This animal has lived through the great extinction of the dinosaurs, and will rule the world if humans go extinct
In present-day Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, there is a special crater named Chicxulub. It is up to 20 km deep and has a mouth diameter of up to 180 km. If you do not know, this is the remnant of an asteroid that crashed into Earth 66 million years ago.
It led to the extinction of more than three-quarters of plant and animal species globally, including dinosaurs. But cockroaches, a tiny insect, have survived since then. As it turns out, size is sometimes a disadvantage. Scientists say not a single creature weighing more than 25 kg survived this Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
For a variety of reasons, cockroaches have been given a lot of opportunities to survive. It is also the only cave creature that lived before the time of the dinosaurs and is still alive today. In this article, we will find out why cockroaches live so long.
Why can cockroaches survive the dinosaur extinction?
If you have ever seen a cockroach, you may have noticed that its body is very flat. It is not a coincidence of nature. When they have a flatter body, insects can burrow into tight places.
This is a clear advantage that allows cockroaches to find hiding spots, deep in caves when Chicxulub occurs. Remember that event, when the asteroid hit the Earth, it caused an explosion, triggering a chain of dominoes that caused a series of volcanoes on Earth to erupt.
The planet’s surface temperature then skyrocketed. Large animals that cannot find shelter can be killed by the heat. In contrast, geckos can burrow down into small crevices in the ground, helping them to protect their bodies from the heat.
See how far a cockroach can get through a narrow pipe
But the impact of the Chicxulub meteorite did not stop there. When Earth’s volcanoes erupt at the same time, they blow ash into the atmosphere, covering the sky and darkening everything. The Sun is hidden, the temperature of the planet’s surface drops again and the whole Earth becomes cold.
With less light, plants struggle to grow. As a result, the herbivores that were lucky to survive the meteorite explosion were unable to survive the famine, as their food stocks kept dwindling.
The same goes for carnivores that hunt herbivores. Only scavengers benefit the most. Cockroaches are among the omnivores. This means they can eat a variety of foods, from plants and animal carcasses to their own droppings.
Many species of cockroaches harbor protozoa and bacteria that live symbiotically in the gut. These organisms provide the ability to digest cellulose, allowing cockroaches to eat wood, cardboard and even clothing.
In short, easy eating has added an advantage to cockroaches to survive the hard times of the Chicxulub event, and then a series of other natural disasters, until now.
The third useful feature that gives cockroaches an advantage in survival and passing on their genes to the next generation is that they know how to protect eggs. Cockroaches lay eggs then carry the eggs with them, inside protective boxes called oothecae located at the end of their abdomens.
Like a phone case, oothecae is very tough and provides excellent protection. It can keep cockroach eggs alive through conditions like floods and droughts. Above, we talked about cockroaches that burrowed deep underground after the Chicxulub meteorite explosion.
And when everything calmed down, the cockroaches crept back up to the ground to see what was left of the ruins. It is at this time that many cockroach eggs have hatched and the tiny creatures continue to survive, rising from the ruins of the planet.
Cockroaches can survive nuclear war and take over human ruins
Even the meteorite that killed the dinosaur could not kill the cockroach, it is not difficult to understand that this insect is still alive and well to this day. Cockroaches even enter the top of the toughest invertebrates on the planet. It can survive in every corner of the Earth, from the hot tropics to the cold polar regions.
Cockroaches can be starved for up to a month without food and still live. Experiments show that cockroaches can even live in a vacuum for 45 minutes. Cockroach eggs can survive for 12 hours in conditions of -5 to -8 degrees Celsius.
A cockroach is still alive when it is decapitated
When you cut off a cockroach’s head, its body still behaves like running away. Its head will continue to live and wag its whiskers for several hours, even longer if you give it nutrients. It is actually thought that if the human race went extinct because of nuclear war, cockroaches might still be alive after that.
That’s because cockroaches molt and divide their cells weekly. When a nuclear bomb causes an explosion, cockroaches can endure 6-15 times more radiation than humans. And just when the bomb explodes at the end of its molting cycle, new cells of the cockroach will be born to replace the damaged cells when the new cycle begins.
Scientists estimate that there are more than 4,600 species of cockroaches on Earth. But we really only see a few of them, which are cockroaches that like to live with humans. They parasitize our homes, eat our leftovers, using us to avoid natural enemies that love to eat cockroaches, such as birds, frogs, lizards and spiders.
And you know, once cockroaches get into the house, they reproduce and multiply at a tremendous rate. For example, the German cockroach (Blatella germanica), each female can lay 30-40 eggs per litter, multiplying with 6 litters a year is about 200.
Only 1 month after hatching, German cockroaches can be considered adults and begin their new breeding cycle. When large numbers of cockroaches become out of control, they can spread disease to you. Cockroaches crawling into your clothes and pantry can cause allergies, asthma attacks, and even anaphylaxis.
Unfortunately, with their excellent survival ability, cockroaches can also be resistant to many human insecticides. So much so, now scientists still have to research and find ways to sterilize cockroaches at the root, for example This research wants to make male cockroaches no longer like female cockroaches.
However, it must be said again and again that cockroaches are not without a good side. In the rainforest environment, cockroaches feed on decaying wood and leaves and digest them, turning them into a valuable source of nutrients for the vegetation. Cockroach manure contains a lot of nutrients, the most prominent of which is organic nitrogen – an indispensable ingredient in the growth of many different plants.
Cockroaches participate in the food chain in nature, it preys on many small mammals, birds and reptiles. These animals are food for the next link in the vast food chain.
Therefore, If suddenly one day cockroaches become extinct, it will cause a great disturbance to the world. But it must also be said that it is an unlikely scenario. Whether it’s nuclear war or a new asteroid hitting the Earth, maybe we should take care of ourselves before we worry about cockroaches.
Refer Theconversation
at Blogtuan.info – Source: genk.vn – Read the original article here
