Blatta orientalis
The Oriental cockroach, as its name suggests, comes from Asia. They are horrifically large, black cockroaches that love water much more than other species of cockroach. They are a different breed in that they prefer to stay coated in the water at all times instead of just being in a damp environment. The egg sack or Ootheca is a small, long, brown package like egg encasement after it has aged some, it comes out white and then yellows, browns and then blackens. The egg sack normally contains around 18 eggs so these cockroaches can multiply very fast. These cockroaches often live in sewers due to the humidity and the plentiful access to water. Like all cockroaches, they can sense food and heat from great distances and will crawl through the sewer and into your house pipes. From there, the insect can come out of any drain large enough to house it. In their natural habitat, they prefer to live in dark wet caves they often share with hordes of fruit bats. While fruit bats can eat insects they seem to not disturb the oriental cockroaches.
In Asia, the oriental cockroach is called a water bug or a black beetle. This demonstrates that they do not consider it as much of a threat and think of them kindly as they live in their natural environment and because they are surrounded by their natural predators which keep their population in line. In North America, they have no natural predators and can breed freely and overpopulate which is what has occurred in most major cities in North America. Because they live in the sewer and climb up drain pipes they tend to be coated in dangerous bacteria that they leave on your food when they eat it. This can cause e. Coli, salmonella, dysentery, and can also cause food poisoning and Staph infections. Cockroaches age through a non-transformative moulting process. This means that as they grow they constantly shed off fragments of their carapace which is a very thin membranous tissue that can float in the air for very long periods and be thrown into the air by sweeping. These dead carapace sheddings can enter your lungs and worsen pre-existing respiratory illness or cause serious infections in your lungs.
If you have a cockroach infestation it is important to understand that they cannot be killed off with just domestic products and out of all the cockroaches the Oriental is the hardest to kill because they live inside drain pipes and eat the food particles in the drainpipe, which means they never really need to leave it except to find more food.
