Will it be disastrous to men if they suddenly go extinct?
Is it possible for men to drive these ugly creatures into extinction?
No to both questions. They will drive us to extinction first.
!st -new here & I apologize for no cites.AFAIK, cockroaches serve no useful purpose,except to each other. They have defeated all attempts to get rid of them-they evolve so quickly. Gee, they eat roach poison for a cocktail. I guess anything is possible, but I doubt it.
Cockroaches are part of nature’s cleanup crew. They are scavengers that help break down organic debris ( like those cracker crumbs you left in the bed last night ). Not just food - Some eat rotting wood like termites. As such they perform a very useful function, not to mention they are a food source for many other critters, vertebrates and invertebrates alike. Also many folks like Madagascaran Hissing Cockroaches for the coolness factor - You want to make a bunch of little kids cry 
?
It is impossible to predict the impact if they suddenly all died, but that’s a lot of useful biomass - It would probably be negative.
- Tamerlane
I don’t know, but one cockroach I know was made vice-president of well-established investment bank…
For reasons Tamerlane stated they were intentionally included in the biota of Biosphere 2. Unfortunately we never found a way to effectively keep them out of the kitchen.
The idea that a cockroach, or any other organism, has a useful purpose is false.
While the world may seem to be a well-oiled machine, with everything in its right place, it isn’t. Rather, it’s a collection of angles and opportunities that the clever and biologically fit can exploit.
See, there are a limited number of resources that species compete over (although those resources are constantly changing). A species adapts itself to fit into a “niche”, where there are enough resources (food, shelter, etc.) to keep it alive. Hopefully they can exploit the niche enough to reproduce and thrive. If they can’t, they die out and become extinct.
I’d try to explain it more, but I’m a bit tipsy at the moment. Look up the mechanism of natural selection and the definition of biological fitness.
So, in answer to the original question, cockroaches may seem to be useful by scavenging and processing all sorts of garbage, but they aren’t really. They wouldn’t see it that way, they’re just doing what they do to stay alive. If all cockroaches died tomorrow for some reason, there would probably be some wackiness, but another species would eventually jump in and take over the niche.
Well, that or they’re God’s way of telling us to keep the damn house clean. Boric acid, my friends.
So Mofo, the extinction of a species is not necessarily a bad thing?
Sounds like that’s what you’re saying. And I’m not picking a fight - I can see that perspective easily.
Well, I’m speaking in terms of natural selection. There’s no good or bad to speak of, only survival and no survival. So if a species go extinct, it’s because they can no longer effectively exploit the resources available to them, or those resources have been taken away.
But that doesn’t mean I think it’s okay to let species go extinct. I think we should try to protect diversity in life forms as much as possible. But that’s a moral choice, removed from the processes of natural selection.
Besides, I don’t think we have to worry about cockroaches going extinct anytime soon.
I didn’t say they have a useful purpose. I said they had a useful function. Their usefulness is a human value judgement and perfectly valid as such.
Sure. Which doesn’t obviate the useful function that cockroaches play in the ecosystem.
Yes, they are. Cockroaches don’t exist in a vacume. In that their activities have a positive impact on the world around them, they can be defined as “useful”.
They wouldn’t see it anyway, not being capable of reason. But even if they were superintelligent and consciously misanthropic, hating the world and everything in it, they’d still be useful in their everyday activities ;).
In evolutionary time, sure. But short term I’d rather not have the wackiness, thank you very much :). We’re talking 4,000 species and, again, a lot of biomass. Plus there are the predators, parasites, and parasitoids that are cockroach specialists or near-specialists ( the entire wasp family Evaniidae, for example - there is another 450 species of cockroach parasitoids that would go extinct right off the bat ).
- Tamerlane
All I know is I’m moving out of my Godawful roach-infested apartment this week, and I’ll be very happy if they manage to drive Musa the Psycho Landlord from Hell into extinction. He’s definitely dumber than they are.
I don’t care about their cosmic usefulness at this point; I just want to be rid of the damn things!