PEST FACT
- Rats contaminate and destroy enough food worldwide each year to feed 200 million people.
- A cockroach can live a week without its head. The roach only dies because without a mouth, it can't drink water and dies of thirst.
- The total weight of all of the termites in the world is greater than the weight of all the humans in the world.
- A cockroach can hold its breath for 40 minutes.
- A mouse produces between 40 to 100 droppings per day.
- More than 500,000 people seek emergency medical help each year as a result of insect stings.
- Female German cockroaches can produce one egg capsule every 20 to 25 days. Each capsule contains from 18 to 48 eggs.
- A female housefly can lay up to 600 eggs in her short lifetime.
- 36% of the reported Hantavirus cases in the United States have resulted in death. Hantavirus is a virus spread by rodents.
- The American cockroach has shown a marked attraction to alcoholic beverages, especially beer.
- To survive the cold winter months, many insects replace their body water with a chemical called glycerol, which acts as an "antifreeze" against the temperatures.
- Wild and domestic rodents have been reported to harbor and spread as many as 200 human pathogens.
- A female house mouse can give birth to up to a dozen babies every three weeks. Imagine having as many as 150 babies a year!
- A rat can swim for 3 days before it drowns.
- Mice feed 15-20 times a day.
- Mice can jump a foot high.
- Mice can fit through an opening of 2cm.
- Conservative estimates place as many as 14,000 people each year in the U.S. bitten by rats.
- Mosquitoes transmit some of the worst diseases known to man, including dengue fever, malaria, encephalitis, and yellow fever.
- As many as 100 people die as a result of bee and wasp stings each year.
- A cockroach that has just shed its skeleton is white with black eyes. After eight hours, it has regained its regular coloring.
- Cockroaches are believed to have originated more than 280 million years ago, in the Carboniferous era.
- Cockroaches can live without food for one month, but will only survive a week without water.
- Cockroaches spend 75% of their time resting.
- Cockroaches can run up to three miles in an hour.
- A one-day-old baby cockroach, which is about the size of a speck of dust, can run almost as fast as its parents.
- Most cockroach species live in the tropics but they can make their home all over the world, including the North and South Poles.
- The German cockroach is the most common cockroach found in and around apartments, homes, supermarkets and restaurants.
- The Madagascan Hissing Cockroach is one of the few insects who give birth to live young, rather than laying eggs.
- The brown-banded cockroach often hides her egg capsules, containing up to 18 eggs, in furniture.
- Termites cause as much as $5 billion in damage each year. Formosan termites alone cause over $1 billion in damage every year.
- Termites eat non-stop - 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Flies taste what they walk on.
- Insects have been present for about 350 million years, while humans have only walked the earth for 130,000 years.
- An ant can lift 20 times its own body weight. If a 175-pound man had the comparative strength of an ant, he could lift four tons.
- Filth flies can carry diseases such as E. coli, leprosy, typhoid and polio.
- Male silk moths can detect female moths up to several miles away.
- Fleas can remain frozen for a year and survive.
- Caterpillars may have over 4000 separate muscles. Humans have only 792.