Essay Sample on Cockroach
Once in our lifetime, people may have been scared of cockroaches or heard about their friend’s experience with a cockroach. But people had a wrong point of view. Cockroaches, or a Blattella Germanica and Periplaneta Americana are one of the extremophiles.
According to the article, “30 Animals Thriving in Extreme Environments,” “cockroaches [are] capable of squeezing through horizontal gaps with their bodies compressed by more than 50% and can withstand around 900 times their body weight” (Wiliams). As mentioned in the quote, a cockroach weighs at most 30g. This means that it can be capable of surviving a pressure that’s about 27kg. (Original sentence: compressed by more than 50% and can withstand around 900 times their body weight. From the website “30 Animals thriving in Natural Environment”) This is probably why a cockroach does not die when a 6-year-old kid steps on it and goes into tiny holes in the wall.
From the notes from the Fact Sheet, “American Cockroaches” mentions that the cockroaches lay 6 ~ 14 eggs at once in average 44 days (Jones). If we say that there could be 9 cycles in a year, from 1 cockroach, there would be 54 ~ 126 eggs in total. According to a google search, there are about 4,500 species of cockroaches that exist. If there are 100s of each species, the world would have 24,300,000 ~ 56,700,000 cockroaches each year. (This is a simple calculation, not from a website).
In the website “30 Animals Thriving in Natural Environment”, cockroaches can rapidly evolve too. It can have the ability to have resistance to pesticides. In one generation of a cockroach, they can increase their immunity by 6 times. They can survive well, but especially in a warm and cozy human body.
Although it could freak us out, there are some people who like and collect cockroaches. According to the video from Youtube, a 9-year-old girl named Shabby collects cockroaches. In the beginning, she only had 5, but now she has thousands. Her goal is making people not scared of cockroaches. She touches them, pat them, and even kisses them. She even has a grave for the cockroaches. While watching the video, some people felt her feelings of love towards the cockroaches, and some were confused and didn’t understand.
Cockroaches can sometimes be useful for humans too. From the website “Are Cockroaches Actually Useful?” It indicates that, “Cockroaches are professional recyclers, chowing down just about anything, including dead plants and animals, and animal waste” (Breau). As the article states, cockroaches may not be just annoying and scary, but rather help us recycle too. It also mentions that if the ones that buggs us are not it, the rest are in nature. (Original sentence: The rest live outside, recycling without bugging us at all. From website “Are Cockroaches Actually Useful”)
In conclusion, cockroaches are not that scary at all, but we humans are misunderstanding. Cockroaches help us recycle things to make a cleaner Earth. But what do humans do to them? We scream at them and probably kill them. Next time if we see one, let’s not panic and think one more time.
