Are there any benefits to having cockroaches?

Question

They're disgusting and dirty. I've heard that they can survive with their head cut off for 30 days. Are there any positive things to them? Do they contribute to the food chain in any way?

Answer 1

For humans, cockroaches pose little threat; practically all species of cockroaches are beneficial to their environment, and they are an invaluable aid in recycling a large majority of the Earth’s dead or decaying plant and animal matter. For example, tropical forests have been called “green deserts,” because their soils are poor in nutrients. The forest vegetation appears to be lush, but it has survived only through ingenious life-support systems. Cockroaches are one of the building blocks of these systems. Without cockroaches, dead and decaying vegetation would smother tropical forests.

Many people associate cockroaches with the spread of disease. Unlike mosquitoes or fleas, cockroaches do not spread disease via direct transmission (i.e. through the blood as the result of a bite). Instead, cockroaches inhabit unsanitary areas of food storage, bringing with them microbacterial agents of decay. In turn, these agents contaminate our food supplies with pathogenic organisms. It is these “hitchhikers” that spread disease, not the cockroaches. To prevent cockroaches from becoming pests in your home, clean your kitchen often, store your foodstuffs properly, and quickly dispose of spoiled food.

Answer 2

For the best answers, search on this site https://shorturl.im/avqTb

There are nearly 4,000 species of cockroaches in the world, of which only 25 to 30 (or less than 1%) have any pest status. Cockroaches are eaten by a wide range of small mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, other insects, and amphibians. They provide an important food source for many predators in the tropical areas where they live. In addition, cockroaches will eat almost anything, and as such are scavengers. Scavengers are the garbage men of the natural world, cleaning up wherever it's needed. If there were no scavengers, decay would be much slower and the soil would be poorer.

Answer 3

"Cockroaches in general have one very important symbiotic relationship with bacteroids living in special cells, mycetocytes, in their fat body tissue. The bacteroids are passed from generation to generation as a thin coating on their eggs, between the chorion and the oocyte cell membrane. During embryology these bacteroids invest in the female future ovary and the developing fat body tissue. The bacteroids produce all the vitamins needed by the cockroach with the exception of choline and cholesterol which remain as the only essential vitamins of the cockroach. The close relatives, termites and preying mantids have lost or never gained this type of symbiont. They must get their vitamins, like Vit A and D, in their food.

This is a true symbiotic relationship since the cockroaches have protected the bacteroids over the millions of years of their association and probably these bacteria-like organisms have been protected from changes forced on their strains by mating with other bacterial strains and have remained true to their type since they accepted the cloistered life they enjoy in the cockroach fat body. As long as the cockroach survives, these bacteroids will survive. They have hung their survival on a pretty sure bet. How is that for a symbiotic benefit?"

Answer 4

Cockroaches are found everywhere in the world except the polar ice caps. We mostly think of them as living in people's homes and scurrying out at night to scavenge leftover crumbs. Although they have a bad reputation as household pests, in reality only about a dozen species are pests to humans. This is less than 2% of all the species of cockroaches. Some roaches spend part of their lives in water. There are roaches that live communally with ants, wasps, and termites. Other roaches live in bat caves. A few live in the desert. However, most cockroaches live in warm, tropical habitats where they put their scavenging skills to good use feeding on living and dead plant and animal material and have a positive impact on their environment as recyclers.

Answer 5

Although there are a few species of cockroach that can become household pests, the vast majority of cockroach species live quiet lives out in the woods and jungles, and don't bother humans at all.

Of the 4000 or so species of cockroach worldwide, only 25 or 30 are serious pests. As part of the general insect fauna in a number of ecosystems, they form important food sources for a large number of other insects, spiders, scorpions, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

They are also important consumers, eating a variety of plants, decaying material and even other insects.

It is only when they get into the human created urban ecosystem that cockroaches become a problem. We have developed a perfect home for the pest species: our dwellings are built with all manner of dark, tight enclosed spaces for them to hide, we provide them with drinking water and leaky pipes to live around, as well as ideal heating conditions, and we have all kinds of food stored in nice dark cupboards for them to snack on. Some areas are even more ideally suited for cockroaches, with nice greasy food remains left on counters, or even dirty dishes with all kinds of yummy residue left behind. And then we also keep out all of the predators that would normally feed on the cockroaches and keep them under control. No lizards, no snakes, no shrews. Many people even kill spiders when they appear in the house! It's almost like some cockroach deity created man just to provide for the cockroaches.

So while cockroaches don't provide any benefit to us in our urban ecosystem, we certainly provide a lot of benefits to cockroaches. Is it any wonder they want to share our homes?

Answer 6

With every day pass, our country is getting into more and more trouble. The inflation, unemployment and falling value of dollar are the main concern for our Government but authorities are just sleeping, they don’t want to face the fact. Media is also involve in it, they are force to stop showing the real economic situation to the people. I start getting more concern about my future as well as my family after watching the response of our Government for the people that affected by hurricane Katrina.

According to recent studies made by World Bank, the coming crisis will be far worse than initially predicted. So if you're already preparing for the crisis (or haven't started yet) make sure you watch this video at http://www.familysurvival.tv and discover the 4 BIG issues you'll have to deal with when the crisis hits, and how to solve them fast (before the disaster strikes your town!) without spending $1,000s on overrated items and useless survival books.

Answer 7

Cockroaches do indeed vector disease. They also have no natural enemies in their environment, except some lizard like gekkos - they live in human habitats, and where would they encounter a natural enemy. They are totally useless to humans.

They aren't really related to dirt. You can have the cleanest, most expensive home and have cockroaches invade it: maybe you brought home groceries and one was in a bag, maybe you had a party and the caterers dragged some in, maybe you visited a restauant and one crawled into your purse. I remember that I was in a government office and one of the workers, who was opening the mail, let out a shriek: a cockroach crawled out of a letter.

Answer 8

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Are there any benefits to having cockroaches?
They're disgusting and dirty. I've heard that they can survive with their head cut off for 30 days. Are there any positive things to them? Do they contribute to the food chain in any way?

Answer 9

Cockroaches have been known to live up to three months without food and a month without water. Frequently living outdoors, although preferring warm climates and considered "cold intolerant," they are resilient enough to survive occasional freezing temperatures. So they will survive most form of disaster(if there is any) and then Darwin's law will do its work :)

Answer 10

Cockroaches in our concrete jungle thrive in our wasteful habit of dumping food.The bright side of considering roaches as food is that they are a good source of protein and multiply rapidly and need very little care to farm them unlike the green crops grown by farmers.With our population growing at a rapid rate its rreasonable to think roaches and bugs as good alternatives for nutrients along with sea weeds etc. In the tropical forests roaches are usually consumed by bats, frogs and other small rodents.
I personally would not like to savour the white gummy juice oozing out of a crunchy snack.