What makes roaches go where they go? Do they notice when a human tries to beat the shit out of them and remember not to go back toward that human?
I’m sure they probably notice scents and are drawn to things a human might not notice. Obviously they are drawn to human dwellings and other buildings because they’re looking for food, water, trash, and warm, dark hiding spots. But they probably don’t want to be in close contact with the actual humans.
Just wondering because of a roach (ugh) that I encountered at work the other day. OMG it would NOT stop coming toward me no matter how much I tried to hit it or shoo it away. It had an infinite number of other paths to get wherever it was going, but it kept coming to the edge of the desk near my hands on the keyboard. Ick ick ick. Finally after about three hours of me fighting it off, it finally got lost.
Was it attracted to my body heat? Did it want to get inside the keyboard? Do I smell enticing to it?
IANAR, but I’m guessing if this happened during the day it was desperately trying to get back to wherever it hides during the daytime and your keyboard happened to be between where it was and where it wanted to be. Cockroaches are nocturnal insects and usually aren’t seen much during the day. If this happened in the middle of the night I would guess it was out looking for food or a mate.
It happened during the day when there was pretty much nobody else in my area of the office but me. I didn’t have any food sitting there and my water bottle was closed.
I wonder if they notice perfume. Maybe it thought I was a flower. I think they’re into sweets but not sure about flowers. It was pretty cold in the building that day. Ugh. Now I’m scarred for life!
To the OP,
Three hours of being menaced by a roach!? Oh hellz no. Would have been a WOOKINPANUB shaped hole in the nearest wall. That’s why you bring a cat, such as your lovely avatar, with you to work.
If a roach was intelligent, it would know to avoid you all the time, but it’s not. However intelligence has a cost. The roach made the tradeoff of being dumb but fast and resistant to toxins, rather than what humans did (smart but slow, no superhuman toxin resistance, and have to burn a lot of food to keep that expensive brain warm). It’s hard to see who is winning
Creatures with small eyes don’t have a wide field of view. I’m not sure how well creatures with compound eyes see (there are theories).
Roaches exhibit negative phototaxis (in plain English, they avoid light… most of the time). Of course it’s harder for a human to smash a roach they can’t see. They tend to stick to walls (which means they might have furniture cover against a foot).
Roaches have a good sense of smell, and famously can detect nearby movement (not visually, their back parts work almost like whiskers). This demonstrates a roach’s lack of intelligence. The neural circuit there is very short, only three pieces. A two piece circuit would be even faster, but would have no decision-making capability. (If you keep forcing a roach to jump, eventually one part of the circuit will make it stop jumping, presumably to save energy.) If you chase one with a small vacuum cleaner, it will jump backward (which is right into the vacuum cleaner!) but, to be fair, jumping backward is the right solution most of the time. There’s really no evidence that the roach’s primary brain plays any role in this reflex.
Roaches, like many insects, have problems with water regulation. They hang out in bathrooms because of free water. Kitchens have that and food.
I’ve not seen anything suggesting that a roach would be attracted to a human, but they might “know” to visit places that smell of human (sort of like the difference between an abandoned shack and an occupied house, the latter of which may have food or water available). An abandoned shack wouldn’t have any food or water in it, so I don’t know if the roach avoids it because it doesn’t smell of human or simply because it’s barren.
I did start thinking about moving to a different desk temporarily! But it finally went away. It was kind of frustrating. I’m probably just a big baby, but I get so oooked out by roaches. If it had actually touched me I probably would not have been able to keep from screaming.
I’m pretty sure roaches can leave their own scents behind, which will attract themselves or other roaches to the same spot again and again.
I had a roach spot inside my stove. There is a little window with a digital clock behind it, and there was often a roach sitting on the face of that clock. I’m sure it was not the same roach over a period of many months this was happening. But one after another, roaches always appeared at that one spot. Eventually, they all went away.
I tried to squish it, but it was so fast! It would run off and then come back in a few minutes. Really thought I had killed it at one point as I saw it fall to the floor, but it returned!
When I lived in NYC my apartment had roaches. I didn’t see them all the time, but if I turned the oven on they would stream out. I generally didn’t get to bed before 4 and slept till noon (I was teaching in night school and was a night person). One morning I got up at 10 and the place was swimming in them. They may be nocturnal, but they adjusted to my “night”. So they sure did notice.
I wonder if their “freeze” behaviour might be getting evolved out.
There was one time I turned the light on in my kitchen, had the conscious thought of “It’s interesting how some animals run away when confronted with danger, and others just freeze” and then I noticed a big cockroach on the counter, perfectly still. To my conscious mind, that was the order of events, but of course my subconscious must have saw it first and it fed through to my conscious in a funny way.
Anyway, my point is, the “freeze” instinct is not going to be as effective in a kitchen as it would be in forest undergrowth. That behaviour should be becoming more rare.
Oh hellz no. Would have been a WOOKINPANUB shaped hole in the nearest wall. That’s why you bring a cat, such as your lovely avatar, with you to work.
