Quantifying the impacts of katsaridaphobia is difficult, however. Lockwood guesses that the number reaches well into the tens of millions, and Richard Kaae, an entomologist at California State University, thinks that cockroaches are the number one insects feared by humans. Still, anecdotally, many people suffer from katsaridaphobia, or cockroach phobia. Yes, cockroaches wallow in filth, but a case of food poisoning is probably about as bad as it gets if one of those pests skitters across your slice of pizza – a stroll through the park compared to malaria, yellow fever or dengue fever. We don’t go screaming when we see a mosquito, even though they are the world’s deadliest animal.
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Unlike mosquitoes, ticks or fleas, roaches aren’t disease vectors, and they do not feed directly on our blood, skin or fluids. Yet given what we know today, logically it does not make sense to fear cockroaches. By the 19th Century, the handful of cockroach species that carved out a niche for themselves as pests had more or less achieved global domination. The ancient Egyptians fashioned spells imploring the ram-headed god Khnum to banish cockroaches in ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder wrote of the “disgusting” nature of those pests and John Smith of Jamestown complained of the “ill-scented dung” of the “cacarooch”, which quickly took up residence throughout the New World. Along the way, however, I would uncover an unsettling truth about the future of our relationship with roaches, and it would transform the way I see these life-long foes.ĭelving into cockroach lore, I quickly learned that our distaste for them goes way back. That mission would require me to dig out the cockroach exoskeletons in my closet, explore intriguing new techniques to help us conquer insect fear, and ultimately confront the terror head-on, by journeying into the heart of six-legged darkness, at one of the premier cockroach labs in the world. The true nature of that relationship – and the irrational fear it so often inspires – was something I was compelled to learn more about for very personal reasons. “In a sense, we loathe that which we foster.” Our very existence enables them to thrive.
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“They’ve really figured out how to exploit the opportunities we create, and in doing so, developed behaviours and life histories that prevent us from controlling them,” says Jeff Lockwood, a professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming. As physical embodiments of filth and germs, they show that for all of our fortifications against dirt and disease, those efforts are ultimately futile. Roaches invade our homes and make those intimate spaces their own. Finding a small dead cockroach tangled in my wet hair after a trip to the beach, and thereafter suffering recurring nightmares of picking roaches out of my hair. Watching my first cat, Salty, as he traps a roach, dismembers it with his claws and mouth, and then eats the succulent, writhing remains. It is a psychological gateway into a lengthy laundry list of traumatic experiences: digging through a box of supplies in my outdoor playhouse when a roach zips out and scuttles up my leg, its spiky appendages pricking at my skin.
Real or imaginary, this incident triggered an intense dislike of cockroaches that would only intensify as years passed and encounters with those creatures multiplied. Or perhaps it was just business-as-usual in our Southern US home, where – no matter what chemical barriers were erected – cockroaches inevitably found their way inside. Perhaps I dreamed it, or my early memory is flawed. I recently asked my mother about this event, and she had no idea what I was talking about. She shrieks, flailing and stomping, suddenly naked and vulnerable and afraid. As she wraps the towel around her body, however, it quickly makes itself known. As she pulls a towel from the rack, I notice a dark stain marring that clean, fluffy pink material. The bathroom door stands open in front of me, and my mother is emerging from the shower. I’m about four years old, and I’m sitting in the green-carpeted hallway of our family’s first home in Biloxi, Mississippi. What’s your earliest memory? For me, the answer is not pleasant.
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