Why cockroaches disgusting

Cockroaches are hard to kill because of these survival mechanisms. It can be sad knowing the feelings of disgust between you and a cockroach are not mutual.

For most of us the fear of insects comes naturally. It is passed down from one generation to the next. This is a general term for people who have an unrealistic fear of any insect. Fear of insects comes from our biology in combination with what we see others do when we are young. We learn to fear these creatures to keep us safe. From when you were first born to around the age of six, a fear of insects had not yet been internalized.

The internalization of fear occurrs when you observe your parents or other guardian react in fear to an insect. From then on your subconscious started to think that reaction is how you should react also. This mechanism of learning to be scared works great when people react in fear to situations that pose a real danger.

It can be blown out of portion when the societal norm is to react strongly. Why did humans first start to have these reacts then? The feeling of disgust you have when you see a cockroach, spider, ant colony etc.

Psychologists hypothesis that this response is triggered because insects are so different than us. Insects are the closest existing thing to monsters and animals that present real danger.

Insects do not look like us, move jaggedly and have lots of legs. They are not relatable and the unknown of what they might do drives us to fear. For pests that colonize the sheer number of insects can eek some people out. Think of termites, ant colonies or a spider nest. For very large colonies you can only keep you eye on so many at one time and it can feel as if something is sneaking up.

It was in our ancestors best interest to avoid interactions with unknown creatures. Some cockroaches and insects have been know to carry deadly diseases picked up by what they feed on. Snakes are another example of something very different than humans and often where fear is validated. Many snakes have potent venom and bites were no always curable. In the past our understanding of medicine was much less advanced then today. Illnesses we think of today as not to be worried about would result in death for people of older cultures.

This only served to compound the very real fear humans have of alien creatures. They love the smell of vanilla though, because vanilla means food. Cockroach farms are all the rage. In China that is. The value of dried cockroach increased tenfold between and These nasty little buggers are popular in traditional medicines, cosmetics and even protein powders. Profit margins can be as high as percent, and a single chicken coop can house 10 million roaches.

Jurassic roach. Actually, roaches are even older than T-Rex and his friend, triceratops. Fossil records show roaches dating back million years, to the Carboniferous era. Yay for us. Off with their heads. Yes, the terrifying rumor is true. Roaches can live over a week without their heads. They have an open circulatory system and their vital organs are found in the thorax. The pollen of the bug world. Roaches are gross in many ways, but for people with asthma and allergies, they are downright dangerous.

Cockroaches produce proteins that can aggravate the respiratory system. Their fecal matter and molted exoskeletons are no walk in the park either.

Roaches also carry 33 kinds of bacteria, six different types of parasitic worms and seven known pathogens. The Magellan of insects. One of the most successful creatures in the history of the planet, roaches are pretty much everywhere. The one exception? Get your tickets now, because this icy southern continent is roach free. Dinner time, table for one. This cannibalistic quality reduces population sizes when an infestation becomes too large to feed itself.

There are over 4, roach species in the world, and lucky for us, 70 are found in the U. With so many species, are you ever safe from roaches?

Apparently not. He stood there, stunned. That roach ruined my date. Psychologists report patients too terrified to get out of bed at night or to go to the kitchen for fear of encountering a cockroach. Emily Driscoll, a documentary producer in New York City, once became trapped in a hotel room in India because a roach was sitting on the door handle.

Andrew Stein, a computer programmer who grew up in New Orleans but now lives in New York, also recalls once being trapped by a roach. One night in his newly renovated Brooklyn apartment, he heard a familiar scratch-scratch-scratch coming from the bathroom. Investigating, he found a large American cockroach clinging to his bath towel. He spent the next two hours camped out in the hallway, trying to work up the courage to go back inside and kill the roach. Their stench, too, is indicative of an underlying purpose.

Finally, their sickly slick feel derives from a lipid-based wax that their cuticle secretes to prevent water loss. None of these traits bode well for the human observer. Roaches are incredibly prolific, and hard to get rid of. But those physical and behavioural traits do not explain why roaches are so frequently the subjects of phobias. As it turns out, the root of that fear often traces back to some traumatic experience in life, such as witnessing your mother scream at the sight of a roach.

Often, that fear forms early, around the age of four or five. Some do manage to evade that fear, however. Philip Koehler, a veteran entomologist with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, probably spends more time voluntarily with cockroaches than almost anyone else in the world.

At his lab at the University of Florida, he keeps around a million of those insects. His fascination with those creatures does have its limits, however. Outside, a disturbingly realistic 6-foot tall metal cockroach sculpture, lovingly crafted by one of his former students, guards his door. The trust is not broken.

A hissing cockroach SPL. Several years ago, a woman in her 50s approached him. Was there anything he could do to help? He invited her to the lab for an informal session of exposure therapy, starting small by simply talking about roaches, then progressing to photos, pinned roaches and eventually the real deal.

After several visits, her hyperventilating stopped and she was even able to hold a hissing cockroach. He begins by weeding out my issue with roaches. I relay a few of my stories, trying to make him understand, and he listens patiently until I finish. Later, I realise how I should have conveyed the problem. When a roach slinks into my bedroom at night or flies into my face, I am forced to acknowledge that all is not under my control.

Just as a leering cat-caller or subway groper might not inflict physical harm on his victims, that undesirable interaction can still inspire intense distress. Unprovoked danger — whether actual or perceived — can appear without warning. It can slink out of a dark alleyway or from beneath a closet door at any moment. To their victims, cockroaches commit a personal violation. In the words of George A. Romero, they creep up on you. Roaches are cute, I told myself, even lovable. But when a living roach would appear in the school bathroom or gym, these soothing thoughts were revealed for what they really were: lies told to comfort a scared little girl.

Over the years, I noticed my phobia intensifying. Viewing this as a weakness, I tried in my own ways to self medicate. But digitised, anthropomorphised roaches on a two-dimensional screen and real-life roaches are not at all the same beast. But even though I regularly handled those exotic species, I still performed a sort of panicked Riverdance each time one of their urban cousins crossed my path in the infested Crescent City.

I find it hard to believe that anything could ever change my feelings and reaction towards roaches. But not everyone agrees with this hopeless prognosis. Expose someone to the same thing over and over again and it will eventually become boring and commonplace.

Untold numbers of phobics go untreated, however, simply because few possess the unique mix of desperation and bravery needed to willingly sign up for the chance to interact with a cockroach. Some therapists are designing workarounds for skittish patients. A team of researchers at the James I University in Spain thinks that augmented reality could be a solution for treating cockroach phobia. Augmented reality projects computerised images into the real world, allowing a more convincing encounter.

To test the system, the Spanish researchers recruited six participants, all of who suffered from debilitating, clinically verified cockroach phobias. One participant wanted to sell her apartment after spotting a roach, while another refused to visit her grandmother for fear of seeing a cockroach.

Before undergoing augmented reality therapy, none of the women would agree to enter a room that contained a live cockroach in a plastic container. When the treatment session concluded, they were able to approach the live cockroach and even stick a finger into its container for a few seconds. Twelve months after the original treatment, the participants maintained those improvements.

Unfortunately, augmented reality is not yet available in a clinical setting. Until further research can be completed and the treatment gains approval for use in therapy, phobics wishing to rid themselves of their fear must go about it in the old fashioned way: through cognitive behaviour therapy paired with exposure therapy. For those who can garner the courage to try it, their efforts are often rewarded in as few as one to three sessions.