Love cockroaches? Tune in this weeks Natural Histories on BBC Radio 4 to hear Brett Westwood, myself and friends chat about the wonders of this incredible creature - an insect that I have shared many a hotel room with.
11am Tuesday 3rd November
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05w9lgh
11am Tuesday 3rd November
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05w9lgh
(Photo: USGS CC2.0)
"For as long as humans have been around, we've had the cockroach as an uninvited house guest. No other creepy-crawly has the power to elicit such strong feelings: the horror of uncleanliness and the involuntary shudder that only a scuttling cockroach can bring, as it vanishes behind the bread bin.
But they've entered our imaginations as well as our living spaces. We may have given the cockroach its dark reputation, but this insect is a survivor. Disgusting and revolting are some of the more polite descriptions we use for cockroaches. Is that because we associate them with squalor and poor hygiene, or because they hold a mirror up to the less savoury side of human nature?
But there is a different side to this great survivor. Probably the most famous cockroach in literature is Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis. Films such as Men in Black use the cockroach as a metaphor for alien arrivals. The cockroach can feed our imagination in other ways too. Its reputation can also be turned inward to explore humanity, satirically described by Archy the cockroach early last Century. It's no wonder then that in Australia, attempts were made to bring the worlds biggest cockroach to the tourism trail." - BBC