Cockroaches can live for about a year.
On average, cockroaches live for about a year. These insects are quite hardy, although some people think they may simply starve to death as a means of pest control, such as if a building was left empty without a food source for too long. In fact, the opposite happens, since the insect can go about a month without eating anything. Similarly, cockroaches can survive on things that most people would not consider suitable food, even for insects. For example, they can eat things like glue, paper, and even shoes.
Although cockroaches can live for about a month without food, they can only live for about a week without water. In fact, even without a head, they can live for about a week. The only reason they die without a head is because they can’t consume water without a mouth. Interestingly, cockroaches can even live for quite a long time if the heart stops.
Many people have heard that after a nuclear war, cockroaches would be the only living things that would survive. While this claim is widely made, there is no concrete scientific evidence to prove it. However, there is scientific evidence to suggest that cockroaches and similar insects are better able to resist radiation than other forms of life. Cockroaches can withstand up to 15 times the amount of radiation that a human can withstand, but compared to other insects, they are not unusually resistant to radiation.
The reason that cockroaches can resist radiation better than humans is the fact that their cells divide more slowly than humans. In these insects, cell division occurs only once during each molting period, and at most they molt only once a week in their juvenile stage and never in their adult stage. This means that if the radiation exposure is transient, cockroaches that have not molted during that period will not be significantly affected. However, any remaining radiation would have the potential to damage your cells.
These insects begin their life cycle in egg capsules, which are discarded just before they hatch. A female German cockroach, for example, can carry around 40 eggs. An egg takes between three and four months to develop, from birth to nymph and adult.