New York’s cockroaches are flying, yes, you have read correctly. Cockroaches with wings have taken over the Big Apple this season. It will be a very long summer for people residing on the East Coast, not only do they have to fight with rats stealing their pizzas, monstrously high rent, the heat, now they have flying bugs hovering their trash cans.
Here is a brief description of a cockroach’s body, including some precise details on the four wings it possesses:
“The body is divided into a thorax of three segments and a ten-segmented abdomen. The external surface has a tough exoskeleton which contains calcium carbonate and protects the inner organs and provides attachment to muscles. It is coated with wax to repel water. The wings are attached to the second and third thoracic segments. The tegmina, or first pair of wings, are tough and protective, lying as a shield on top of the membranous hind wings, which are used in flight. All four wings have branching longitudinal veins, and multiple cross-veins.”
Many experts view cockroaches as insects with a few special adaptations, but the scientists featured in DNAInfo‘s article entitled “Roaches Love This Disgusting Heat So Much, It Makes Them Want to Fly,” see the bugs living and flying around New York very differently.
In the lengthy post, it was revealed that due to the scorching heat, roaches have found ways to flex their muscles to soar in the air in search of food. It is worth noting that two species of cockroaches live in New York, American and German.
While the American roaches have started flying, the German bugs, which love warm food and live in kitchens, dishwashers, sinks, and stoves, are not flexing their tiny wings. Ken Schumann, an entomologist at Bell Environmental Services, said:
“In hot steam tunnels, something with the temperature and the humidity encourages them to fly. When it’s warm and steamy that seems to be what they like.”
The American Museum of Natural History’s resident bug expert, Louis Sorkin, added that:
“with more heat they have more use of their muscles.”
However, there is no need to fear, by fall, all American cockroaches will get back to crawling around and making messes in basements, tubs, and sinks. This is how you can make your home cockroach-free:
“There are many things you can do to help make sure that your home remains cockroach free. Be ware! Double check when carrying boxes, containers, and grocery/produce bags into your home. Sanitation is one of the most basic ways to ensure that your home remains cockroach free. Even the slightest amount of food or moisture falling into cracks and crevices will provide ample resources for a cockroach to thrive. Sealing cracks and crevice and placing weather stripping on doors and windows, will also help prevent many pest problems.”
New Yorkers are advised to stay calm; this situation will soon fix itself.
