Not only they can regrow lost legs, but they also make their own antibiotics and have an almost supernatural sense of smell.
They are growing stronger, so it’s only a matter of time before the cockroaches rise and conquer us all! The flying ones are the worst!
Photo via INSECT COP
According to CNN, scientists exposed German cockroaches to different insecticides, and found that the cockroach populations not only developed a resistance to the insecticide they were exposed to, but also picked up resistances to other insecticides.
Yup, we’re dead.
These super immune insects can then pass their resistance on to their offspring, making it only a matter of time before a given population becomes, essentially, insecticide-proof.
Michael Scharf of Purdue University, who led the study said that this is a previously undiscovered challenge in cockroaches.
“The cockroaches developed resistance to multiple classes of insecticides at once which will make controlling these pests almost impossible with chemicals alone,” he said.
The problem is, exterminators typically use a cocktail of different insecticides, which are divided into classes based on toxicity, and that way, if an insect is immune to one kind, another kind can knock them out.
But with cockroaches, this obviously won’t work if they become immune to different types of insecticides.
Photo via Loyal Termite & Pest Control
Scharf says resistance within a single generation of the cockroaches sometimes increased four to six fold, combine that with the fact a single female cockroach can produce 200 to 300 offspring in their short lifetime… and well, you can imagine what happens next...
It’s terrible!
But the truth is, cockroaches were on this earth millions of years before humans, and they’ve always managed to evolve. And it’s no surprise if they’ll be here millions of years after we’re gone.
By: Aishah Akashah Ahadiat
