the floral romanticism of the sixties. Moreover, Yoko Ono in the long-term project "Odyssey of the cockroach" demonstrates Homo sapiens as a monstrous aggressive monster, seen through the eyes of a small innocent cockroach, crawling from one terrible era to another. At the end of the journey, the artist prepared for her cockroach hope and light at the end of the tunnel. Apparently, the same old sneaker.

Perhaps, behind the hostility to cockroaches lies the usual fear, self-doubt: a person is afraid that a cockroach that arose on Earth before him will outlive him. There are grounds for these fears. An adult red cockroach is able to painlessly starve for forty days. If required, the cockroach can hold its breath for half an hour or an hour or slow down the heart rate to almost a complete stop, and then accelerate it again, as yogis do. Moreover, a cockroach can live for several days without a head - its brain is not localized inside the skull, but is distributed throughout the body. The headless animal continues to wander around the house until it dies, colliding at full speed with a wall or crushed by a slipper.

But the widespread belief about the cockroach as the only inhabitants of the Earth after the global nuclear war refers, apparently, to a synthetic phobia, in which a person's horror of a nuclear catastrophe and a small domestic insect are combined. In fact, although the cockroach's resistance to radiation far exceeds that of humans and other mammals, it is far from a champion in the insect kingdom. The same Drosophila, beloved by geneticists, is seriously ahead of him. In addition, a cockroach, as a heat-loving creature, will not endure a nuclear winter. However, the Earth, inhabited only by fruit flies - a picture more absurd than apocalyptic - was not adopted by PR fighters for world peace.

Over the years of coexistence with cockroaches, mankind has developed many ways to deal with them. In peasant Russia, cockroaches were fought with biophysical methods: huts were frozen to a temperature unacceptable for cockroaches to live. Gradually, when the cold spread up through the hut, the cockroaches climbed higher and higher up the walls, accumulated on the ceiling, and finally fell to the floor in hundreds of stiff bodies. AT Soviet time the favorite means of killing cockroaches was a mixture boric acid with sugar or, in more sophisticated cases, dry alabaster with flour. The Soviet people firmly believed that a cockroach that had eaten boric acid would experience unbearable thirst, and if its access to water was cut off, it would soon die in terrible agony. Alabaster, on the other hand, was supposed to solidify in the stomach of a cockroach with a piece of gypsum and lay down heavily on the heart and other organs of the insect. Then incomprehensible chemical traps, sprinklers, crayons were used, the creators of which did not stoop to explain chemical composition their drugs and methods of influencing the cockroach organism, limiting themselves to oath promises of unbearable torment and imminent death to all insects in the house.

Along with practical methods, there were also anecdotal ones. Dictionary Dalia advised: "To make the cockroaches disappear, take as many of them as there are residents in the house, and drag them over the threshold and the road in a bast shoes", and modern folklore warns the owner of the apartment not to smile during the exodus of cockroaches - so that they do not decide that the owner is joking, and did not return to him. In the fight against a cockroach, people reach savagery, to manic insanity, turning into sadists and fanatics, obsessed with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bfix. Among the tips that such people distribute, there may be recommendations not just to slap a cockroach with a slipper, from which a hardy insect can wake up and return to life and intensive reproduction, but by all means crush, smear the body on the floor and dance on a chitinous cover. Or, on the contrary, do not kill the cockroach to the end, but only lightly slap it and, while the wounded one comes to his senses, take out the duty sachet of boric acid and carefully sprinkle the chitinous body. Then the cockroach that returned to the family will not only go to another world in agony, but will also take the lives of its comrades with it.

A lot of methods, a lot of effort, a lot of strength put a person to fight with a mustachioed insect. But this struggle, this age-old war without compromises and rules did not lead to the destruction of the cockroach - there it is, as if nothing had happened, sticking out its antennae from under the plinth! But where does it come from? And who is he?

Let's try to cover up an old slipper and take a look at the cockroach without the usual prejudice. A lot of interesting things will immediately be revealed: from edible Chinese cockroaches, to large, six centimeters in size, Madagascar, which can be kept at home as pets. Only caring for them is complicated and expensive: they need a special terrarium, and maintain the temperature and humidity conditions, and give them bedding, and a lamp, and shelter, and decorations for the house, and even making a menu - not every restaurant craftsman can do it, it’s better immediately hire a former chef kindergarten. And most importantly - drinkers! Remember - only completely flat drinkers! Otherwise, your pet will drown and die in front of your eyes.

However, this applies to Madagascar cockroaches, gentle and spoiled Afroinsects. But the South American ones are quite combat, more precisely, cross-country. They reach speeds of up to 5.5 km / h, running in a second a distance fifty times the length of their own body. They are the fastest land insects in the world. And the Turkish ones are not bad, judging by M. Bulgakov's description of the famous races in Constantinople. Bulgakov, who has never seen them himself, interprets cockroach races as evidence of the last degree of degradation of Russian officers in exile, in isolation from "the king, the motherland and faith." The Russian reflective mentality is alien to the childish joy of Australians who have held cockroach races in the city of Brisbane every year for more than twenty years. Races are arranged exactly on a public holiday - Australia Day. Their rules are clearly regulated, for violation a fine of one hundred million dollars is imposed, or a harsh male trial follows with "mights" - visitors to the bar. At the end of the race, the owner of the prize cockroach, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and slippers - the working and dress uniform of a working Australian, climbs onto a pedestal and starts pouring proletarian Victoria Bitter beer on all those gathered or - oh, a magnificent young nation! - spray with a water pistol.

A Russian person looks at cockroaches differently. Perhaps the reason for this is the long coexistence with him under the same roof, which left indelible marks on our psyche. Already at the end of the 17th century, Archpriest Avvakum, thrown into an earthen prison, complained: "No one came to me, only mice, and cockroaches, and crickets scream, and there are enough fleas." But in France, paradoxically, the cockroach first appeared in the language, and only then in the house. It is claimed that the word cabard came from Arabic with spellings in various grammatical forms kafir , kafara , caphar and meant "unbeliever", "converted to a foreign religion". In the 16th century, this word had a meaning: a hypocrite, a hypocrite, a person with false piety. In one of Voltaire's letters, they find a complaint that yesterday at the table he was, by an absurd accident, seated next to a "cockroach". More generally, this word meant: "pretender", and in slang - "informer". Note that in the Russian dictionary of prison-camp-thieves jargon, one of the meanings of the word "cockroach" - "a police officer who does not pose a danger" - is directly opposite to the French one: "not a criminal, but a law enforcement officer, not dangerous by his talkativeness, but safe by inaction and silence"; they are related only by the fact that both of them receive a reward from the opposite camp - they feed from someone else's table.

However, this value is French, according to an authoritative dictionary, is already considered obsolete. Now the word cafar d refers to an insect, and named, according to linguists, from "a pretender who hides his essence," like a cockroach hiding from a bright light.

The word turns out to be hardy, like the insect itself, and can even crawl from a person's name into his life and work. Wouldn’t this “kafir” or “kafar” hide in the name of a Czech writer, would a reverse metamorphosis happen to one of his heroes - a transformation from a man into a giant cockroach, forced to hide from the light and people? And the tragic fate of the illegitimate daughter of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, both the real one and her self-proclaimed clone, was it not determined by the name - Princess Tarakanova? It was hardly worth it to claim the Russian throne with such a surname, the tragic end (oh, this tender neck, the thrown back head, this humility before hopelessness!) Was predetermined, as the end of a cockroach is predetermined, in the middle of the day alone climbed out into the world.

Since the time of Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil", the word "cockroach" in French has also been used in a figurative sense, becoming a synonym for spleen, sadness, melancholy. There are phrases "to have a cockroach" (indulge in black thoughts), "catch t.", "give t.", "t. blow", "t. day". The most common expression sounds like "cockroach in the head" and means "to be in frustrated feelings, to be absorbed in an obsession."

Russian literature is infested with cockroaches - in their basic, biological, meaning, and almost always in a pejorative, negative sense. Cockroaches are found in the texts of Gogol, Shmelev, Korolenko, Saltykov-Shchedrin, of course Gilyarovsky. In Chekhov, a cockroach marks a vulgar life, petty bourgeois happiness: "Vulgarity and vulgarity surround me. Boring, insignificant people, pots of sour cream, jugs of milk, cockroaches, stupid women. women and cockroaches.

The cockroach also crawls out of the novel by Dostoevsky, the writer, if not the most obsessed with black melancholy, then most of all writing under its influence. In the novel "Demons", which predicts "demons coming out of a Russian person and entering a herd of pigs" (that is, other Russian people), Captain Lebyadkin's fable sounds.

. The place was taken by a cockroach,

Our glass is very full,

They shouted at Jupiter.

But while they were crying,

Further, Lebyadkin retells the unfinished fable in his own words: the watchman Nikifor throws out insects, the cockroach dies, but - "he does not grumble!": not participating in violence and not resisting it, the cockroach silently dies in the garbage heap. Captain Lebyadkin, himself just as disgusting and harmless as the hero of his fable, an insignificant cockroach of Russian literature, silently and ingloriously perishes in the revolutionary-terrorist conflagration that is just beginning. But the death of one cockroach does not lead to the destruction of the cockroach family, and soon, undoubtedly, the same glass from which the watchman Nikifor threw it out will be filled with them again. Cockroaches, swept away by the revolutionary whirlwind, fires and blizzards, will again crawl out into the world, but in such qualities and quantities that literature XIX never imagined for a century.

The period of war communism turned out to be an unsuitable era for cockroaches: "The cockroaches failed somewhere, showing their malicious attitude towards the war period of communism," writes M. Bulgakov in Fatal Eggs. They emigrated, apparently, as we saw, recalling another work of the master. But then, when life and comfort began to improve, when at least some kind of prosperity appeared, and with them - the desire to relax and have fun, cockroaches also climbed, but such that horror took. Korney Chukovsky in fairy tales for children tried to overcome this horror in a rational way. In the tale of the lazy and untidy Fyodor, he still managed to induce the heroine to clean up and thereby warn against the appearance of a cockroach. In the fairy tale "Cockroach", written in 1921-1922, but predicting the time when the hero would already straighten his mustaches, the writer appealed to the mind of the little reader, showing and explaining that in fact THIS is just a "liquid-legged goat-bug", but such calls, of course, did not help, and the cockroach reigned over the animals. In fact, the animals themselves transferred the authority to the kingdom to the cockroach, delegating to him their fears that had accumulated over the years of a warped psyche. And then they simply had to implant these phobias into their own children, who initially, perhaps, were able to discern the "liquid-leggedness" of a cockroach. But the parents, "crying, sobbing, roaring," managed to scare them too. Salvation came to them at the end of the fairy tale, otherwise what a fairy tale it would be, but it came from outside, "because of the bush, because of the blue forest", because of the hillock, like Deus Ex Machina, and the animals of their own "cockroaches" did not overcome.

Of course, political allusions do not work here, the "cockroach" created in 1921 is not Stalin at all, there was no "Stalin" then, it is simply the realization of one's own obsessions, black thoughts that cannot be easily dealt with. Born inside the human head, from the complexes and fears of a person, cockroaches crawl out into the world and begin to multiply rapidly and increase in size. And in 1933, "cockroach eyes" are already appearing everywhere and cockroach features are personalized in someone's familiar and beloved form. In 1934, oberiut Nikolai Oleinikov will still attempt to cope with a cockroach in one go, in the spirit of Khlebnikov's "laughter spell":

. And then the crowd to him

Some with tongs, some with a hand

One hundred and four tools

Tearing apart the patient

From injuries and from wounds

By the way, this "and then the crowd will come to him." It is very reminiscent of "The crowd will fly into this room / The wash basins will fly in, / And they will bark and howl, / And they will pound with their feet. ", cruel wash basins from Chukovsky's Moydodyr, who were about to wash the dirty boy - bring him in order until the cockroaches wound up neither on him nor in his head. What can you do, putting things in order is always an effort, a temporary victory of energy over entropy, and a violation of the natural course of things, which prefers relaxed soft warmth and the gradual advent of cockroaches. In Oleinikov's poem, which has a distorted quote from Lebyadkin's fable as its epigraph, laughter is at war with a cockroach, concentrated to black humor, reaching, in turn, to evangelical heights.

Thrown by all, alone,

But his father does not hear him.

And we shudder, hearing here the echoes of "Why did You leave me?" and immediately we sigh with relief: this is not the cry of a cockroach, tormented by a crowd of executioners, it is not he crying out to his eternal under-cupboard father, this is his own son, a future orphan, crying to him. Nothing, the cockroach will survive, grow up, and all the efforts of the crowd of vivisectors will lead to nothing: from the darkness under the stove or from the fears inside our head, the cockroach will appear again.

Cockroaches are inevitable, like entropy, to fight with them as effectively as to fight with the laws of the Universe, they are inside us, and the fight against our own complexes only leads to the destruction of the personality or the emergence of other, even more difficult complexes. Cockroaches come down the garbage chute from other people's cluttered kitchens or from our own dark corners. If you stop, give up, let them multiply uncontrollably, then a couple of cockroaches in a year can easily turn into ten thousand, one hundred thousand, a million individuals. Multiplying, they will occupy the entire space of our kitchen, our home, our mind. It is impossible to erase them from existence with one volitional movement of the hand, they are in this existence before us, they are numerous and prolific, secretive and resilient. Destroying them is as real as lifting yourself by the hair or building the kingdom of God in a single country.

In V. Pelevin's novel "The Life of Insects" the cockroach appears twice. The first, bloodsucker-loser Archibald, explains his worthlessness by parental misalliance: "Mother was a ladybug. And father was a cockroach." Mixed blood either calls him to fly into the sky, then lowers him to the ground, to a provincial donor station. And yet, the upward attraction turns out to be stronger, and one day, having almost forgotten how to fly, on wings that do not hold him, he rushes across the bay and dies - but not like a cockroach crushed by a slipper, but like a mosquito slammed by a human hand. His broken body is washed ashore by the surf; as befits a real romantic story, he renounced years of living in a dark barn and chose a moment of heroic flight.

Another Peleven character is a cicada by birth, and it was the cicada, remember Lafontaine's fable, remade by a Russian fabulist, "sang and danced all summer long." And according to Plato, cicadas, delighted with music, were able to "live without needing food, and sing without food and drink until death", and after that they ascended to the Muses. However, the character of Serezha is not yet a cicada itself, but its larva, a worm that lives underground and digs a hole, driven by an incomprehensible instinct to him. During his dark underground life, Seryozha twice turns into a cockroach - but each time he is horrified, noticing a long cockroach mustache on his face, and, having made an impossible effort on himself, pulls himself out of the natural swamp of everyday life. In the end, he nevertheless turns into a cicada and soars into the sky, simply because he has not forgotten about him.

Pelevin's heroes defeated the cockroaches inside themselves, dying or turning to a new life, they overcame that part of the "mixed" themselves that swayed and cockroached them. Such "mixed" personalities were the Greek demigods, Hercules, Bellerophon, Perseus - half gods, half people, torn apart by this dual nature all their lives and performing feats, defeating monsters not so much external as internal. The heroes eventually managed to rise into the sky, feast with the gods on Olympus or burn as a star in a new constellation, naturally at the cost of losing human nature, burned in the funeral sacrificial fire.

Rendered correctly, as one Zen parable says, but somewhat straightforward. And yet there is a recipe: to clean and build ourselves, tirelessly, day after day and year after year, sweeping out dirt, dust and cockroaches and knowing that they will certainly start up again, come at night when we sleep, and begin to rustle in the dark with their antennae -antennas, will catch and multiply our fears. But we will look at them as at ourselves, without prejudice and disgust, and then the one who was our fear will be horrified himself. Let's finally finish the quote with which we started this text: "And, by the way, the cockroach is an ancient, kind and sympathetic animal. It runs only on four of its eight legs. The rest it presses or carries something in them. But it cannot look into the eyes - they ossify with horror" (DAP).

Cockroaches in an apartment are a problem that is familiar to many firsthand. These insects are the most common pests in apartments, residential buildings and business premises. And although cockroaches do not harm a person directly, they are extremely undesirable insects in the house, contributing to the spread of diseases and generally deteriorating the sanitary condition of the home.

Let's see where they come from in the apartment ...

How and where do cockroaches get into the room

A little more about the reasons for the appearance of cockroaches in the house

If everything is more or less clear with where the cockroaches come from in the apartment, then the reasons for their successful “fixing” and reproduction in the room are not so obvious to most of us.

Cockroaches are insects that require a certain area to settle the population. If there are already too many cockroaches in an infected apartment and there is not enough food for everyone, some of them go to neighboring rooms in order to master new territory. This is the reason that after a while the entire entrance or house suffers from cockroaches.

Sometimes cockroaches populate a room from a previously accidentally introduced female or a pair of cockroaches. Most often, this problem occurs in people who travel a lot or go on business trips, staying in various hotels and inns. Sometimes cockroaches get into the house with food bought at the supermarket.

An example of an apartment infested with cockroaches

Cockroaches in the house - a sign of unsanitary conditions

Regardless of the reason for the appearance of cockroaches, the preservation and increase in their population is possible only if there are a number of favorable factors:

If cockroaches appeared at home, you need to carefully study the possible ways of their penetration. It is imperative to close up all the cracks in the walls and floor, equip the ventilation holes with special nets that will not allow other insects to enter the apartment.

It often remains unclear where cockroaches came from, because there can be many options. However, these insects can continue to live and reproduce only in favorable conditions for them.

Usually, cockroach infestation begins with a few individuals, which become the ancestors of an entire population that occurs in just a few weeks. Unsanitary conditions in the apartment - the main factor comfortable life cockroaches.

By the way, after disinsection, cockroaches can return only if the owners do not care too much about the cleanliness of their home.

See also our experiments on cockroaches:

We catch cockroaches and test for them different means- See the results...

What to do if there are cockroaches in the house

It is important for every person living in an apartment building or a private house to know where cockroaches come from. This will remind you of the need for preventive measures: maintaining order, eliminating gaps in the walls and closing ventilation ducts.

But if cockroaches have already appeared in the house, you need to urgently start fighting them:

1. Put things in order in the apartment. The appearance of cockroaches can even become a reason for a small repair, but if this is not possible, then general cleaning is a must. Eliminating deposits of old garbage and eliminating openly lying food will make the fight much more successful and speed up the result.
2. Use special means and traps. The industry offers a lot for the destruction of cockroaches chemicals: insecticidal crayons, aerosols, powders and gels. In addition, you can use folk recipes or put

With these annoying insects, humanity has been living side by side for more than one century. All this time, by whatever means, the owners of the dwellings did not try to get rid of uninvited guests. AT modern world pesticides are used for this, but how did they fight cockroaches in Russia?

Where did the "Prussians" come from in Russia?

There is no mention of domestic pests in medieval Russian chronicles. Historians attribute the first negative statements addressed to them to mid-eighteenth century and are associated with the Seven Years' War in Europe, in which Russian troops also participated. Then, in 1757, Austria, France, Russia and Saxony united against Prussia and England. Russian soldiers fought with varying success in the Prussian lands and at the end of the war went home. And once in their homeland, they were surprised to find that their carts, knapsacks, as well as collars and pockets of uniforms, were simply teeming with some kind of red insects. The fact that they were attracted there by the remains of meat and bread crumbs, the soldiers did not think. "Prussians", as the Russians called them, very soon bred in all villages and cities, and they could be seen not only in peasant huts and inns, but also in the mansions of noble landowners. Previously unknown insects that do not bite a person and fear him like fire were at first perceived as harbingers of profit. They were even used as a medicine - they were added to vodka, believing that then it would become useful for colds. The peasants came up with a sign associated with them - if the "Prussians" run away from home en masse, then a fire will happen soon. Whether this is true or not is unknown. But very soon it became clear that the same food that people eat is also needed by new insects, and the Russians seriously thought about how to rid their homes, taverns and inns of these small parasites.

What is this cockroach?

All insects similar in behavior to the "Prussians" in Russia began to be called cockroaches. Rumor has it that the name was invented by the Russian Tatars, whose language is part of the Turkic group - they had the word “tarkhan” in their lexicon, denoting a clan that, by ancestry, was exempt from all taxes and, in general, “owes nothing to anyone.” Indeed, in Russia, cockroaches, unlike other insects, have not been integrated into the food chain: not a single animal or bird eats them. And it turned out to be necessary to destroy cockroaches: the majority of the country's population never had food abundance, and then there were these freeloaders. But then the Russians did not know that, unlike people, cockroaches can live without food for about 40 days and can do without air for 45 minutes, so even drowning them in water will not work. And in a year, one female cockroach is able to lay more than 2 million eggs, and where until recently these insects were rare, hordes of cockroaches were soon running.

How to kill cockroaches

But on the other hand, people very quickly realized that cockroaches need a warm and humid room for a normal life, and at low temperatures they die. And this is true: entomologists say that at +15 cockroaches stop breeding and become numb, at -5 they die in half an hour, and at -7 - in a minute. And the Russians came up with a way to get rid of cockroaches. This was usually done in a harsh winter; in the hut they stopped heating the stove, opened the windows and doors wide open and went to the neighbors for a day. The cockroaches could not run from the cooling hut to another due to frost, following warm air they crawled to the ceiling and, freezing to death, soon crumbled to the floor. The family that returned home had only to sweep away this whole bunch of cockroaches and throw it out of the outskirts.

But the "Prussians" annoyed people in the summer. Noticing the feeding habits of insects, various traps were arranged for them. They left old dishes with the remnants of beer or honey on the tables, and then, when it was filled with eternally hungry cockroaches, they covered it with a lid and threw it away. Others, more effective way was the preparation of decoctions. Fresh leaves of tansy, wormwood, mint, wild rosemary, honeysuckle, anise and sprigs of red elderberry were boiled, poured ready solution in cups and placed around the hut. And also laid out the plants themselves in all corners of the room. Cockroaches hate the smells of these herbs, but still drink the solutions prepared for them and die from poisoning. The remaining individuals, as a rule, scatter, emigrate to their neighbors. And later they move from them back to the same hut where they lived, when the grass there finally withers and the owners get tired of preparing decoctions.

Therefore, it is possible to completely get rid of cockroaches only now, with the advent of modern chemicals. And even then, unfortunately, this is a complicated matter.

Insects such as cockroaches have existed on earth for more than 300 million years, as proven by archaeological excavations. They are insanely resistant to climate change and the conditions around them. They can survive in the cold, with no large quantity or no food at all, and live underwater or without oxygen for short periods of time. These insects are the most common in the world, among other types of household pests.

There are approximately 3,500 species of these insects. Most of them live in nature and do not survive indoors. Not just most of consider houses as a favorite place to live. Difficult to find a place the globe where these pests cannot be found. Due to the fact that they masterfully adapt to the environment, they are present in almost parts of the world.
At the same time, all their ability to change makes them leaders in invulnerability. They easily get used to the kind of pesticides they were poisoned with earlier and do not react to it in the future. They can even do without a head.
In Russia, there are only a few species: German, red, black. Such species mainly inhabit houses in Russia, America and Europe.

cockroaches photo

General form familiar to everyone and presented on cockroaches photo. They have an oval shape with a flat body, which allows them to crawl into all types of cracks and crevices. The back looks like a kind of shield. With their long, spiny legs, they can run long distances quickly on almost any surface. Their paws have such properties that they can easily move on glass windows or walk on the ceiling. Different types differ in size and color, some of them can fly. The most common are German cockroaches. It is they who most often inhabit apartments, restaurants, hospitals, warehouses, offices, and so on. They have a brown color. Distinctive feature- two black stripes on the back of the body, near the head. Immature individuals, which are called nymphs, acquire a darker color. Being almost black, they have a light stripe down the middle of the back, which is a well-known marking of the juvenile. Significantly smaller in size adult.

An adult red cockroach is about 1.5 cm long. The adult male is golden brown in color and has a narrow body with wings extending beyond the tip of the abdomen. The female is dark chestnut in color, has a teardrop-shaped body, and her wings do not completely cover the abdominal cavity. Both sexes have distinctive horizontal yellow stripes. The nymph has two pale stripes that run horizontally across the entire body.

These pests do not like strong odors such as vinegar or kerosene. Such dope will scare away annoying insects. Also, ultrasonic devices have recently begun to appear on the market, but they have not yet proven themselves to the end.

Since cockroaches move mainly at night, daylight or the light of the lamps will stop them. But spending money on electricity and rejoicing is not particularly worth it, they will still find a way to profit. Finding tidbits in hard-to-reach places when cleaning.

The main thing cockroaches are afraid of is being hungry. If you comply with sanitary conditions, carry out regular wet cleaning, take out the garbage in a timely manner, put food in containers, do not leave dirty dishes and crumbs after eating, then cockroaches will have nothing to do with you.
But, if these insects fell in love with your room, then getting rid of them will not be very easy. After all, they easily adapt to new conditions. environment. And what scared them off the first time may not work on them the next. And they will not leave attempts to settle to you again. Use of barrier means of protection is necessary.

How cockroaches breed

Cockroaches have three stages of development: egg, nymph and adult. Each female produces 4-8 capsules in her life. The female carries the eggs in a special cocoon that looks like a capsule. It has an elongated long shape and a light brown tint. Inside the cocoon there are 2 rows of eggs. The female wears this capsule on the lower part of the body almost until the very moment of maturation.

Before hatching, the female lays the capsule by dropping it or sticking it to a surface. Most often, this happens in a secluded place where the nymphs can easily find goodies for themselves. It happens that the eggs ripen while still on the body of the female and open the capsule.
Each capsule can contain from 30 to 50 eggs. When the maturation process is completed, the seam along the capsule on the upper part breaks through the grown nymphs. After that, they immediately begin to fully function.
The population is dominated by young individuals, which are the vast majority in relation to adults.
The next stage is the nymphs. These are small cockroaches, which in their behavior are no different from an adult. They also make constant forays in search of food.

Do cockroaches bite

Cockroaches are omnivores, they eat everything from plants to meat. In the case of extreme settlement, where their number is very large, they can bite a living person. Especially when food becomes limited. Therefore, the answer to the question of whether cockroaches bite will be - yes, they bite. Although, it doesn't happen as often as one might think.

When it comes to biting, they are more likely to bite: Legs; Arms; Nails; Eyelashes. This does not mean that cockroaches really want to eat you. They don't do it on purpose. Food is the only thing they are looking for. Therefore, bites usually occur at night when people are sleeping in food debris around their hands or mouth. It is this remnant of food that attracts them.
In most cases, cockroaches will not bite humans if there are other sources of food, such as in trash cans or open food. When the number of cockroaches is left unattended, the population can outgrow the amount of normal food sources. In such a situation, they will be forced to forage more and eat things that they usually do not eat. Generally, pest control will be started before the population reaches these levels.
These ugly pests use chewing movements that can cause painful bites that cause mild skin reactions in sensitive people.

How long does a cockroach live

To complete the nymph stage into a mature individual, with room conditions, need 40-125 days. Depending on environmental conditions and other factors. Adult German cockroaches can live up to one year, but most will die from various causes long before that time. Adult females live for about 200 days.
To answer the question of how long a cockroach lives, you need to add up all the stages of its development. The total will be about 1.5 years, excluding the egg stage.

They are very stable and durable. If water is present, adults can live for about a month without food, but young nymphs will starve to death within 10 days. Without water and food, adults die in less than two weeks. At this time, the cockroaches become very aggressive and begin to seek food even during abnormal periods such as daytime. They begin to run to other habitats, in search of a better life.
A cockroach's body can survive even without a head for up to a week. This is because they breathe through small holes in their body segments and have an open circulatory system. Since they don't need a head to breathe, these insects can survive without it for a short amount of time. In the end, the cockroach dies of dehydration, since it can no longer drink water.

Where do cockroaches come from

It is simply impossible to establish the place where cockroaches come from. They move very quickly, are hardly noticeable and constantly travel, in search of a new habitat.
They can get into your house absolutely by different reasons. You may unconsciously bring them with you after visiting some public place, whether shopping center, cinema, cafe and others.
Since we live in apartment buildings, then one infected apartment is enough for the whole house to suffer! They climb through cracks and crevices, vents, sewer pipes, under doors, in places common use and flights of stairs, even outer walls through windows.

Your home is an ideal breeding ground for certain types of pests. With plenty of food, warmth, water, and nesting sites, they can stay active all year round.

People are shocked when they find cockroaches in their homes and kitchens. Even if you observe crystal cleanliness, you still will not be completely immune from the appearance of such neighbors.
Seeing one individual, there is a high probability that most of the population is simply hidden from view. So it is impossible to delay the destruction. First of all, pass general cleaning, the main thing is not to forget about hard-to-reach places. If you do not see the special ones themselves, you may stumble upon the waste products of these insects. In such cases, it is better not to delay until the breeding process has grown into a larger disaster.

Few of the representatives of the animal world have a worse reputation than ordinary cockroaches. The BBC Earth reviewer found that almost all our ideas about these insects are nothing more than urban myths.

Reputation: vile creature. Cockroaches are disgusting creatures that feed on garbage, are not afraid of radiation and are able to survive in any conditions. If the world ends, only these nasty insects will remain on Earth. And in general: without them we would be better off.

Reality: there are almost 5,000 species of cockroaches, of which only about 30 are capable of harming humans. It is they who cast a shadow on a group of insects, which is characterized by an incredibly rich variety of forms. And by the way: radiation has a very detrimental effect on cockroaches.

It is unlikely that anyone will like the sight of a cockroach running across the kitchen floor. negative emotions, which we experience in relation to these creatures, make us think that all cockroaches are equally repulsive.

However, George Beccaloni, curator of the Orthopteroid insect exhibit at the Natural History Museum in London, is of the opposite opinion. He is on the side of the cockroaches.

“People are very biased towards this group of insects,” he says.

Less than 1% of the 4,800 cockroach species we know can cause people trouble, but we are not ready to change our attitude towards the remaining 99%. According to Beccaloni, this is a blatant injustice.

He notes that there are almost as many species of cockroaches on Earth as there are species of mammals. According to him, it is impossible to write off all cockroaches from the accounts only because of hostility to 30 of their species.

“It's like meeting a mouse or a rat and calling all mammals vile pests,” he says.

A fair but not entirely convincing argument: the diversity of mammals is much more obvious.

Context

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I remember when my parents took me on a trip to Sardinia as a child, where our apartment was infested with cockroaches. How can other representatives of this group of insects differ from them?

During the next half hour, I learned a lot. First, cockroaches live in completely different geographic regions.

“Cockroaches live on all continents except Antarctica, and in most climatic zones, from rainforests to deserts,” says Beccaloni.

In the tropics and at low altitudes, where the temperature is constantly high, the variety of cockroach species is especially high.

However, some of them are able to live in more extreme conditions. So, for example, the species Eupolyphaga everestiana lives only on Mount Everest at an altitude of more than 5000 m above sea level.

The fact that cockroaches live in such different climatic conditions, undoubtedly suggests a variety of sizes and shapes of these insects.

The smallest species known to us, the Texas anteater from North America, chose the nests of leaf-cutting ants as a dwelling. Its length is only a few millimeters, and it looks tiny even against the background of its owners.

In contrast, the huge cockroach Megaloblatta blaberoides boasts an incredible wingspan of more than 18 cm.

Even more close-up view is a giant rhinoceros cockroach native to Queensland, Australia. The body length of this wingless cockroach reaches 8 cm, and its weight is more than 30 g.

This cockroach is almost the size of the palm of your hand and may seem dangerous. But he doesn't care about people. “The giant rhinoceros cockroach feeds only on bark and fallen leaves,” says Beccaloni.

Many types of cockroaches perform similar environmental roles: They eat decaying organic materials, producing nutrients for other organisms.

“There is evidence of the colossal ecological importance of cockroaches,” says Beccaloni.

For many species of living creatures, including some people, cockroaches are a delicious snack. Which explains why many representatives of this group of insects in the process of evolution have learned to skillfully disguise themselves so as not to become someone's lunch or dinner.

Banana cockroaches (Panchlora) have chosen a fairly simple green camouflage to help them blend in with their surroundings.

Cockroaches of the genus Perisphaerus curl up into a ball like an armadillo to protect themselves.

Representatives of the genus Prosoplecta mimic ladybugs and, accordingly, have the same catchy red and black color.

According to Beccaloni, to achieve a rounded shape ladybug, this cockroach wraps its hind wings "around itself like an umbrella".

Some species, such as beetle cockroaches, may squirt liquid to protect themselves. But if you disturb the Madagascar hissing cockroach, he will make a frightening sound warning that you should not mess with him.

It is not surprising that with such a rich experience of survival, cockroaches have learned to reproduce in various ways.

“When it comes to the diversity of reproductive biology, this group is almost unmatched by other insects,” says Beccaloni.

For some species, such a method of reproduction as parthenogenesis is characteristic. Females give birth to individuals that are completely identical to themselves, and for this they need neither a male nor mating.

In other species, the female, depending on the circumstances, may use both sexual and asexual reproduction patterns.

However, in most species, the female lays the egg capsule. Some simply leave it, while others incubate this capsule in a brood pouch from which the larvae subsequently emerge.

Beetle cockroaches do not have egg capsules. The female lays her eggs directly into the brood pouch, where they are supplied with a special nutrient similar to milk.

According to Beccaloni, it is "the most nutritious and high-calorie protein we know of." Thanks to this, well-developed offspring are born.

Sounds familiar? Not surprising. "It's very similar to the mammalian placenta," says Beccaloni.

In some cases, the female even takes care of the offspring after birth.

For example, females of the species Thorax porcellana carry their young under their wings. This may seem very cute, if you do not know that the larvae have razor-sharp jaws, with which they cut the skin of the mother and feed on her blood.

“They are like little vampires,” Beccaloni says.

Considering how many incredible adaptations cockroaches have made over the course of evolution, few people would be surprised if they had the ability to survive after a nuclear explosion. However, it is not.

"It's more of an urban myth," says Beccaloni.

For humans, the lethal dose of radiation is 10 Gray. “Five such doses will be enough for a cockroach,” he notes.

At first glance, such resistance to radiation may seem impressive, but in fact, according to Beccaloni, “among insects, this result is one of the lowest.”

Other species are able to survive, receiving a dose of radiation ten times higher.