Dr. Dominic Evangelista

I think that's probably how they get around most of the time.

Because like I said before, they don't want to stray too far from...

human habitations.

So the way they're getting around is like through sewers, any kind of hidden tunnels underneath buildings, and through like us moving them around in potted plants or boxes on Amazon.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're constantly grooming themselves, their antenna, their legs.

They are constantly grooming themselves.

You know, they can't groom their whole bodies, but I think they do also have antimicrobial properties on their exoskeleton.

For the most part, I would say pest cockroaches, if they're around, they have to be eating something.

So that might mean that there might be some food for them around, which...

might be crumbs food waste or mold even if it's not visible might be there for them and basically if you cough on a cockroach and that cockroach walks on someone's sandwich then you just coughed on their sandwich oh but that's that's not the cockroach's fault that's your fault for coughing on the cockroach they're not like inherently dirty but just like anything else that moves around and interacts with this environment it might pick up some things

They do smell.

They do smell kind of musty.

And I smell them most.

And there's a lot of them like in a container because we have a lot of cockroaches in containers here in the entomology department.

When you open up those containers, there's a distinct musty kind of smell.

I think it's mostly from their pheromones.

And some of them have like a very strong smell.

So like Uricotis, which is a genus of cockroach that is found in the tropics, but also like in Florida, they're called skunkroaches because they stink.

They smell kind of like stink bugs.