Part 1 of 2 Parts
The 2008 film Wall-E showed Earth as a post-apocalyptic wasteland with nothing on it, but the abandoned remnants of human society and a forlorn, trash-compacting robot named Wall-E. His only living company is a surprisingly adorable pet cockroach named Hal. This was Pixar’s nod to the popular myth that cockroaches will outlive us all.
Despite Hal’s sympathetic portrayal, many people feel that cockroaches are pretty gross. But the creepy crawlies do have a reputation for being very hard to kill. This resilience likely contributes to the belief that they could even survive a nuclear bomb and subsequent radiation exposure. Reports in the media have suggested that the cockroach myth stems from rumors that insects thrived in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Tilman Ruff is a professor at the Nossal Institute of Global Health in School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He studies the health and environmental consequences of nuclear explosions. He says that he has yet to see any documented evidence that there were cockroaches scuttling through the rubble.
Ruff said, “I’ve certainly seen photographs of injured people in Hiroshima that have lots of flies around, and you do imagine some insects would have survived. But they still would have been affected, even if they appear more resistant than humans.”
The U.S. TV series “Mythbusters” tested the cockroach survival theory in 2012 by exposing cockroaches to radioactive material. The roaches survived longer than humans would have. However, they all died at extreme levels of radiation.
Mark Elgar is a professor at the School of Biosciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He said that the results of the Mythbusters test are incomplete because they only looked at how many days the cockroaches lived after exposure. They didn’t check the cockroaches’ ability to produce viable eggs, thus ensuring the continued survival of the species.
Elgar said, “There is some evidence that they seem quite resilient to gamma rays, although they are not necessarily the most resistant across insects. You could argue, that some ants, particularly those that dig nests deep into the ground, would be more likely to survive a nuclear apocalypse than cockroaches.”
Previous tests of insects subjected to radiation found that cockroaches, though up to fifteen times more resistant than humans, would still fare much worse than the humble fruit fly. Professor Elgar says the feral American and German species of cockroach which are the ones you might recognize from your kitchen nooks and crannies have given the rest of the species a bad rap.
Elgar continued, “I think our view of cockroaches is informed by our frequent interaction with the American and German cockroaches, which have spread throughout the world. Their habit of basically acting as an unpaid house cleaner horrifies people.”
There are more than four thousand species of cockroaches, however, including native Australian cockroaches marked by iridescent colors and patterns.
Elgar added, “Some of the Australian bush cockroaches are really lovely looking insects, which might change people’s perspectives. The Mardis Gras cockroach, for example, has got these lovely yellow patterns on its plates and bright blue legs with little black spots.”
Nossal Institute of Global Health
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