Brown-hooded cockroach
The brown-hooded cockroach is a wild cockroach that lives deep inside rotting logs in the mountain forests of eastern North America. It has no wings and it eats wood. Its family life is special: mum and dad stay together and look after their babies for years.
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Fun facts
It is a close cousin of termites, and like them it eats wood.
Newborn babies cannot digest wood yet, so their parents feed them until they can.
A mum and dad usually have just one batch of about 73 eggs, and then care for the family for three years or more.
It helps the forest by breaking down dead logs, so their goodness goes back into the soil.
Its family has lived in these mountain forests for tens of millions of years.
Most asked questions about Brown-hooded cockroach
?Do brown-hooded cockroaches live in houses?
No. They live their whole lives inside rotting logs in the forest.
?What does the brown-hooded cockroach eat?
Rotting wood from fallen logs.
?Can the brown-hooded cockroach fly?
No. Both boys and girls have no wings at all.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cryptocercus punctulatus
- Group
- Cockroaches and termites
- Family
- Cryptocercidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Blattodea > Cryptocercidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Woodroach, Wingless wood roach, Eastern wood-eating cockroach
Where the facts come from
- Cryptocercus punctulatus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Matt Muir. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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