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Sticker of Chinese medicinal cockroach
Bug card No. 0883 of 4,939

Chinese medicinal cockroach

Eupolyphaga sinensis
Eats: Leftovers and dead thingsCockroaches and termitesForests and woods6 legs

The Chinese medicinal cockroach is a round, flat cockroach that lives under rocks and dead wood. People often call it wingless, but only the mothers have no wings. The fathers are smaller, paler and can have wings longer than their bodies.

Lives in
Central and northern China, southern Russia and probably Mongolia
Length
1.8 to 3 cm (0.7 to 1.2 in)
females are bigger than males
Top speed
about 3 km/h (1.9 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not bite or sting, and it lives outdoors, not in houses.
What does it eat?
It eats bits of dead plants that it finds on the ground.
For real!Photo of Chinese medicinal cockroach
Picture by Jerrythebest. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Chinese medicinal cockroach about 3 cm long (1.2 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)
as long as 5 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 1.2 secondsmoves 28 times its own body length every second

How big is Chinese medicinal cockroach compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It is a night animal. During the day it hides under rocks, in dead wood and bark, or in loose soil.

2

The mother keeps her eggs in a hard little case and carries it at the end of her body before she puts it down.

3

Females can live for up to two and a half years, much longer than males.

4

In China people have used it in old-style medicine for a very long time, and big farms raise it today.

5

In different parts of its home the cockroaches grow to different sizes, to suit the local weather.

you asked

Most asked questions about Chinese medicinal cockroach

?Does the Chinese medicinal cockroach have wings?

Only the males do. The females have no wings at all.

?How big is it?

Females are about 2.3 to 3 centimetres long. Males are a bit smaller.

?Why is it called medicinal?

In China it has long been used in traditional medicine.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Eupolyphaga sinensis
Group
Cockroaches and termites
Family
Corydiidae
Classification
Insecta > Blattodea > Corydiidae
Lives on
Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Eupolyphaga sinensis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Jerrythebest. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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