Species group · Insects
WAnimals has 5 species of cockroach, spread across 4 families (Blaberidae, Blattidae, Cryptocercidae, Ectobiidae).
Ranges calculated from the profiles that record the figure, not from all 5.
Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.
No species documented in this group is genuinely at risk according to the IUCN, with the data available today.
Recorded in 2 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:
It can make an audible hiss by forcing air out through a specialised pair of spiracles on its abdomen, an unusual mechanism among insects.
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Unlike most insects it has no working wings, and it is one of the few cockroaches that bears live young rather than laying an external ootheca.
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It hisses in a way unique among invertebrates: it does not rub body parts together but forces air out through a pair of modified abdominal spiracles. It is virtually the only insect that makes sound by breathing.
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The young are born without symbionts and must acquire them by ingesting anal secretions from their parents, which obliges the family to stay together for years.
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Its gut symbionts are almost identical to those of termites, and this cockroach is their closest living relative: termites are, in evolutionary terms, social cockroaches.
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A family can live together in the same gallery for more than three years, a degree of parental care very rare among non-social insects.
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It eats rotting organic matter, rubbish and practically any waste it can find.
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It lives in damp cellars, sewers, pipes and cold dark underground spaces the world over.
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