How long can a cockroach live?

Cockroach belong to the order Blattata, and their scientific names all have the word “cockroach” at the end. Among them, German cockroach, black-breasted cockroach and American cockroach are the most common. This doesn’t require much explanation.

The egg stage refers to the time from egg laying to nymph hatching. If we humans are used as a metaphor, this stage is equivalent to the ten-month pregnancy of humans.

The nymphal stage refers to the time from when a nymph hatches to when it emerges as an adult. This stage is equivalent to human beings aged 0-18 years old, except that our adult age is legal. Cockroaches are determined by their own physiological changes. The most obvious feature of adults is the growth of wings. This means that no matter how big a cockroach is, if it does not have wings, it is still a baby cockroach. The opposite is also true (the picture in the title is of a German cockroach that has just emerged as an adult, white and translucent, and will become colored in a few minutes).

The pre-oviposition period refers to the time from the emergence of adult insects to the start of egg laying. This stage is equivalent to the period from adulthood to the time before getting married and having children.

Life history

The life history period refers to the time from egg laying to sexual maturity for mating and egg laying. That is the sum of the egg stage, nymph stage, and pre-oviposition stage. If someone gets married and has children at the age of 30, then her life history is 31 years (just for metaphor, it is definitely inappropriate).

Adult lifespan refers to the time elapsed from adult emergence to death. It is equivalent to what we call human lifespan minus 18 years.

How long can cockroaches live? If calculated according to our standards for calculating human lifespan (from birth to death), then the lifespan of a cockroach is: nymphal stage + adult lifespan = cockroach lifespan

Substituting the data in the table into this formula can calculate how long the cockroach lived.

The most common German cockroaches:

40+119=159 days

84+119=203 days,

The female lifespan is 159-203 days

40+87=127 days

84+87=171 days

Male lifespan is 127-171 days

By analogy, you can calculate the lifespan of other cockroaches.

Reproductive capabilities

From this perspective, cockroaches do not live very long, but they have strong adaptability and reproductive capabilities (more on this next time), so it is difficult to completely eliminate them.

Now we know how long cockroaches live. There may be some people who don’t quite understand the word “nymph”, so let’s talk about a very interesting concept and explain the word “nymph” at the same time.

Cockroaches go through three developmental stages in their lives – eggs, nymphs and adults, and each stage has a very different appearance. During development, the appearance changes greatly. We call this development metamorphosis. Flies are maggots when they are young, and butterflies are caterpillars when they are young, so they also undergo metamorphosis.

Of course, the development of cockroaches is somewhat different from that of flies and butterflies. Cockroaches are called baby cockroaches when they are young, and this stage is called the nymph stage. If, it means “like”, which means that the appearance of the small cockroach is already a little like an adult cockroach. This type of abnormal development is called incomplete metamorphosis. When flies and butterflies are young, they are called maggots and caterpillars respectively. This stage is call the larval stage. Maggots are completely different from flies, caterpillars and butterflies in appearance. They also need to go through a pupa stage to transform from larvae to adults. This type of abnormal development is call complete metamorphosis.

Cockroaches have brought too much trouble to our lives. For some people who are afraid of cockroaches, this is not a complete abnormality, but a super invincible abnormality. Ha ha!