Cockroaches are very resourceful bugs that can live, eat, and reproduce in your home without you even realizing it. They are scavenging insects that resemble beetles, have long antennae and legs, and a broad, flattened body.
Even though cockroaches don’t usually bite, their mere presence raises health concerns as they can cause health issues for some people in an infested home. Some might experience allergy and asthma symptoms from inhaling cockroach waste and skin.
If cockroaches get into your house, they can multiply at astonishing rates and infestations quickly become severe. Just two cockroaches can produce around 400 thousand babies within a year. As their populations tend to grow rapidly, they can be hard to get rid of, and will usually require professional treatment.
A few types of roaches have become established as household pests in the United States. If you’ve seen these insects in your home, garden, or garage, keep reading to find out what different species of cockroaches look like, and how common and bad they might be.
Can Cockroaches Infest Your Home And How Do They Infest?
Cockroaches can often infest your home or business and seeing the insects during the day is a solid indicator of an infestation.
You might notice the fast-moving creatures usually flee to dark areas as they favor damp and dark places to live, feed, and breed, such as the basement, bathroom, or laundry room. They also like to hide behind sinks, cabinets, stoves, and refrigerators, but also under floor drains, near pipes or electrical wiring, and inside the motors of large appliances. Once inside your house, these pests usually make their way into the kitchen and pantry in search of food and water.
These pests can infest homes easily as they enter through basement windows and garages, or pass underneath doors that lack weather stripping.
You will see different signs of a cockroach infestation. The insects leave behind droppings in the areas where they hide. In addition, they tend to leave smear marks behind, eggs and shed skin, stench or unusual odor. Large numbers of live or dead roaches are a sure sign that there is a nest nearby and you have an infestation.
Types Of Cockroaches That Infest Your Home
According to experts, there are five common types of cockroaches that typically sneak into and infest homes in the US. These are the American cockroach, German cockroach, Brown-banded cockroach, Smoky brown cockroach, and Oriental cockroach.
The American Cockroach
The most common species are American cockroaches, also identified as water or palmetto bugs. They are the largest roaches typically found in homes, and are fast and flying insects that can quickly and efficiently infest a place, becoming very difficult to eliminate.
They are reddish or brown in color, have light yellow bands around the shield behind the head, and can grow up to 3 inches in length.
While the American cockroach does not bite or sting, it is known to be a carrier of more than 30 kinds of bacteria and can therefore spread diseases to humans and contaminate human and pet food.
The German Cockroach
German cockroaches are considered the worst species of a cockroach when it comes to home infestations and getting rid of them.
They are smaller than American roaches but their long, dark antenna and pale brown color can make them difficult to spot in dark and cluttered areas around the house.
These are hardy and fast critters that don’t have many natural predators, and are able to scavenge from just about any food source and survive on very little. These insects tend to produce more eggs than other species and can live up to a year, therefore, their populations grow rapidly, making your home become infested within just a couple of months. For all these reasons, German cockroach infestations are notoriously difficult to control.
The Brown-banded Cockroach
Brown-banded cockroaches are small, just about half an inch. Male roaches are golden-tan in color and will fly if disturbed, while females are dark brown and don’t fly at all. These species have light-colored stripes running across the abdomen and wings.
They tend to live in buildings and are a common pest in commercial facilities. At home, you may spot Brown-banded roaches in a damp bathroom, kitchen, or basement. But they can also survive in drier areas, such as bedrooms, hiding in bookcases, closets and other pieces of furniture.
They are omnivorous, which means they can eat anything that contains organic matter.
The Smoky Brown Cockroach
Although they prefer to live outdoors in a high-humidity, wooded environment, Smoky brown cockroaches can still pose a big problem for homeowners. This is a large type of roach that is attracted to light, so it will enter a house when it sees the light on.
These species are likely to infest garbage cans and have been found living in sewers, which makes them potential carriers of disease.
The Smoky brown looks similar to the American cockroach, but lacks the yellow hues of the American species. It has a glossy, consistent dark brown or mahogany color, and an antenna that can even be longer than its entire body. These roaches have long wings that they use for flying to look for food or a mate.
The Oriental Cockroach
Oriental cockroaches are black or reddish-brown and grow up to 1 inch in length.
They are sometimes referred to as black beetle cockroaches because of their smooth, dark bodies. Only males have wings.
These roaches have a strong odor and are considered to be one of the dirtiest and most harmful of all cockroaches. They are a threat because of the bacteria and pathogens they spread. Their strong drive toward water leads them to sewers and other dirty water sources. Oriental cockroaches often come out of drains, and also like eating garbage and decomposing food.
In warm weather, they tend to live outdoors, but it is winter when they infest homes more frequently. They’ll nest in damp, secluded places like basements, crawlspaces, and attics.
If you’ve encountered cockroaches around your home, don’t panic. Finding roaches doesn’t mean that your home is dirty. Cockroaches thrive in different environments and can find food and water anywhere.
If you think your home is infested with roaches, don’t wait for the situation to get worse by dealing with it yourself. It’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to pest control, so you might want to call in the experts no matter how many bugs there are or how big they are, especially since they can transmit harmful diseases.
Our pest control technicians have the experience to handle a cockroach infestation of any size, and they make sure to exterminate these pests so they never return. Call our team at Peachtree Pest Control in Metro Atlanta to set up an appointment at your earliest convenience.
