We all hate them. They infest our kitchens and bathrooms, scurrying across our path in the middle of the night, sending poor females the world over screaming into the darkness. If only we could somehow be rid of these retched creatures once and for all…but what if they were gone? A wise woman once said, “be careful what you wish for.” A world without cockroaches could very well be a world we wouldn’t want to live in.
Well, let’s think about this. First, their predators such as rats and mice would drop in numbers. That’s not so bad, but what about the animals that ear those predators. I’m not sure I would like a world without my mischievous cat, Finn, even if he can be a brat sometimes.
But, there’s actually a much more serious problem that would arise that has nothing to do with the circle of life. A lack of cockroaches would seriously mess with something called the nitrogen cycle. Here’s it is in a nutshell: cockroaches eat decaying matter, trapping nitrogen in their poop, which is then released into the soil when they go number 2. Without that nitrogen-rich poop feeding our environment, we’d be in serious trouble. Think of no plants, crops, food…So, what can we take away from this? We humans really really need cockroach poop to survive.
Did you know how heavily we rely on cockroaches?
