Do Roaches Have Any Redeeming Qualities?

They spread diseases, trigger allergies, contaminate food supplies and -- let's face it -- roaches make our skin crawl. From a human perspective, the roach's negative characteristics far outweigh its virtues. For now, most of us can offer the roach little more than a grudging admiration of the species' tremendous survival abilities, but recent research suggests that these creepers may yet earn our gratitude.

  1. Roach 101

    • The term "cockroach" can refer to any one of more than 4,000 species of insect from the order "Blattodea," though only a few of these are common household pests. Though most roach species prefer warm and humid climates, they readily adapt to other environments. This flexibility owes much to their eclectic tastes in food: They can survive on anything from the simplest starches to animal tissue. Their eyes tend to be bigger than their stomachs, however: They often disrupt and contaminate far more food than they can consume.

    Why We Hate Them

    • Only the most focused entomologist is free of disgust when confronted with a cockroach.

      Beyond the spine-crawling disgust many people feel upon seeing a roach, there are significant health reasons to despise these bugs. They are quite literally filthy, attracting and disseminating pathogens, consuming and contaminating food from many sources, and leaving behind considerable amounts of fecal matter. Roach droppings are a major trigger of allergies and asthma, and roach infestations in food supplies can cause gastritis and other digestive woes. Compared with other household pests, roaches are especially difficult to eliminate once an infestation has begun.

    Virtues of the Roach

    • Certain roach species are valued as pets.

      Ironically, the difficulty we have exterminating roaches points directly to their most admirable trait. They are among the hardiest and most ancient species on the Earth. They are believed to be roughly 300 million years old, having survived the conditions that doomed the dinosaurs. They can withstand levels of radiation up to 16 times the amount that is lethal to humans, though they are outranked in this competition by many other types of insect. The roach's formidable life span, however, lasting from several months to nearly three years, gives it significant evolutionary advantage.

      The primitive nature of the roach can also be seen as a portal back in time, offering scientists a living key to primal life forms. Further, the majority of roach species are not pests, and are even considered to be beneficial members of their ecosystems, as the Amateur Entomologists' Society reminds us. Some of these bugs are even prized pets among a small but enthusiastic population of roach admirers.

    On the Horizon: The Roach Pharmacy

    • The roach's brain may soon become an unlikely pharmacy for much-needed antibiotics.

      The virtues listed above probably won't cheer a homeowner charged with eradicating an army of cockroaches in the kitchen. But scientists at the University of Nottingham have discovered a side to the roach that we can all celebrate: Roachs' brains have been found to contain antibiotics that combat such deadly diseases as MRSA (the "superbug" strain of staph that has been notoriously resistant to known antibiotics) and E-coli. We'll have to wait for actual treatments to be developed from this new find, but the irony is delightful: A pest despised for spreading disease may ultimately give us a weapon against a "superbug."