This article attempts to bring you up to date on just how awesome the cockroach is.
Let’s be clear right away that a cockroach is nobody’s best friend. And yet…even though you may not like them, you have to respect them. At least that’s one lesson you could draw from recent studies in which scientists decided to sequence the entire genomes of the two cockroach species found in your house.
The American cockroach is a sprinter, able to run up to 50 of their own body lengths per second. If they were human size this would translate into a bit over 200 miles per hour, fast enough to scurry under the fridge before you even think about stomping on them in other words. Also, it turns out that their genome is bigger than ours. Yes, for all of our pride in our big brain and opposable thumbs, American cockroaches in all their sewer-dwelling, allergenic, glue-eating glory have about a thousand genes more than we do.
