What food do cockroaches like to eat, and can they be eaten? It is understood they can live up to 8 months
Cockroaches are one of the oldest insects on this planet, originating alongside other insects in the Devonian period; they are scavengers that prefer to hide by day and come out at night, living inside caves. So what food do cockroaches like to eat? Can they be eaten? How long can they live?
What food do cockroaches eat?
Cockroaches are omnivorous insects with a very wide diet. They eat all kinds of food, including bread, rice, pastries, cooked meat and vegetable dishes, melons and fruit, and beverages, and they are especially fond of fragrant, sweet, oily flour-based foods. Cockroaches have a craving for grease; among the various vegetable oils, sesame oil is the most tempting, and in some places cockroaches are called “oil thieves”. Among sugars, brown sugar and maltose are the strongest attractants. Cockroaches also often bite other items, and can gnaw on cotton and wool products, leather goods, paper, books, soap, electrical wires and so on. Outdoors in garbage piles, sewers and toilets and similar places, they feed on decaying organic matter, and will even gnaw on dead animals.
Can cockroaches be eaten?
Not only can they be eaten, they are also a high-protein nutritional product. Long ago scientists proposed that solving humanity's nutrition problems requires starting with insects, such as locusts, cicadas, ants, and even maggots can be made into paste, along with cockroaches, scorpions, earthworms (these last two are not insects), and so on. It sounds disgusting, but there are many people in this world who eat them, and some are very fond of them. The word "treating disease" is too broad; if supplementing trace elements or treating malnutrition also counts as treating disease, then of course the special proteins contained in the bodies of many insects can be used medicinally.
How long can a cockroach live?
This depends on its species. Common varieties include the German cockroach, the American cockroach, the Japanese cockroach, the Oriental cockroach, the Australian cockroach, and the smokybrown cockroach, among others; the German cockroach and the American cockroach are the most widely distributed. In China, the most common is the German cockroach, whose growth is divided into three stages
1. Egg stage 15-30 days
2. Larval stage (nymph stage) 64-109 days
3. Adult stage around 100 days.
From egg to death is around 240, that is, about 8 months.
Adult cockroaches also live relatively long. The German cockroach lives the shortest, about 100 days, while the longest-lived American cockroach can survive for as long as 1 year; lifespan likewise varies with species and environmental conditions. Taking the German cockroach, which has the shortest cycle, as an example, it generally takes more than 2 months to complete one generation, while the longest, the American cockroach and others, takes more than 1 year. The length of the life history varies not only with species, but also with different conditions such as temperature and nutrition. A single fertilized female cockroach also produces a large number of egg cases over its lifetime; the American cockroach can produce more than 50, so cockroaches have very strong reproductive capacity.