A friend was about to smash a roach in his house the other day, another friend said “I wouldn’t do that, they’ll only come back in greater numbers”. He smashed it anyways, and the other guy said “now you’ve done it, enjoy your infestation”.
This sounds like a load of crap to me, don’t most things retreat when they smell their own dead? Might the dead roach be a source of food for the other roaches?
Snopes had nothing, and Orkin’s closed. Anybody know?
That seems to be crap to me. My house has never been one to be overrun with bugs though. I’m pretty sure the biggest attractors for roaches and the like are conditions where they have food that can’t be seen by us. One extra roach ain’t nuttin’. 
I stomped a roach once, but didn’t kill it - I just smashed the back half of him. He was stuck to the floor, waving his legs around. Immediately, two more roaches ran out and started eating him while he was still kicking. I thought that was pretty rude, so I stomped them, too.
Not really, sayeth the Master.
I come from a long line of entomologists.
No. What being misapplied is the notion that for every Blatta you see, there’s 10[sup]2[/sup] hidden in the wall.
Completely irrelevant story about my mom:
My mom is an entomologist (big suprise[just like my dad] Wood’s hole and all that). In one project, she studied the effect various chemicals had on cockroach hind gut. So she’d cut a wood roach’s legs and head off before extracting it’s hind gut. She had problem with the heads trying to escape, pulling themselves along by their mandibles.
Extra double irrelevant story about my brother
My brother studied the effects of gram-positve and gram-negative antibiotics on the reproductive abilities of Blatta. Turns out there’s some disgusting bacterial symbiosis in [Blatta procreation. In other news, my brother is now on tenure tract. Yeah!
Double-super irrelevant story about my dad
He’s spending the next month cataloging the lygaeidae collection at the Smithsonian in D.C. He’s a taxonomist.
I chose physics as my degree, so I work with computers. My dad thinks I missed my calling in entomology. Ha!
Actually, it’s not the Master, but SD staff Doug.
If I may be blunt, I thought his report was kinda flimsy. So I delved deeper here:
Comments on Staff Reports: Does the smell of squished cockroach attract other roaches?
However, while I was able to clarify them, Doug’s conclusions pretty well stood intact.
One line from that other thread is worth repeating here:
Heh. Amazing what you can do, when you don’t go into shock.
Ahh, thanks for the clarification, dqa.